Building high-performing content marketing requires a range of individuals who can create content, advertise it, distribute it, and ultimately, hit the company’s marketing goals.
However, housing such a team requires mindful recruitment with clear-cut objectives for each role vis à vis their KPIs (key performance indicators), which can directly impact revenue outcomes.
Often, forward-looking organizations adopt a revenue marketing philosophy where every marketing effort is attributed to revenue. Now, you’d wonder, what is revenue marketing? What role does it play in building a robust content marketing team?
A collaborative content marketing team adopts conventional content marketing tactics and works with the sales team to positively impact return on investments (ROI).
Considering revenue marketing principles when hiring will build a team that prioritizes collaboration across all functions. Thus, they not only aim to perform tasks effectively but also strive to achieve the best revenue outcomes.
Your team should have cohesive expertise on how, when, and where to publish content online to target a particular audience. They also need to have a firm grasp of SEO and understand the intricacies of revenue attribution.
As content marketing involves a gamut of tasks, connecting content strategies to tangible revenue outcomes will be vital.
So, the question remains: how will you ensure building a team that breaks marketing silos, thrives on collaboration, and is aligned with the company’s revenue goals?
Let’s explore.
Collaboration tools to power your team
First, building a marketing team that gets them together requires fitting collaboration tools. Here are a few resources to consider.
- A reliable project management tool to monitor marketing, assignments, and due dates. For example, ensure your team members possess basic know-how of tools like Jira, Asana, Trello, etc.
- A range of software that helps create content (includes writing), graphic design, and video editing. For instance, Frase.io for writing, Canva for design, and VN editor for editing videos.
- Software for scheduling and tracking social media. For example, HootSuite for scheduled social posting.
- Website analytics and performance tools. Typically, marketers’ go-to tool is Google Analytics for websites, but you can also use SEO tools like UberSuggest, Ahrefs, etc.
- Elevating your level of security posture is critical. Consider investing in GRC software that can maximize your compliance efforts. This tool is essential for managing governance, risk, and compliance, which is vital for larger content marketing teams to ensure that they meet various regulations and guidelines in their promotional efforts.
- Tools that focus on teamwork for sending messages and holding video conferences. For instance, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc., can help connect team members if working remotely.
Investing in relevant software services often incurs significant upfront costs. However, a few tools must not be missed when building a content team.
For instance, publishers need tools to speed up and improve their content creation experience. In such cases, they must leverage WordPress editorial collaboration tools for agencies that allow multiple authors to create content for the same page.
Mindful investment in such resources can improve communication between remote teams, speed up business operations, and even relieve your team of duties like data maintenance and security.
Know your ‘why’
When hiring for content marketing, you must define the ‘why’ to pave the way for clarity. When the vision is clear, there’s less confusion about the direction. This clarity is instrumental in building team synergy.
The business or further departmental goals derived from the ‘why’ make measuring success easier. With clear objectives, the content marketing team can track metrics that matter and measure progress against the set benchmarks.
Here are some whys to consider when building a content marketing team.
- Why is there a vacancy or need for a new role?
For instance, Is it due to growth, replacement, restructuring, or entering a new market or domain?
- Why is this role critical to the organization?
How does this position contribute to the business’s goals, vision, and mission?
- Why would someone want this job?
What makes this position appealing? Is it the culture, growth opportunities, challenges, compensation, or a combination of factors?
- Why now?
Beyond qualifications, what intrinsic qualities or values are you seeking in candidates?
- Why should we diversify our team?
Understanding why you aim for diversity can shape recruitment strategies and enhance workplace inclusivity.
Knowing the core reason behind any efforts, particularly when building the marketing team, is a cornerstone for every action, decision, and strategy.
The goal is to make every team member understand the bigger picture to give them a sense of purpose, making them dedicated and passionate about their roles.
Structure your content marketing team well
An organized and well-structured content marketing team will enhance efficiency and help cultivate creativity.
An organization where everyone in the marketing team knows their role facilitates clear communication and drives consistency in the output. By structuring your content marketing team effectively, you lay the foundation to build upon.
Here are a few roles you’d consider when building a content marketing team.
Strategist
This is the role of those who possess the power of precision targeting, boast SEO skills, and have the marketing prowess to create the blueprint for audience engagement.
Executor
There may be more than one executor in the content marketing team who ensures seamless implementation of tasks. Hire skilled marketing experts who can finish daily jobs of repurposing content, checking keywords in the content, creating Excel sheets to schedule content, etc.
Creator
The role of a content creator is to craft blog articles, dynamic videos, and compelling social media storylines. This includes creating narratives that suit the marketing plan and blending the art of writing while matching the marketing needs.
There will be many roles within the content marketing team, with different categories encompassing the majority of content marketing roles.
For instance, A social media manager might perform creative and managerial tasks. The strategist and the creator should exchange ideas with your chief content marketer, while others will work as a team coordinator.
Wrapping up
Change the emphasis of your content marketing from selling to helping, where everyone collaborates with one aim to achieve a single goal of meeting user needs.
In this piece, we’ve dissected the intricacies of building a collaborative content marketing team, which shows that synergy, clarity, and structure form the crux of a collaborative team.
Equip your team with the right tools, instill in them a sense of purpose through a clear understanding of the ‘why’, and structure them effectively to maximize their potential.
