One thing we learned from Paul Graham's viral essay, Founder Mode, is that conventional advice about how to manage a marketing team is often not the best— and you shouldn't follow it blindly. A successful marketing team requires thoughtful leadership that goes beyond standard practices.
This means that the better way to shape your marketing team structures is to first understand the truly important tenets of people, operations, and resource management within different marketing environments. Your marketing efforts should align with these principles to chart your own course, whether you're focused on digital marketing, social media management, or search engine optimization.
The marketing department structure you choose will significantly impact your entire marketing team's ability to execute effective marketing strategies and marketing campaigns. As a marketing manager, you'll need to consider various marketing channels while conducting thorough market research to inform your decisions.
Let's get into it.
The core characteristics that make you an exceptional marketing leader
If you're reading this, then it's likely that:
- You just moved up a rung higher on the corporate ladder.
- You have been a manager for some time but are considering how to do things differently to get better results from your team.
- You run your own business and need to figure out how to make the best of a small marketing team.
Regardless of your situation, there are four core characteristics that equip you to handle the demands of managing people and build a marketing team of high-performing individuals.
You’re a strategist: Be the compass that guides your team
The world of marketing is expansive and keeps evolving. As new trends emerge, others become obsolete. The consumer expectations and habits of yesterday could change before tomorrow. This means that without a clear vision and direction, your team faces the risk of simply being reactive, chasing trends without knowing how to prioritize initiatives that drive them toward a north star.
As a marketing leader, you have a clear understanding of your company’s goals, the competitive environment, and your team’s capabilities. You also have the foresight to see where the market is heading and can reference that to design a roadmap for your team. You’ll build a hierarchy of goals, define objectives that tap into your team's strengths, and create checkpoints to review progress regularly.
You’re a communicator: Set the tone for open and effective dialogue
The modern workforce is significantly hybrid as teams within the same company are spread across multiple cities and time zones.
As a marketing leader, you lay the groundwork for effective communication both internally and across departments. You’ll define the tools, channels, and methods for different purposes. For example, Tracey Wallace, who manages the content team at Klaviyo, communicates with her team mostly over Slack and video tools. With each person, she holds individual one-on-ones, then a weekly 30-minute team standup (status call) on Tuesdays, and a monthly content marketing meeting to review data, review goals, and make changes in strategy.
Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven, recommends being explicit when communicating with your team. She suggests adding examples when you give instructions, clarifying which tasks are top priority and providing deadlines.
You’re an analyst: Look at everything from a data-driven lens
One of the top mistakes that Emily Kramer, co-founder at MKT1, sees often when working with marketers is that they do "random acts of marketing. [They choose] the wrong growth levers or try to pick too many to do at once, and don't properly test and scale."
As a marketing leader, you balance your intuition with evidence-based insights by using data to test and validate your gut feelings. You pay attention to what data reveals about audience behavior, market trends, and campaign or team performance. You’ll also uphold a data-driven culture by encouraging experimentation, using attribution models to track insights, and centralizing data across platforms
Read: How a marketing analyst can help your team
You’re a decision-maker: Take ownership of the choices that impact success
Marketing team management involves a lot of decision-making, and an inability to make effective decisions can be costly. A McKinsey survey found that inefficient decision-making costs a typical Fortune 500 company around 530,000 days of managers' time each year, equivalent to about $250 million in annual wages.
As a marketing leader, you're responsible for improving the speed and quality of decisions the marketing department relies on. You understand the various decisions to be made, prioritize them based on their expected impact, and collaborate with members of your team and other departments to clarify execution.
Managing marketing teams in different contexts
When you ask the question "How do I structure my marketing team?" Many answers will arrive at the same conclusion; it depends. Your marketing team structure should adapt to your specific context and marketing channels. The key is understanding how different marketing efforts contribute to overall success.
Here’s how to align your management style to the demands of different industries, company stages, and team functions.
Based on industry
Managing a B2B marketing team
Longer sales cycles and the complexity of product offerings require you as a manager to collaborate closely with sales and ensure your team can effectively communicate technical value propositions to knowledgeable buyers.
