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Stretch your marketing team – and its budget
How lean marketing departments thrive
Today’s B2B corporate marketing
departments are lean – while expecta-
tions and requirements grow large.
Digital strategies, content strategies and
overall data management have become
all-consuming, as marketers feed a
voracious appetite for leads, awareness,
authenticity and authority.
The hats corporate/in-house marketers
wear change frequently. At any given
point your company’s marketing team is
managing your events, creating buzz,
generating leads, building your brand,
talking to your community and managing
your website. At times something as
simple as a social media post can cripple
even the most seasoned marketer.
To properly and efficiently deliver
against the laundry list of expectations,
lean marketing teams – often made up
of one or two people – depend on guidance,
resources and technology to help them thrive.
For a lean marketing department
to thrive, it requires an experi-
enced, seasoned marketer at the
helm – either on the executive
team, on the board, or as a
resource on speed-dial.
This person will have at least 15 years
of corporate B2B experience. They’re
creative communicators and have sur-
vived tradeshow nightmares, generated
hundreds of leads, managed teams of
marketers and are as comfortable with
the executive team as they are with newly
experienced marketing managers.
A senior marketer will help you develop
a strategy, a budget and a tactical plan
that maximizes resources – both internal
and external. Some will even pinch hit
when there’s a void and ensure a profes-
sional and comprehensive hand-off once
a new hire has been found.
They will help you guide and build your
growing team of marketers, who will
thrive in some areas and struggle in
38 | May 2019 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
others. They expect mistakes will be
made, know that lessons will be learned
and feelings will be hurt – yes that
actually matters – but in the end, careers
and business will blossom.
Automating repetitive, time-
consuming tasks – from social
media posting to content curation
– helps marketers squeeze more
juice out of every hour.
Today’s B2B marketers need to know
everything about who they’re selling to
and how they help. With this knowledge,
they can create highly personalized digital,
direct mail, email, mobile and social media
campaigns and content – critical to
engaging today’s business buyer.
Lean marketing teams maximize
their ROI by outsourcing tasks
that cost them money and time.
According to Glassdoor.ca, the average
salary for a marketing manager in Toronto
is between $57,000 and $104,000 per
year ($27/hr - $50/hr), requires 5+ years
of experience, and includes a laundry
list of requirements simply too long to
post in this article.
That means you could be paying $50 an
hour to have your marketing manager
ship FedEx packages. How often does
this need to be done and how long does
it take each time? Can you bring in a
temp, intern, or co-op student?
Assaulted by data coming at them from
a variety of sources, smart marketers
are constantly on the lookout for ways
to automate tasks and measure results
so they can quickly figure out what
works, what doesn’t, and why. No matter how large or small the marketing
team, sometimes there are projects and
opportunities that pop up that don’t
merit the hiring of additional, full-time
resources. But taking them on could
leave the team unable to execute suc-
cessfully. Outsourcing make sense here.
When you can take even a little bit of
pressure off the marketing team it gives
everyone a chance to just breathe. It
helps them focus on what matters most
to help their business thrive. Sometimes, a vacancy needs to be filled,
leaving a potentially huge and lengthy
void throughout the hiring and onboarding
process. Options here include short-term
contracts or retainers.
There’s no shortage of marketing automation
tools, including Hubspot, Hootsuite and
Zapier (to name a few). MindFire is a mar-
keting automation company that develops
solutions to help our industry’s print and
marketing professionals. Da Vinci gives
B2B marketers the insights they need to
create “campaign blueprints” – proven
recipes for obtaining more leads and driving
sales. Marketers can spend more time
moving more
leads through
the pipeline -
and less time
executing
drip-and-
nurture
sequences. The frequency, duration and know-
ledge required to execute against a
marketer’s task list impacts the decision
to outsource everything from keyword
research to tradeshow management.
Balancing resources, technology and
experience will help your lean marketing
team – and your business – thrive.
Joanne Gore is a B2B marketer who’s
passionate about print and has spent the
last three decades helping companies
maximize their marketing and
communications efforts. Founder of Joanne
Gore Communications, she helps companies tell their story to a
new generation of print and business buyers.
Email: [email protected]
Follow her on Twitter: @joannegore121
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