How to Build an In-House Marketing Team

In regards to marketing, many business owners have been their own in-house marketing team and because of necessity, they had to figure out how to run it all.

They’ve been online for years, read a few books, and even hired a marketing firm in the past. But for some reason, their marketing isn’t working as well as it should. They’re not getting the results they want and aren’t sure why.

The truth is, running your marketing in-house is very different from hiring a marketing firm, or being a marketing-based solopreneur. It requires a different skill set, and it’s crucial to have the right team in place to make it work productively and efficiently.

In this article, we will teach you how to build your marketing team, sort their roles, efficiently assign work, manage staff productivity, and set your employees up for success. We will also walk you through the specific pieces of your marketing to have your team focus on and why each matters to your overall strategy and vision.

The Benefits of In-House Marketing

There are many benefits to having an in-house marketing team. An in-house team allows for more creativity, as they are familiar with the company’s product, philosophy, and culture.

In-house teams focus 100% on your business, whereas agencies often have multiple clients. In-house marketing can be more cost-effective than hiring an agency and is a great asset to any company.

Let’s explore a few benefits of having an in-house marketing team.

In-House Marketing Allows for Flexible Creativity

First, in-house marketing teams allow for more creativity because they’re familiar with the company, brand, and mission. In addition, they work closely with other teams or departments in the company to create a holistic marketing strategy that includes all aspects of the business.

A company’s employees likely have more detailed knowledge of their products and culture than an agency can provide. It often leads to more effective campaigns that resonate with customers on a deeper level. In-house employees have in-depth knowledge of what’s worked well in the past and can apply that experience and data to future campaigns.

Plus, in-house teams focus 100% on your business! Agencies have multiple clients, so it’s hard for them to focus on your marketing only. It can lead to them being spread too thin and not being able to give your business the attention it deserves.

In contrast, an in-house employee provides focused attention solely to your brand. They can help create more seamless and coherent content because they have a firsthand understanding.

POTENTIAL DANGER: Be careful to hire creative employees if you want creative flexibility. A marketing agency will naturally have creative individuals on their team — if you want that creativity in-house, you’ll need to make sure you hire for it. Don’t hire a someone to execute marketing tasks with an expectation they will be creative thinkers.

In-House Marketing is More Cost-Effective (Usually)

In-house marketing can be more cost-effective! If you have highly capable individuals on your in-house marketing team, you might eliminate the expense of an agency without sacrificing the results you’ve come to expect. With strong internal processes and an emphasis on training, you can use internal teams to build up your marketing performance. 

It empowers you to scale up your team and scale down your team as needed, leaning on the processes you use rather than the people you hire.

For example, if you have a high sales volume during the holiday season, you may need to hire more people for your in-house team. When things slow down, you may decide to scale back on some of those employees and have them work on other projects or tasks within the company until they’re needed again in October or November. 

A clear marketing playbook with quality training materials allows you to do this as needed.

Agency relationships can work well for short or long-term periods — but there eventually comes a time when you will need to change and evolve as a company; the contracts and services with that agency may not evolve with you.

With an in-house team, you can change at any time. All you need is strong internal marketing leadership. Hiring a qualified agency is not always the expensive option – the benefit of the agency is you typically get highly specialized skills which usually translates into strong results produced quickly.

An agency makes sense for many companies that cannot afford to hire highly specialized individuals.

POTENTIAL DANGER: The cost effectiveness of in-house marketing comes when you can hire lower salaried individuals to perform high capacity tasks. This means you will need strong marketing management skills from whoever is in charge. They must possess the ability to cast vision, create structure, and motivate workers. If you do not have the structure and leadership, it could be more cost-effective to hire an agency who can perform the needed functions at a higher cost than a single employee but at a lower rate than a collection of employees without leadership.

In-House Teams Aid in Client Retention

In-house teams help build long-term relationships with clients. If you work directly with another company, it’s harder for them to drop you if something goes wrong or they feel like the relationship isn’t working well for them.

In-house marketers can reach out to customers in a personal way that is often lost when working with an agency. If a customer has a question about your product or service, they can directly reach out to you through social media or email. It provides an opportunity to build relationships with your target audience and helps them become advocates for your brand.

In short, in-house teams have the potential to build strong relationships internally and externally. This isn’t a given, but it is more likely to happen with an internal team.POTENTIAL DANGER: Be clear on how you anticipate your marketing staff interacting with customers. If your marketing staff will be customer facing, you want them to be strong communicators and empathetic. If your marketing staff will not be interacting with customers, you may be able to focus more on the tactical skills of marketing, rather than the emotional side of customer support.

