Now that you’ve laid the foundation for your marketing strategy and gotten to know your ideal customers, it’s time to find the right people to carry out your vision.
It might come as a surprise the amount of work that goes into implementing even a simple marketing plan. Launching a new B2B marketing strategy is no one-person job. You need reliable problem-solvers on the ground helping you bring all the intricate details together.
At the bare minimum, there are 3 marketing roles you should be looking to fill: Content Specialist, Digital Specialist, and Visual Designer.
Before we get into what each role entails, we think it’s worth noting that many companies launch successful B2B marketing campaigns by outsourcing day-to-day marketing tasks to specialized firms, while the overall strategy and direction is developed by their internal leaders.
There are a few main reasons outsourcing marketing initiatives can be beneficial for a company:
The outsourced firm specializes in the marketing services they provide, so they have experience, a proven process, and they often provide certified specialists
It saves you money by placing the responsibility for all the costs of hiring, managing, and supplying resources for the team on the outsourced firm
Outsourcing allows you to allocate more time to high-level strategy and growth instead of focusing on the minute details and managing employees
In the case of software company Onit, an outsourced EBQ Marketing Department was employed to create content and manage their email marketing automation platform, resulting in a dramatic increase of email opens and click-through rates.
It’s easy to see why choosing the right people to implement your plan can make or break your marketing strategy.
You may build your team slightly differently than how we break it down here, especially since many marketers are multifunctional. But let’s talk about the 3 main specialties that the members of your team should be able to cover.
A Step-by-Step Guide
Content
Specialist
Content drives your digital marketing strategy, packaging your messaging in an easy-to-digest way in order to inform and offer value to online visitors beyond a hard sell. The key responsibilities of a content specialist include:
Write engaging website copy that educates visitors about the company and products
Create short and long-form blog content published on a consistent basis
Write tactical content like email copy and sales enablement collateral
Regularly post on and moderate social media channels for the brand
Digital
Specialist
The digital specialist on your team plays a crucial role in driving new visitors and leads to your website and content, handling the more technical areas of building your online presence and launching campaigns. Key responsibilities of a digital specialist include:
Run email marketing campaigns through marketing automation software
Implement paid social media and search engine ad campaigns
Use analytics to track conversions and the success of campaigns
Research and collect data to inform marketing decisions
Help develop and troubleshoot issues with your company’s website
Visual
Designer
The role of visual designer requires a specialist who understands basic design principles, as well as your overall vision and where you want to stand in the market. We’ll talk more about the importance of building a cohesive brand in the next chapter.
The visuals that represent your company are an important factor in building a credible brand, and the visual designer you recruit should be able to convey the value of your offerings in a cohesive and appealing way. Visual designers take on the following responsibilities:
Establish visual branding and apply it consistently throughout content, including logos, colors, fonts, and more
Design graphic elements, layouts, and illustrations for your website, blog content, ads, social media, and printed collateral
Design the user interface/user experience (UI/UX) for your company’s website with the goal of keeping visitors engaged