Core focus
- Cultivating industry expertise within your team
- Account-based marketing
- Lead nurturing across your buyer’s journey
Management tactics
- Use a skills matrix to identify industry/product knowledge gaps
- Create personalized development plans to address knowledge gaps
- Establish a quarterly planning process with sales, product, and customer success teams
Read: How to structure a B2B marketing team
Managing an Ecommerce marketing team
Ecommerce marketing teams operate in a rapidly changing environment where market trends and consumer behaviors can shift dramatically within short periods of time. Your management approach should lean towards creative agility and real-time performance optimization.
Core focus
- Developing creative and analytical expertise within your team
- Prioritizing seamless customer experiences
- Supporting both short-term performance marketing goals and long-term brand-building initiatives
Management tactics
- Allocate adequate resources to conversion rate optimization (CRO) experts
- Ensure your team collaborates across channels to deliver a unified customer experience
- Set up weekly syncs between marketing, merchandising, and inventory teams to establish campaign alignment
Read: How to hire an Amazon marketing expert
Managing an Agency marketing team
In an agency, your marketing team will be juggling multiple client projects and must demonstrate expertise across various industry verticals. You’ll need to identify the best way to allocate resources to ensure effective client management and efficient project execution.
Core focus
- Delivering impactful solutions for clients through a culture of creativity and innovation
- Implementing a robust project management system to track multiple client campaigns
- Balancing technical marketing expertise with relationship-building and communication skills
Management tactics
- Create pods of 3-6 people with complementary skills to handle specific client portfolios
- Set up seamless communication systems within pods and across the agency
- Schedule regular feedback sessions for both team members and clients
Read: Scale programmatic advertising with an expert marketer
Based on company stage
Managing a startup marketing team
In a startup environment, your marketing department will likely be a team of one. Budgets are limited, so you'll rely on innovation and experimentation to find scalable channels that deliver quick wins.
Core focus
- Building a foundational marketing structure your team can rely on as the company grows
- Prioritizing high-impact initiatives
- Working with a brand marketer to establish your differentiation strategy
Management tactics
- Hold brief daily standups to track progress and remove blockers
- Document processes early on before things get more complex
- Celebrate small wins while working towards long-term goals
Managing a growth-stage marketing team
At this stage, your company has achieved product-market fit and you’re ready to scale operations and customer acquisition. You’ll need to transition from generalist roles to more functional specialists.
Core focus
- Optimizing processes to drive sustained growth and team efficiency
- Hiring marketers with specialized skills and developing your team to fill key skill gaps
- Retaining high-performing team members
Management tactics
- Use sprint planning to manage increasing project complexity
- Implement a hybrid team structure where external specialists can support internal team functions
- Transition from being hands-on to providing strategic guidance and oversight
Read: Hire a Fractional CMO to help you grow faster
Managing an enterprise marketing team
Managing enterprise marketing operations at scale demands strong decision-making abilities and the capacity to handle multiple stakeholders, product lines, and large teams.
Core focus
- Driving customer acquisition, retention, and brand equity at scale
- Creating hyper-personalized marketing campaigns for diverse audiences
- Implementing governance frameworks to clearly outline decision-making authority and approval processes across marketing initiatives
Management tactics
- Build a strong culture of accountability with clear ownership of campaigns
- Structure communication channels to flow seamlessly across the marketing department
- Set up mentorship programs to develop the next set of team leaders
Based on team function
Managing a product marketing team
As a product marketing manager, you need to develop your team’s analytical and storytelling capabilities as they’ll be responsible for product positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategies.
Core focus
- Utilizing deep product knowledge to create compelling narratives
- Gathering and synthesizing customer insights to guide product positioning
- Developing frameworks for effectively launching new products and features
Management tactics
- Schedule regular syncs where your marketing team can observe sales calls, conduct customer interviews, and join product planning sessions
- Assign ownership for specific product lines or launch campaigns
- Provide training to deepen your team’s product knowledge
Managing an email marketing team
To effectively manage an email marketing team, you need to build a culture of experimentation and iteration as the success of your campaigns will require both creative strategy and methodical testing.
Core focus
- Developing scalable personalization campaigns for various customer segments
- Experimenting with subject lines, email deliverability times, and copy to increase email conversions
Management tactics
- Create detailed documentation for compliance, brand standards, and email workflows
- Establish seamless project collaboration across functions such as copywriting, design, and analytics
- Review campaign performance regularly with your team to identify gaps and optimize for better results
Read: How to structure an effective email marketing team
Managing a content marketing team
The content marketing department faces the challenges of lengthy production cycles and tight delivery deadlines. You’ll need to create systems to ensure consistent quality output without burning out your team.