Efficiency Is Increased When Working In-House

In-house marketing is more efficient! With an in-house team, you can work directly with your employees to develop the most effective strategies and tactics. It also means you don’t have to wait on feedback from an agency before making decisions.

In-house teams are better at implementing real-time changes and adjustments. You know what works well for your company, so you can quickly change your strategy.

A well-run in-house marketing team can be a huge asset to any business. They can help to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales.

When it comes to marketing, a company’s success is dependent on how well it can promote itself. The best way to achieve this is by hiring an in-house team of marketers who can execute all aspects of a campaign.

POTENTIAL DANGER: In-house staff can become more relaxed over time and not maintain the same sense of urgency an agency might have. The potential for increased efficiency is there, but you must have great systems and strong leadership to make sure there is always work to be done.

You Are Investing In Your Team, Not Someone Else’s Team

When you decide to hire marketing help — whether that be marketing strategies, administrators, or marketing specialists — you are investing in your team and your business. Any training you put your team through benefits your company directly. 

The ultimate goal is not to build your team, it is to fulfill your mission and remain profitable. If you’re prepared to invest the resources in your team, you can begin to build a marketing team you can influence and control in a way that may be preferable to working with an agency.

There are plenty of agency relationships that will work in the short and long term. When you find an agency that goes the extra mile, performs on time, delivers results, and works well with your team, don’t let them go.

This is what we call a 2-way agency relationship. 

However, when you’re in a 1-way agency relationship, the money that you spend with that agency is ultimately investing in their team and resources and not your own. 

POTENTIAL DANGER: If you hope to retain your team, you’ll need to make investments in them. With an agency, you pay a rate for specific services and it’s on the agency to hire, manage, and retain talent. When you hire in-house, it will be your responsibility to do those same things. Be prepared to invest in the individuals because that’s what it will take to realize the full potential of the team.

The Different Areas of Marketing

Marketing is all about creating awareness for your product or service. You need to make sure your target market knows your product exists and it’s the best option for their needs.

In order to build a strong team, you’ll need to focus on several main areas of your marketing plan in order to hire a staff with enough bandwidth to execute your clearly defined marketing initiatives. 

Here are the essential pieces of a strong marketing strategy and successful marketing campaigns.

A Proven Product and Passionate Industry Knowledge

The most important thing you can do for your business marketing is to have a proven product you know can make money. If you were asked the question, “What can I give you money for right now?” you must have a clear and definitive answer — as well as a specific number. This clarity not only makes it apparent to the customer what you do and how much it costs, but it also makes it clear to your team what they are meant to promote.

The second most important thing is to have a strong knowledge about your industry. Your knowledge is the main fuel for developing your product offerings and then deriving marketing campaigns that are relevant to the professionals in your industry.

“You have a proven product you can market with confidence knowing it will sell — because it already has. You’re passionate about your industry which means you know how your product can help. Of course, you must have knowledge as well.”

Dave Shrein, Founder of The Blocks Agency

The more your team knows about your product and industry, the more effective they will be at crafting individual marketing campaigns to promote the products and services you offer. If they know how the product works, what it does, how it helps people, why it’s the best solution to a problem or need, and why it’s better than all other options available in the marketplace, they can talk about it with confidence.

If they don’t know anything about these things (or worse only know what they’ve heard from others), they won’t be able to sell anything effectively. They don’t believe in what they’re selling enough to think anyone else would buy it!

This is why it’s important that you also have passion for your industry. Someone may have all the knowledge in the world but without passion it will be hard to convey that knowledge. Passion for the work and the people impacted means that it won’t be hard to start talking about the benefits of the product. 

The more you talk, the more your team can brainstorm what to create for your marketing content.

Your marketing team will be your content creators. 

You may not see your team as ‘creators’ like the people you see on YouTube, but you should. Moreover, they must be equipped to create content like influencers do to adequately capture attention and educate potential customers. It’s up to you to hire the right people and make sure they have strong leadership to sell your product with knowledge and passion. 

Clearly Defined Branding and Aesthetics

Successful marketing delivers a consistent message about your company and its products or services. It’s about creating an experience for customers that makes them want to buy from you again and again.

Clear visual branding is important for successful marketing. Pick a color scheme, a logo, and a visual overview of your brand and products, and stick with them! If you constantly change your look, customers will get confused and can even begin doubting your legitimacy as a brand.

