A comprehensive digital marketing plan involves multiple channels and formats. The role of the sales team is different in the SaaS industry and there's a reason why it's so often called the "customer success team" instead. A Marketing Life Cycle Manager is responsible for overseeing the marketing funnel from beginning to end. SaaS Marketing Team Structure and Org Charts. While I’d not refer to the system as elastic I do believe that an explicit focus on the customer benefits you are trying to promote should inform your organizational structure. The five B2B SaaS marketing team skill groups Below is a more detailed breakdown of the skill groups including an outline of responsibilities for each role. These may be two separate roles, but they are often fulfilled by the same manager or team since a key focus is on building relationships. Are the features easy to use? For example, efforts intended to generate demand will not necessarily lead to more demand being captured. Join 4,200+ ecommerce and cloud service executives that we send practical ideas to close more business from search and content. There are three primary things a marketing team for a SaaS company does: Most marketing efforts will be devoted toward one or more of these goals, and it's important that the right metrics are being used for each effort. They should be skilled at planning, promoting, and overseeing the event itself, as well as estimating value and measuring and reporting on results. The reason why most SaaS affiliate marketing programs fail isn’t because of a poor commission structure (although that can make the problem worse). Web traffic captured by site content or referred by publications on other sites, Value added to leads who have interacted with more content, Search engine traffic, rankings, pages indexed, conversions, and revenue, A SaaS with less than 50 employees has a marketing team making up 5.5 percent of the workforce, A SaaS with less than 50 employees has a sales team making up 11.7 percent of the workforce, Companies with more than 50 people have marketing teams making up 7.4 percent of the team, Companies over size 50 have sales teams making up 27.5 percent of the team. SaaSX recommends dividing it up into two teams built around assets and channels: If you are selling multiple SaaS under one brand, Sponge's approach recommending teams for brand, demand generation, and product is a good option: Don't rely too heavily on templates to decide what your org chart should look like. Content creators write content for landing pages, blog posts, guest editorials, whitepapers, and so on. 6 years experience in internet marketing and marketing obsessed. Always thinking of traveling in exotic countries and wishing I could eat couture cupcakes all day long. Keep in mind that this is not a hard-and-fast list, but a starting point to help you think about the skills you need for each area of the marketing function. We don't emphasize pay per click, pay per impression, remarketing, and other paid channels at Northcutt, since these primarily contribute to monthly, rather than cumulative, revenue. Ebooks & White Papers. When constructing, managing, and leading a SaaS marketing team, it's important to start with these high level concepts. The development and support of the hierarchy and the agility and user focus of the durable team. Although hiring an experienced professional feels like a heavy investment for a self-funded startup, it will pay back in the long run. Web managers can edit site code, improve site speed, connect various marketing platforms, automate various tasks, and resolve technical issues. International SEO A third role for PR Manager is sometimes made distinct as well. While this may seem like a buzzword painting over an old concept, and sometimes is, there are genuine reasons for this shift in language. It should be primarily driven by company philosophy and marketing approach. Obviously, every marketing team will be structured differently, depending on how big your budget is and which areas are best to invest in for your target markets. SEOs can identify opportunities to capture more visits or value from search engine traffic. Event managers organize events like conferences, meetups, gatherings, and workshops. Obviously the names of the roles aren't always identical to the titles we used above either. A Marketing Ops Manager may have a lot of overlap with the Optimizers section above and in some cases may be the same person or people. In our case, we believe the the lean/agile model gives you a toolkit that puts the customer up front as a participant in the design of the organization and that should be tantamount with success.” – Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, CMO Mozilla, Great communication skills able to make tough decisions when prioritizing features and updates. Good Social Media managers not only expand reach, but use the platform for customer service, for getting feedback on your SaaS, and for identifying needs in the market. CEO at Incredo. The more important numbers to focus on are the marginal revenue vs cost of each new member of the team, as well as whether customer support, and in some cases the product team, can keep up with the growth the marketing team is generating. They should be skilled at researching topics and synthesizing information quickly, and understand the psychology behind how content influences lead's decisions, and what is likely to get accepted for publication or achieve popularity on various platforms. The goal of a SaaS sales rep should be to offer the prospect trust and comfort that they will be able to accomplish what they need to with the platform. Professionals ready to roll up their sleeves and proceed to managing their respective teams at once will enhance the overall company performance, saving time and additional training costs that would be required for less experienced specialists. They also likely play the role of overseeing how sales and marketing communicate with one another. What unites them, however, is their focus on using data and technical skill to identify opportunities to create business value. Different types of content creators may be necessary for different types of content, since the psychology behind influencing hot leads on a landing page with pithy content can be very different from the psychology behind building trust with cold leads over an extended time period with useful advice. Landing pages designed to overcome objections and convince a prospect to try a free trial are good for capturing demand, but not for generating it, and only indirectly for identifying it (through A/B tests, for example). Problem Solving through a Collaboration Mindset Strategical Thinking; Loyal and able to dedicate time to get to know the audience organized and oriented on goals, Reliable – able to use good judgement in various scenarios. These roles may be filled by search engine optimizers (SEOs), conversion rate optimizers (CROs), and web managers, and these often should be roles filled by different people. In order to show them that your service has everything they need, you will have to provide logical arguments, fresh and real data and all that wrapped in a financial scrutiny burrito. Northcutt is an SEO agency that delivers ever-growing streams of leads and sales for enterprise, ecommerce, and cloud service brands. This means tailoring the marketing approach to each step of the customer journey, from exposure to purchase to customer retention and remarketing. Social media is very rarely a channel that leads directly to sales, so as a stage in the funnel, the goal should primarily be to eventually move leads to higher ROI channels. “Every marketing organization needs a dual operating system. SaaS (and Software) For example, social media is a good channel for identifying and generating demand, but not for capturing it. They will also likely focus heavily on customer segmentation for various different funnels. Obviously, every marketing team will be structured differently, depending on how big your budget is and which areas are best to invest in for your target markets. In other words, Hana's spent a ton of time figuring out how to structure a great marketing department, and quickly scale her efforts beyond herself. As the authority on how SEO gets done at scale, Northcutt has put in, 5106 N. Lincoln Ave. #2S, Chicago, IL 60625. The marketing team does much of the work that was once done by the sales team. Content Strategy PaaS (and MSPs) Most should be skilled at tracking marketing campaigns, reporting, and offering data-driven feedback on progress. While every member of the team should be involved in contributing ideas, the team's strategist is the one most responsible for setting goals and planning how to execute them. The emphasis on content marketing, inbound marketing, SEO, and free trials in the SaaS industry means that most prospects have already educated themselves a great deal about a product before ever speaking to sales. This time last year, Hana Abaza was running a 3-person marketing team for Shopify Plus. Ecommerce