Core focus
- Building systems and developing strategies (e.g SEO) to drive effective content marketing
- Developing editorial guidelines that align content initiatives with the company's marketing goals and brand voice
- Gathering insights from subject matter experts to enhance content credibility
Management tactics
- Set up standardized content workflows to enable writers, editors, and designers to produce content that meets content marketing objectives
- Train your team on how to analyze content metrics and use insights to identify pieces that should be repurposed or updated
- Establish a structured process for working with freelance content marketers and contributors
Managing a social media marketing team
Social media marketing is fast-paced. Many times, your team would have to trade off scheduled content for spontaneous posts in response to trends. You will need to guide them on how to stay culturally relevant and participate in trends without losing sight of the main strategic objectives.
Core focus
- Building a social media team with diverse platform expertise (e.g. a paid social expert)
- Developing processes to manage brand reputation
- Setting up social listening tools to review community feedback and refine strategy
Management tactics
- Create clear protocols for escalating different social situations
- Host regular briefings to review trends and platform updates
- Define creative production processes for time-sensitive content
Read: How to structure and manage a paid social media team
Managing a growth marketing team
Considering that your team will focus on rapid experimentation to optimize the customer acquisition and retention funnel, you need to cultivate an agile mindset and data-driven culture.
Core focus
- Leveraging data and insights to refine strategies and guide decision-making
- Experimenting with multiple channels to identify and scale the most effective strategies
- Analyzing funnel metrics to optimize your customer journey
Management tactics
- Prioritize A/B testing and small-scale experiments to nurture a mindset of testing and learning
- Create a system to document all growth experiments, outcomes, and insights
- Schedule regular technical training to sharpen your team’s skills
7 unconventionally effective ways to manage a marketing team
Your effectiveness as a manager depends almost entirely on your ability to help each team member thrive. These seven strategies may be unconventional, but they are effective and contribute greatly to nurturing a team of exceptional performers.
Focus on individual strengths
An article in Harvard Business Review likened great managers to chess players. The author explained that "Great managers are fascinated with individuality." They know that akin to how chess pieces move in different ways, each team member differs in the way they think, what drives them, and how they build relationships.
To be a great manager, find a way to capitalize on each person's unique ability and put them into roles that allow them to shine by assigning specific tasks that align with their strengths.
Empower ownership of programs
Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, sparked (ha!) a debate on LinkedIn that had commenters arguing for and against functional specialists versus program ownership. Her opening statement was, "Leaders should empower ownership of programs — not just specific job functions."
To clarify, she mentioned that marketing teams in which each marketer owns a whole program could look like this: One marketer runs the weekly live YouTube show, and another runs the blog. This approach can work great for your team especially for well-rounded marketers who enjoy autonomy. It will also keep the team accountable for the outcomes of their program.
Implement asynchronous work
In computer programming, "asynchronous" is a non-blocking architecture that allows multiple related tasks to run simultaneously so the execution of one task isn't dependent on another.
At the core of this approach is trust—the belief that team members can get things done without constant supervision—and communication—the practice of sharing detailed information to ensure the team has access to everything it needs to move forward on tasks.
To implement this, Steve Glaveski, founder of Collective Camps, suggests;
- Using task management tools like Asana or Basecamp to provide a transparent view of project progress and allow team members to leave comments or updates asynchronously.
- Encouraging your team to carve out time slots on their calendar –preferably not more than 30 minutes– on a daily or weekly basis when they are open to being booked for meetings.
- Encouraging the use of shared documents and visual collaboration platforms such as Miro.
Prioritize giving super-specific feedback
In situations where people's intentions don’t match their results, "Super Specific Feedback," as Kao termed it, can help "narrow the gap between strategy and execution" for your team.
The idea is to take every piece of work product —the strategic thinking that went into an asset such as a website copy or email campaign— as an opportunity to coach your team. Share your observations with them and help them think like you. She explains that this "acts as a force multiplier and passes on your capacity."
Use personal motivations to trigger good performance
To trigger good performance means to activate or stimulate an individual to apply their strengths in a way that leads to excellent results. This involves understanding and addressing each team member's personal motivations.