Your aesthetics make a big difference in how your company and product are thought of. If you have a clear sense of what your visual brand should look like, it will then be easier to communicate that visual identity in everything you do: website design, social media posts, and more.

If you don’t have a designer on staff or don’t feel confident doing it yourself, hire someone who can do the job well — especially if it’s an area where you struggle to execute.

Your Website Is a Sales Machine Working 24/7

Here is the biggest problem with business websites: They are treated as a to-do rather than a strategic piece of your marketing strategy. Most companies will build their website and then check it off of their list of things to do and in digital marketing, that’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

One potential problem with an in-house team is that no one is visionary enough to see problems with your current website, never mind that they don’t have a vision for what the website must become in the future to facilitate growth and success.

A solid website is vital to your marketing strategy because it is the first impressions of your company when potential customers try to find you online. Here are a few of the mistakes people make when they treat their website like a to-do rather than a strategic element.

• A company will make their website all about themselves, rather than speaking to the wants, needs, desires, and concerns of their customers.
• The company website puts obstacles between the customer and the sale, think unnecessary steps, information, and prompts.
• Potential customers are not clear what product or service is being offered, or it isn’t clear what the purpose of the company is even if there are products for purchase.
• There is not a consistent or strategic call to action, allowing customers to choose their own adventure rather than guiding them to a specific choice.

When you’re searching Google, you want to find what you’re looking for on the first page.

The same goes for your website.

When a user shows up on your website, you want them to find what they’re looking for immediately. Using an in-house team to create, monetize, and monitor your website can help make it convert well. Having an in-house team helps ensure that there is a unified vision and focused resources available. Just like you’ll put an employee to work, you want to put your website to work for you.

Every visitor will form an opinion about whether or not they want to work with you within seconds of visiting your site for the first time. Here is a list of what they will most likely want to see:

• Who you help
• What you sell
• How it works
• Will it work for them?
• A place to find questions answered
• Use cases of your product or service working
• Company information
• How to get more info
• Where to get started
• Has this worked for other people like them?
• What if I have a problem?
• What could go wrong?
• What does it look like?
• What will it feel like?
• Can I see myself enjoying this product?

If your site isn’t up-to-date with essential information, details, and insights, people will quickly turn away from it and look for another option – your competition. If you have an outdated site, it could be costing you money each month in lost revenue.

Here is a list of changes your marketing staff can immediately make in order to improve your customer website experience and have a sales machine working for you 24/7.

• Test your website on mobile, tablet, and desktop. Even if you know your site is ‘responsive’, still test it out and see how it ‘feels’ to you on each device. Make necessary changes.
• Update your logo to a properly sized image. Don’t use a file that is too small and looks pixelated.
• Synchronize your brand colors and fonts. Make sure you are using no more than three fonts across your entire site and make sure you’re using no more than 3 main colors, plus white and black. Too many font selections and too many colors creates chaos.
• Eliminate unnecessary words or unclear content. If it doesn’t point to a purchase (speaking to the items listed above, get rid of it).
• Add a single call to action on the home page in multiple places. If you want people to call you, add a button that says “Call Us” in multiple places across the entire page.

You should not create your website based upon how you feel. If it doesn’t bring in clients and make money, the fact that you like it is irrelevant. Instead, you should create your website based upon what your clients need. If it doesn’t help them solve their problems, it’s not worth anything.

Your in-house marketing team should be crazy about optimizing your website. You need to train your team to:

• Create compelling sales pages 
• Write strong copy, including headlines 
• Design quality product mockups
• Incorporate strong original photography
• Integrate shopping cart and other CRM and email marketing system

If you’re going to hand over the reins of your website to an in-house team, you want to make sure they know what they’re doing and have a vision for your website now and in the future.

Shareable Content Educates and Creates Authority

Your marketing team will also be responsible for creating your best shareable content! Shareable content showcases your knowledge and authority in your industry and is a precursor to winning over your customers and client’s trust.

An in-house marketing team must know that shareable content is not about selling or promoting, it’s about providing value and education. Helping your customers, whether they’re existing or perhaps a prospect, is important.

Current customers, new customers, and potential prospects will turn to your content — whether articles, videos, infographic, guides, or workshops — to discover more about their needs, discover more about your solution, and make a decision whether or not to work with you. Shareable content is about helping them see you are the solution they have been looking for.

When you create shareable content that educates people on how they can achieve their goals, they will trust you more than if they were just being sold to all day.

