What Is the Ideal Product Marketing Team Structure?

What is the ideal product marketing team structure? It’s a question every marketer considers and a hot topic at business seminars everywhere.

Is it organized, next level, centralized or efficient? Maybe you need your team to take elements from each category.

To stay competitive, you’ll need to keep up with the current trends, but businesses structure their marketing teams differently. So, how do you know which template to follow??

The critical methodology is keeping your team agile. In addition, there’s a shift toward focusing on the customer experience and removing silos to create sales enablement.

If you don’t know where to start, then consider this your guide to creating the ideal product marketing team structure.

What Makes A Modern Product Marketing Team: Your Ultimate Checklist

Before discussing the structure, we need to discuss the positions that will keep a product marketing team running smoothly. You’ll need content writers, editors, and your chief marketing officer (CMO), but generally, it depends on the size of your marketing team.

A small team doesn’t need as many roles, but it needs a more efficient strategy to beat a bigger team. So, what will the marketing roles be in your organizational structure?

Chief Content Officer

Your chief content officer (CCO) leads your content marketing team. They draw the roadmap and decide what the long and short-term deliverables of your marketing campaign will be.

Your CCO also interacts with management for setting a budget and acquiring funding. Although the CCO may not regularly interact with your marketing team, they lead their marketing efforts.

Content Marketing Manager

Your marketing team may not interact with the CCO, but they’ll interact with the content marketing manager (CCM) regularly. They directly supervise the content that is created. The CCM’s responsibilities include:

• Assigning roles and deciding who will do what task
• Creating content and setting editorial guidelines
• Forming buyer personas
• Setting goals and outcomes for the project
• Writing and updating style guides

Data Scientist/Analyst

Research and data are crucial to today’s product marketing teams. Data scientists look at statistics like return on investment (ROI) and return on ads spent (ROAS) and decide, based on the numbers, how your campaign is doing.

A data scientist’s other responsibilities include:

• Gathering marketing analytics
• Funneling data into marketing automation tools
• Planning market research projects to discover your customer’s needs
• Structure metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.
• Create data-based strategies for the marketing team

SEO Strategist

Search engine optimization (SEO) is complex and often requires its own specialist. The job of the SEO strategist is to make your brand or product more visible to search engines. They also may handle inbound marketing activities and be responsible for other duties, including:

• Creating SEO brand guidelines
• Develop critical keywords
• Optimize current content for SEO
• Work on different inbound marketing strategies like PPC

Writer/ Editor/Content Creator

It takes an army of writers to create good blog content and content marketing. They are the heart of your creative talent. They take the style guidelines from the CMM and write content to fit those guidelines. Other writer responsibilities include:

• Creating long and short-form blogs
• Writing website content
• Guest writing for websites like LinkedIn
• Ghostwriting pieces for your CMO
• Developing social media summaries

Although it is helpful to employ a content team to create your material, sometimes that’s not financially feasible. If your budget and resources are tight, then consider outsourcing writing, or using a content service. There are tons out there with varying pricing plans and specialties.

Visual Designer

People following text and visual instructions do 323% better than people who follow text alone. Moreover, your marketing team needs a visual designer. A visual designer’s responsibilities include:

• Developing social graphics  
• Designing videos
• Drawing infographics 
• Shooting videos
• Working with content creators to add visuals into your content

Content Editor

Your content editor ensures that your output follows the style guide and contains nothing embarrassing. In other words, they are the last line of defense on your product marketing team. Other duties of an editor include:

• Checking your blogs for grammatical mistakes
• Ensuring your content meets brand guidelines
• Quality control
• Coming up with edits and corrections for your content creators

Content Publisher

The content publisher releases your content to the audience. This content may be anything from a single social media post to a project launching over many digital marketing platforms.

Social Media Manager

The role of a social media manager depends on your organization. It may involve running your Twitter account or creating social media strategies. Other functions of a social media manager include:

• Running your online business accounts
• Managing your email marketing
• Working with your writers to come up with social media summaries
• Working with publishers to publish blogs on social media sites

Public Relations Expert

Your PR expert manages how the public sees you. Do they perceive you as a giant global corporation or a socially-conscious “green” brand? The numbers show it matters – 88% of clients want you to help them make a difference. Your PR expert will be responsible for:

• Putting the positives of your company out there
• Highlighting your initiatives towards creating positive change
• Brand management
• Telling your story (if you don’t, someone else will)
• Working with influencers

Each of these roles plays a critical role in any successful product marketing team. That said, you don’t need to hire a completely new, and frankly large, team to achieve positive results. Some of these roles can be wrapped into a single position. Alternatively, some shops opt to outsource some work or use freelancers for specific projects.

Your Product Marketing Team Now vs. Your Product Marketing Team In 2010

Things change quickly in marketing, and the industry has moved on in a decade. Obvious changes to product marketing include:

Customer-Centric Product Marketing Teams

A decade ago, most marketing teams were product-based, with each product requiring a distinct marketing team. Now, most companies create their teams around the customer, their pain points, and their life cycle. Your marketing team may be built around segments such as:

• brand awareness
• consideration
• exploration
• purchase

Centralization and Harmony Across Product Marketing Teams & Departments

80% of marketers say improving collaboration is important (Welcome& Sirkin internal study, Jan 2021). A decade ago, the marketing department and sales teams were islands on their own. Now, breaking down silos is considered key to customer success.