Vicky Owens, the Gen Z manager of a social media agency, shared some of the seemingly controversial ways she runs her team. She realized early on that most of her team aren't morning people, so she lets them start work a bit later. If a member of the team feels more productive working from home on a certain day, she lets them.
To be an effective manager, identify what drives good performance. For some, it may be financial incentives, such as a substantial bonus. For others, the motivation might come from flexible working hours, having you as a mentor, or, most powerfully, from personalized recognition.
Adopt the Agile mindset to deliver value quickly
The primary way to achieve this is by breaking down large projects into sprints: a fixed time you allocate to complete a designated set of tasks. Based on feedback, goals and processes may be adjusted for the next sprint.
Sprint planning goes hand-in-hand with standup meetings, which are scheduled check-ins to share progress. When seeking marketing agility, you can ask, "How might we structure and run our marketing campaigns in a way that allows us to quickly adapt to changing market trends, customer needs, and resource constraints?"
Being Agile can help you figure this out through trying, getting feedback, and iterating. It is also an excellent approach to marketing project management.
Use digital talent platforms to build a hybrid workforce
In 2019, a joint research by Harvard and Boston Consulting Group (BGC) reported that many large companies integrate a mix of marketing talent — including freelancers, full-time staff, and remote workers — to create a hybrid workforce.
Wallace, now at Klaviyo, previously built a core marketing team for MarketerHire and then leveraged the support of expert freelancers to help them with projects. In a similar fashion, Jennifer Ravalli, former CMO at Harri, built a network of independent marketers with specialized skills to help her team succeed during the busy seasons. "Our network of agencies and freelancers," she explained, "help us get more things done and also tap into expertise we may not have on the team".
Managing a marketing team can be hard. But it gets easier when your marketing department is structured to include both in-house and freelance marketers.
Common pitfalls to avoid in marketing management
You're not above making mistakes. Even experienced managers can fall into common traps that hinder their team's performance and limit growth. Let's discuss some major challenges managers face and how to avoid them.
Micromanaging
Many managers believe that micromanaging is the ideal way to get their team to deliver results.
However, 91% of them are unaware that employees change jobs because of their micromanaging behavior. Micromanaging interferes with job performance, negatively impacts morale, and undermines autonomy. It also increases the time and effort you expend as your team grows.
Trusting your team's expertise is a great way to prevent yourself from doing this. "Trust," Ravalli explained, "is a powerful antidote to micromanagement and gives talented people the space to try new things." Provide support and guidance, then step back and let them do the work.
Failing to provide growth opportunities
If you want high employee turnover, box people into roles that don’t have a clear path for growth. But if you want to retain talent, get to know each person on your team's career goals and areas of interest.
Managers often neglect growth opportunities due to time constraints, budget limitations, or a short-term focus on immediate results rather than long-term team development. To set up opportunities for growth;
- Work closely with each person to create a personalized personal development plan.
- Allocate a budget for personal development that covers certifications, conferences, books, and mentorship. Then, show them how to take advantage of it.
- Encourage job shadowing and cross-functional collaboration to enhance your team's understanding of the organization.
- Follow up with progress updates, offer honest feedback, and share relevant recommendations.
Information silos between team members or departments
"It's devilishly difficult," HBR states, "to help people collaborate across boundaries."
Limited communication tends to exist between cross-functional teams, which can cause the entire company to miss out on revenue-generating opportunities.
In many cases, silos are the result of poor communication infrastructure or unclear processes for sharing insights. To resolve this,
- Set up regular syncs between marketing, sales, and product teams to align KPIs and review relevant data.
- Create dedicated knowledge-sharing spaces where team members can easily collaborate and exchange ideas.
- Don’t just lay down the law; embody it.
Poor resource allocation and prioritization
The success of marketing initiatives often hinges on a clear understanding of resource limitations—whether financial, human, or technological. Managers struggle with this due to difficulty saying "no" to stakeholders, a lack of a structured framework for prioritization, or an inability to accurately assess resource requirements for different initiatives.
To address this, assess your team's capacity and resources before committing to projects. Prioritize planning ahead by using marketing resource management (MRM) tools to streamline the process of planning, budgeting, and managing digital assets for campaigns.
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