Shareable content is how your in-house marketing team leverages your industry and customer knowledge to build authority and influence with your target market.

For example, let’s say you are in the equestrian industry and you sell instructional videos along with tack and equipment for equine, you want content that convinces people your methods work by providing them with insights into getting results with training and great equine experiences. 

You would want to create an articles that outlines what to look for when buying an animal, where people make mistakes in evaluating an animal for purchase, what signs to look for that an animal might not be the right fight, the different variations of animal types and how that impacts the training experience, as well as what they should anticipate their first month of ownership will look like. 

Do you think an article like this would be valuable to a person who doesn’t know how to purchase equine but wants to make a good decision? Absolutely! What’s more, if your advice and approach makes sense to them, they are more likely to trust your additional instruction resources and your equipment. 

This is how shareable content is supposed to work.

Shareable content is important because it showcases your strengths and reaches deep down beyond the surface to deliver valuable insights, instruction, inspiration, and information that ultimately builds trust.

When you share someone else’s content, you’re not only exposing potential customers to a different authority, you’re also outsourcing your expertise. Creating these highly authoritative pieces takes time and energy and there are no shortcuts — but the payoff is when you can share them with potential clients over and over again.

When you share someone else’s content, you’re not only exposing your followers to new information, but you’re also building relationships with other bloggers and businesses.

Additionally, by sharing high-quality content, you’re helping to build your brand’s reputation as a credible source of information.

High-Value Lead Generation Captures Emails

Lead generation is a process of attracting, qualifying, and gaining information from potential customers. The ultimate goal of lead generation is to turn those leads into sales. Your marketing team should have a clear understanding of lead generation strategy as well as a plan to, well, generate leads!

A lead gen phrase you will most likely hear (if you haven’t already heard) is lead magnet.

Lead magnets are one of the most effective ways to grow your email list. They are offers or pieces of content you give away in exchange for someone’s contact information. Typically, this is an email address, but can also be a name and phone number.

If you’re instructing your team to create lead magnets for your company here are a few points that you’ll want to keep in mind as you draft each lead magnet:

• Best performing lead magnets promise a specific result.
• Develop a lead magnet that can deliver a quick win. Meaning, they can consume the content and immediately apply what they learned.
• Top lead magnets are simple and easy to consume. Do not overthink it or over complicate it.

Why is it important to build your list? Because your list is one of the most valuable assets you have as a business owner. It allows you to connect with people interested in what you do and provides a way to keep in touch with them long after they leave your website… and on your terms.

Consider social media. You may amass a following of hundreds or thousands of followers, yet you have zero control over whether what you publish finds its way into their feed… unless, of course, you pay money.

With an email address, you are in 100% control over the communication. A subscriber can still make the decision not to open, but the decision to share the message is left to you — not to the social media company.

Generate leads by creating lead magnets with shareable content all over your site. “Signup here for our free workshop… download the template now… get the guide sent directly to your email inbox!” The more lead magnets you create, the more people will sign up to receive the shareable content you create — and they’ll give you their email address in return.

This is a great way to build an email list that you can use for future marketing campaigns, as well as capture email addresses from new customers who may not be ready to buy anything yet but who could become customers later if they know about your business through the lead magnet program.

Email Marketing That Nurtures the Sale

If there is one thing you want your in-house marketing team to be experts in it is relationship building… and email marketing is the ideal conduit for a one to many relationship.

Once you have a person’s email address you can now communicate with them regularly regarding the problem or concern they have. Presumably their problem or concern relates directly with your products or services — but you don’t want to go in for the sale right away. 

Rather, you want to look at the first collection of emails that go out as a way to gain trust and help them achieve more results!

Your marketing team must write every email to focus on the customer’s needs and zero in on the type of results the customer wants to achieve. This is where you subtly share your products, services, brand, and more with customers on a repeated basis.

Your First Nurture the Sale Email Sequence

Maybe you offer a membership subscription where customers can come to your website, pay a specific monthly fee, and get access to an entire collection of fitness videos. If they did not purchase immediately after coming to your website, but they did opt-in to receive a lead magnet, they are interested, but not ready to purchase. Here is how the next several emails could look:

