Marketing Department Organization Elements

Marketing Department Organization Structure

All companies have their own way of structuring the marketing department and the approach can differ from company to company. Small companies may have one or two marketing employees, whereas bigger organizations may have tens of marketing employees or staff. Generally, simply the act of putting an organizational structure in place with clear roles and responsibilities will help your team understand how they can each help achieve your goals and performance objectives.

Here is a brief summary of some roles and their respective responsibilities:

 

Vice president

The vice president is a general term given to the person in charge of the entire marketing department. The vice president is responsible for planning and creating a marketing strategy for the products and services of a company. Other marketing employees forward their reports to the vice president. The vice president serves as an intermediary between the owners or upper management of the company and the marketing department.

 

Marketing manager

In the world of marketing, the term marketing director and marketing manager are mostly used interchangeably. A marketing manager is responsible for carrying out the marketing strategy for the company. Such strategies include carrying out various programs and campaigns to reach the target audience of the company, creating marketing messages, and choosing mediums such as print advertising and website advertising. The marketing manager generally manages the other marketing employees and reports to the vice president. When a company has multiple product lines, there might be a marketing manager for each of the product lines.

 

Marketing Operations

The Marketing Operations team members are usually focused on the data and metrics in the department. They will review the information to identify trends and gaps in execution to see if new strategies are in order. The group can also be responsible for the procurement, deployment, and management of the various marketing applications that are used in the organization. In some cases, the Marketing Operations team is also responsible for monitoring and managing demand generation teams.

 

Market researcher

In some companies, market researchers are also employed. Their responsibility is to find out information about the target audience of the company together with the competitors in the industry. Market researchers can make use of tools such as focus groups and surveys to assist them in uncovering information and statistics or make use of the U.S. Census and other publications to gather data. The information, research, and statistic gathered by the market researchers are put to use by the marketing manager to craft the messaging and programs. Although market research is important, small scale to medium-sized businesses usually hire a third-party source for market research instead of having full-time market research staff. Large organizations employ their own market research staff.

 

Public relations

Companies make use of non-paid forms of advertising to promote business, and these non-paid forms are handled by public relations employees. Public relations is a subdivision of marketing; however if a marketing manager placed emphasis on taking care of the budget by choosing the right form of advertising, public relations is typically free. In order to attract attention to the company, public relations can go ahead to produce and submit press releases to local or national media. They also act as the media spokesperson for the business, so they partake in conducting interviews with staff of the media or arrange an interview for the executives of the company with the media.

 

Creative services

Usually, these web and graphic designers take part in portraying the image of the company and brand to the outside world. This team might assist the marketing manager to produce a brochure design and layout so as to portray the company messaging the marketing manager and vice president have chosen on behalf of the business.

These are just some of the roles that you can have in your marketing department. There is no right or wrong answer as to how you should create your team. It is just important that you have a plan and that you are clear and consistent when you communicate it.