According to statistics, aligning both sales and marketing could lead to a 209% growth in revenue. Your PR, demand generation, and product development are expected to work together to create an exceptional customer experience. Other activities where different departments come together include:

• Product launches
• Product development
• Development of go-to-market (GTM) strategies

Migration to Agile Methodologies 

Long meetings are out, and agile teams are in! 47% of marketers say freeing up their teams to drive results is very important (Welcome & Sirkin study, Jan 2021). An excellent way to do this is by using agile strategies.

 A few agile marketing techniques that define marketing teams today include:

• Shorter, 15-minute scrum meetings
• Breaking down large targets into small tasks
• The removal of hierarchies and democratization of marketing teams
• The rise of cross-functional teams
• Centralized briefs and calendars for your team members

The Blueprint For A Killer Product Marketing Team Structure

How you structure your product marketing team is key to your marketing strategy. Small changes or modifications can make a big difference.

Not every marketing structure will work for every organization. What works for a start-up will not work for a developed company; however, there are some standard team structures.

SEO Team

According to Hubspot, only 64% of marketers invest time in search engine optimization, which is, frankly, the bare minimum. However, with a dedicated SEO team, you’re ensuring that your target audience has easy access to your inbound messaging.

Your SEO team should be proficient in technical writing, editing, and programming. Your SEO team will focus on:

• Increasing the visibility of your content on search engines
• Improving the ranking of your content online

What Is the Ideal Size of an Ideal SEO team?

For smaller companies, you can give your specialists overlapping roles to save on budget. Overall, small teams are more efficient.

What Roles and Titles Fit an SEO Team?

Roles you can include in your SEO team include:

• SEO strategist
• SEO writers
• Optimization strategist

Social Media Marketing Team

Did you know that 19% of retail banks have a dedicated Twitter customer service handle? Today, marketing teams and other departments, like customer service, work in tandem.

Your social media marketing team will include a list of experts from your talent pool that focus on increasing your visibility on social media platforms. For this, you require tech-savvy, creative, persuasive people who have experience with social media.

Pro-tip: Find an employee with a lot of followers – they know their way around engagement. Roles of your social media team will include:

• Increasing your presence across social media platforms
• Running your social media accounts
• Tracking and leveraging online trends such as hashtags
• Customer service and engagement through social media (e.g., Twitter)
• Creating conversions and generating leads online

What Is the Ideal Size of a Social Media Marketing Team?

There is no one-size-fits-all go-to-market strategy. Nor is there a magic number for successful marketing teams. That said, you could take Jeff Bezos’s advice and find a team you can feed with two pizzas.

What Are the Roles and Titles for an Effective Social Media Team?

Roles you can include in your social media marketing team are:

• Account manager
• Chief account manager
• Content creator or writer
• Digital marketing strategist

Product Marketing Team

These are members of your marketing team whose specialties lie in marketing your product and its features.

These are the people who believe in your product or have a special connection with it. You’d be surprised at the number of people working at Apple who use Samsung phones.

Your product marketing team should have a deep understanding of a consumer’s mindset and mannerisms. Some of their roles include:

• Finding creative ways to market the features of your product
• Introducing the new features of your product to your audience
• Communicating the utility of your product to your audience

What Is the Size of an Ideal Product Marketing Team?

Your product marketing team can have as few as two people. In this setting, what’s most important is their skill and understanding of the customer.

What Roles and Titles Fit a Product Marketing Team?

Some of the titles that you can include in your product marketing team are:

• Brand specialist
• Brand copywriter
• Product marketing manager (PMM)

Your Customer Acquisition Team

This team should be the section of your marketing department that specializes in your prospective and existing customers.

If these people eat, drink, and dream customers, then you can count on them to find useful ways to engage with them. Your acquisition team should be one with your customer journey and obsessed with their experience and satisfaction.

The marketing functions of your customer acquisition team should include:

• Mapping out your customer journey and experience
• Segmentation of your audience
• Development of lead generation and customer retention strategies 

What Is the Ideal Size of a Customer Acquisition Team?

Your customer acquisition team should have a broad base and a narrow top. This means that it should have many members from different departments inputting information and few decision-makers.

What Roles and Titles Fit a Customer Acquisition Team?

• Lead acquisition specialist
• Acquisition editor
• Lead generation specialist
• Customer retention specialist

Managing All These People Can Be a Hassle: Why Not Bring Them Under A Single Dashboard?

Running a product marketing team can be overwhelming. Tracking deadlines, creating workflows, and communicating with dozens of people can take a toll on someone.

You deserve a break. Fortunately, Welcome offers a solution. Let our software bring all your cross-functional responsibilities under a single dashboard. 

From here, and with the help of our automation, you can organize your workflows, track progress, and communicate without having to switch tabs. Ready to give it a try? Get started with a free Welcome account today!