• Email 01, ”You should be applauded” — Talk about how strong they are for taking the brave first step and exploring what it might look like to get healthy or fit. Affirm their choice and remind them that there are people counting on them being healthy for the long haul.
• Email 02, “Don’t be afraid” — In this second email address the fears they may have about taking the next step in their journey. Talk about how you’ve heard stories from people similar to them who were embarrassed in the past, or couldn’t keep up and so they felt frustrated. Talk about how to overcome those fears and feelings and let them know that all they need to do is identify a goal that they can reach.
• Email 03, “What will you change?” — If they could have gotten results already they would have. Something has to change and you know that community and accountability are two ingredients to their success. Talk about how you have had the privilege to be alongside person x, person y, and person z and how exhilarating for you it was to watch them… but more importantly how special it was to see the family members of your clients be able to experience life together again.
• Email 04, “An Invitation to…” — Finally, you want them to take action… invite them to start your membership for 30 days at $1 for the month. Tell them exactly what they need to know about getting started, where to go, which workout to start with, and how to track their progress. Tell them how much you believe in them and you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing if you hadn’t seen so many people transform their lives through fitness.
• Email 05, “Reminder…” — Remind them of their why. Remind them of what’s at stake. Remind them of the first step they took. Challenge them to make today different than last year, last 5 years, last 20 years. Tell them that you’re committed to their success but they have to want it. And ask them, “Do you really want it?”

The list could keep progressing, but hopefully this collection of five hypothetical emails clarifies exactly what we mean when we say build relationships.

Notice that there wasn’t any selling going on here — rather, there was encouragement, inspiration, insights, and a little bit of information.

The Purpose of Email Marketing

Not only is email a way to build the relationship, but it’s also a way to confirm the purchase decision. Once they have made a purchase, you can use email to affirm their decision, create a red-carpet onboarding process, and then follow up over the next day, week, month, etc.

Beyond that, if you send follow-up emails that include links to helpful content or additional promotions, this will help reinforce their purchase decision and increase the chances of them making another purchase down the line.

When you use email marketing beyond just selling products or services you build relationships, develop a connection, and keep your brand top-of-mind, right where you want it when your customer decides it is time to make a purchase.

The best way to get started with serious email marketing is by sending out regular newsletters that provide value to your subscribers. You want to keep the content interesting and relevant so that people will continue subscribing to your newsletter over time.

Email marketing is ultimately a numbers game — but it’s very dangerous to think about it that way. You MUST think about email marketing as a relationship building strategy. You are genuinely concerned with the well-being of your customers. 

The reality is that the bigger your list grows, the greater the audience will be for future promotional campaigns. If you know you’re going to convert 3% of your list, it’s a numbers game. 

But, the only way you can count on conversions is by building relationships.

The Right Email Segment

Email marketing also allows you to segment your audience into different groups based on their interests or purchases. Your marketing department should constantly be strategizing over how to segment your audience into groups that you can target more specifically.

Here are a few ways you can create segments within your email marketing database.

• Target user groups based upon products purchased
• Target user groups based upon time since a purchase was made
• Target user groups based upon what lead magnet they subscribed to
• Target user groups based upon personal data (age, gender, profession)
• Target user groups based upon time as a customer

When you begin segmenting users this way you can begin running some of the following types of campaigns.

• Specific offers based upon interest.
• News, releases, and features based upon product purchased
• Promotions to only past customers
• Offer to only non-customers
• Feedback from customers of a specific product or service
• A specific offer you only run to customers once

You can go even further with email segmentation. For instance, you can integrate your email database (we use our affiliate partner Drip) with Facebook Ads and you can create not only segmented email lists, but you can also make segmented Facebook Audiences. If a user signs up for your email list but does not make a purchase, you can track that data in your email system but you can also add them to a Facebook Audience called “Non-Customers” and target ads specifically to that audience.

These are the types of strategies an agency will use without a need for you to ask and they are the type of strategies you want your in-house marketing team to be aware of and be thinking about without you having to ask.

Speaking of ads… 

Pay for Attention With Ads

Paid ads are tools your marketing department can use to expedite the process of getting your brand in front of potential new customers.

Personal Branding Expert Mike Kim says, “You can either wait for attention or you can pay for attention,” and with paid ads you are doing the latter. You are paying attention on an ad network (be it search, social, or otherwise) and your desire is to capture enough attention from a user to warrant a click or sign up or download… or some other key performance indicator. 

If you have ever functioned as your own in-house marketing department chances are you’ve spent money on paid ads and didn’t quite get what you were hoping for. They can be tricky and even intimidating if you are ignorant with high hopes. Usually the consequence for ignorance is time lost, and that’s a big deal for sure, but when it comes to paid ads, the losses are double because you’re also losing money.

This is why paid ad experts are a must for your marketing team — whether in house or an outside agency.

Paid advertising is not complicated to set up, but it does need to be managed regularly. It’s why it’s a good idea to assign ads to someone on your in-house team because they likely have the bandwidth and awareness to manage your advertising campaigns.

There are many different types of paid ads you can run, and they all have different costs. Each type has its benefits, and it’s important to know the difference between them so you can make a better decision on which one might be right for your company. 

There are several ways to advertise online: pay-per-click (PPC), display ads, social media ads, mobile ads, and more. Different types of advertising have different goals for your business. Let’s take a look at a few different kinds of advertising. 

Social media advertising is one of the best ways to engage with new leads online. It’s approximated that 72% of adults in the U.S. use at least one social media site. Knowing how many users are available, ad spend on these networks is a smart choice because of the amount of potential leads. 

Paid search advertising refers to the ads that are at the top of the results when using a search engine, like Google. When someone searches for a specific keyword, your ad can be displayed, siphoning them toward your business instead of a link in the results.

Native advertising consists of hiring content creators or creating content yourself that is shared on websites and social platforms. Relevant content without a promotional influence is an example of this kind of advertising. If someone finds your content valuable and shares it, they’ve just advertised for you. Viral marketing is an example of this.

Display advertising is the fourth kind of advertising in marketing. Examples of display ads are banner ads, pop-ups, and image-based ads. Display advertising is effective as a strategy, but generally yields less positive results than social media ads or paid search ads. The reason for this is that display advertising often cannot be targeted as easily as other kinds of ads.

You can wait for people to notice you by posting week after week on social media and hoping for some organic reach, or you can pay for attention and show up in advertisements targeted to your audience and client avatar. 

When your marketing department makes the decision to get into paid ads, make sure you give them a primary goal that you want to achieve with a budget. You will want them to manage the ads and make adjustments over time — knowing the metrics is key.

Advertisements work most effectively when they are well-targeted, so instruct your team to draw up the audience avatar to target so they can create the right audience when setting up your ads. Be as specific as possible.

Create Community and Grow Influence With Social Media

Social media is a great way to engage with your audience and helps build your brand. Ultimately, to be successful, you need to post consistently, share the right content, and be consistent in your messaging. Having a content manager or a team member dedicated to managing your social media is important. Not only will you have eyes on comments, you’ll be able to respond to requests, reviews, and questions from your audience, full of potential customers.

A social media manager will need to create a community around your brand. This is crucial for a business that wants to market more because it allows you to connect with customers and potential customers on a personal level. When people feel like they know a company or product, they are more likely to buy from them. Additionally, a strong social media presence can help promote your brand to new audiences and bring in leads. By creating engaging content and cultivating a supportive community, you can make your business stand out in the online marketplace.

Social media is a great way to build a community around your brand. You do this by creating an Instagram page, sharing content people care about, and engaging with them in the comments.

A social media manager will need to post regularly with relevant content. When you create content that resonates with people, they’ll come back, again and again, to see what else you have to offer. Having someone in-house manage your social media means they can make use of things like candid images, live videos of the team working together, and more.

Your social content should be something that keeps your audience coming back for more! You can post about new products, sales, or promotions and share interesting articles or videos related to your brand. Keep it fresh by posting at different times of the day and varying the length of each post. You’ll want to watch your analytics to see what is getting the most traction, reach, clicks, or engagements. 

Use hashtags when appropriate. Hashtags are searchable keywords that can be used on social media posts. If people search for your hashtag, they’ll see all the posts tagged with it. Using hashtags on Instagram and Facebook is a great way to boost brand exposure and get more eyes on your posts!

A social media role can help you be consistent in messaging. If you want to build a strong brand identity, consistency is key. Make sure your social accounts are always posting at regular intervals and with relevant content so that people know exactly what to expect when they visit. 

If you post once every few weeks, it will be hard for anyone on these platforms — including potential customers — to find you when they’re looking for something new and interesting to read or watch. An in-house team often can create content firsthand, versus an agency that would likely need content in advance, to schedule out. Saving your social media for an in-house team member can save significant time and is much more efficient and effective.

Make sure to post at least once a day on each platform (if not more often) so people can come back and check what’s new any time of day or night without having to remember when you last posted something new. Each time they visit, they’ll come in contact with something new from your brand. 

If you’re curious about how to run effective social media for your business, and want to dive deeper, the season one episode 11 of The Donut Shop Podcast covers this! Click here to listen!

Rank for SEO Keywords With Long-Form Content

One of the most central pieces to online marketing is your search engine optimization strategy. As great as paid ads are, when you stop paying for them, you stop getting results. Search engines are the attention giver that keeps on giving. 

While results often take longer to see (usually six months before you see any results) the results will last much longer than any paid ads campaign. 

In-house marketing teams are often looked at to produce creative campaign initiatives and drafting long-form content is something that doesn’t make its way into the conversation much. 

The reason? Meaningful SEO work is highly specialized and a lengthy process. 

At the very least you’ll want a strong writer on your team who is capable of producing long form articles (6,000 to 9,000 words) that are compelling, insightful, and instructional. The second role you need to fulfill as it relates to SEO is a researcher who is able to identify keywords relevant to your industry that are low competition high search volume keywords.

Your company needs to invest in long-form content. It is not an option, it is a necessity. 

Hiring an outside agency to handle both the research and writing of these long form articles will cost somewhere between $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the quality length of the article and expertise required. These long-form pages are different from your typical ‘blog post’ and not just any writer will do. You need a writer who specializes in writing SEO rich content.

If there is one thing your marketing team will always need more of it is writing — it is advantageous to hire an in-house writer full-time to produce content for your business. Even if they can’t do the SEO research, they can produce the necessary article if they’re provided with the necessary keyword parameters.

As a business leader, you need to be involved in the content-creating process, but you must not become too involved. You are a visionary leading your company and its forward trajectory, not carrying out the marketing tasks yourself. Letting your team develop the content and executing to carry your vision forward is important.

Your team should not expect to know all the details of how content is created, and should leave enough space for a writer’s creativity. Marketing departments should create a strategy, then let their writers do as much creative work as possible within that strategy.

Creating long-form SEO content is a team effort. For instance, on our team we have one person who conducts the research, a second person drafts the article, a third person reviews the content, a fourth person adds illustrations and imagery, and a fifth person who publishes the article. Each person is specialized in their unique area and finding one person to complete all of these roles would be like spotting a unicorn — they’re out there, but they’re hard to find and expensive to hire.

Create Compelling Promotions With Strong Offers

The best offers are usually the simplest ones because people are more likely to take action when the offer is straightforward – it’s easy to understand. 

However, don’t confuse simplicity with a lack of motivation or features; you can still create an irresistible offer by including relevant information and benefits. It’s important to understand what motivates your customers and how to use this information to create offers that resonate with them. 

• Do they want to save money? 
• Get something for free? 
• Get a better version of something they already have? 
• Improve their lives in some way? 

Knowing their goals will help guide you in the development process of creating an irresistible offer. By understanding your audience’s needs, you can tailor your offer to appeal to them and increase your chances of conversion. Market research is essential when selling online, so don’t neglect this vital step in creating your offer.

There are three core types of offers that you can use as you create your irresistible offer.

Financial Offer

When we think of a marketing or promotional offer we typically think of the financial offer, specifically offering a discount. To be sure, offering a discount is easy… just mark down your product or service by a specific amount and that will appeal to your buyers. However, a financial offer doesn’t have to be a discount. Offering a discount is essentially giving the same value for less money. You can reverse this concept and offer more value for the same money. Meaning, instead of discounting your products, add new value or additional value to the offer but charge the same. 

If you run a subscription or membership program you most likely have an average customer lifecycle. If your average customer stays for two years, create an offer that gives a purchaser three years for the price of two. On average, they would have left after two and adding a third year, on average, won’t cost you anything else.

This way you can add value, charge more in the beginning, and the customer is getting value. 

A financial offer doesn’t always have to be giving discounts.

Single Solution Offer

Many people have made the decision to purchase our product or service but they are holding off on actually executing the transaction for a specific reason. Here are a list of the reasons you may have encountered during the sales cycle:

• I don’t have time right now.
• Waiting for a sale.
• I’m not ready to implement it.
• Another area of my company needs more attention.
• I have to wait for more budget.

This is a difficult place to be because you’ve done everything you can to showcase your product and yet something you can’t control is preventing the conversion.

This is where a single solution offer comes into play.

A single solution offer looks at the typical reasons your customer base will give for not following through on a purchase and transforms that reason into a reason to purchase right now instead of waiting for a later time.

For instance, let’s say a customer objects to purchasing right now because they don’t think they’ll be able to get started quickly enough to justify the cost. The purchase will just lay dormant for a while. You create a single solution offer called the “60 Minute Jump Start Call” as a special bonus for purchasing now. “This call is essentially the lightning lane for using your purchase, integrating it into your workflow, and getting results. If you have thought, ‘this is exactly what I need but I don’t have time to get the ball rolling right now,’ you will want to get this special limited-time offer.”

See what we did there? We turned the objection into a reason to purchase. If you create multiple single solution offers and space them out over the course of a year you will most likely address every key concern a customer may have — giving each person a reason to buy.

We call the art of spacing these out and running multiple irresistible offers a 12 month marketing playbook.

Support Offer

Customers who love the value that you offer, who don’t have any objections, but are concerned they won’t know how to get the results they expect are key candidates for support offers. 

The concern is, “I really need these results but I don’t feel like I’ll be able to implement this on my own. I feel like I’ll be in over my head and, despite my best efforts, I just won’t be able to make it happen because I’m not capable.”

That’s a valid concern and if you’re prepared to come alongside and help them along then you can look at the support offer as a way to entice them to take the next step.

The concern is failure and the promise is help. How you deliver that help is entirely up to you. 

• Offer a weekly coaching call.
• Kick off success call.
• Mentorship group.
• Customized tutorial videos made.
• Personalized weekly check in emails.
• A series of 1:1 video calls.

You will want to create a support offer that you can actually fulfill in a way that is practical and won’t leave you drained.

Ultimately you’re promising them that you are nearly as committed to their success as they are!

Creating A Sense of Urgency for Your Offer

Adding a sense of urgency to your offer will make it more irresistible. It could be in the form of a limited-time-only offer or an offer that expires soon. You could also use a countdown timer to show how much time is left before your offer ends. This can help build excitement around your offer and prompt people to take action right away. Scarcity and urgency are two of the areas of marketing that have been around for a long time and are tried and true methods.

This is known as scarcity marketing because it makes people feel like they have something special on their hands – they feel like they must act now before they miss out on something great!

Each area of marketing is important in its own right, as well as in the whole cycle of marketing.

If you want to teach your team to run your marketing in-house, you need to make sure that they understand all of these different areas. By doing so, you can create a well-rounded marketing strategy that will help you reach your business goals.

Top brands achieve success because they have a well-defined marketing strategy that is implemented flawlessly. If you want to achieve the same results, you need to make sure your team has the same level of understanding and commitment.

In-House Marketing vs. Outsourcing Marketing

In order to carry out the various marketing functions, you will need a team. You have two primary options: an in-house team, or hiring an agency. There are pros and cons to both, and it’s a decision that requires thought. 

Process

You will have much more control over the processes and procedures utilized for your marketing with an in-house marketing team. If processes and procedures are a strong point for your business and, more specifically your marketing team, this could be a really great advantage. Of course, the opposite would be true as well. An outside agency should have very strong processes and procedures but they will be more rigid in their work structure.

Speed 

This could be a tossup. The speed of your marketing depends on a lot of factors, including your marketing team lead or your marketing manager. If you have a strong manager who is working on behalf of the team members to move everything forward and get everyone the assistance they need, an in-house team will often be faster.

Still, an outside agency is often going to be specialized in their given area of expertise and that experience and skill can produce an end result quickly. Perhaps an agency could deliver paid ad creative in a day or two where it may take your team four or five days to complete the same creative project. It may cost more to have the agency produce the content but you’re able to move more quickly.

Creativity

Typically an outside agency will have a higher caliber of creative inputs. Because agencies work with a variety of clients on projects wide ranging they are almost required to have strong creatives on their team to produce results. A creative writer is a completely different type of person than a creative art director and both writing and art are essential in online marketing. 

If you are committed to building an in-house marketing team, you’ll need to make decisions on which roles to hire first as well as which roles you want as pure specialty roles versus administrator or generalist roles to execute the work outside of the specialty.

Revisions

No doubt an in-house team will be able to produce revisions more quickly than an agency. The fact that you and your talent are in the same place, focused on the same project, and at the same time means that there aren’t other competing interests to arrange around.

If you have the right talent on your team, revisions can be quick and quality. Of course, if you partner with an agency that you trust, in theory, the amount of revisions needed should be minimal as they will get closer to the finished product more quickly. 

For leaders who want to be involved in every part of the marketing process, an in-house team will give you that capability. For leaders who prefer things “just get done and work” an outside agency could be a better choice.

Quality

Quality is often subjective but when it comes to conversions and KPIs there is nothing subjective about it. The status speak for themselves.

While many artists may look at their art in a vacuum, marketing professionals look at the art through a conversion lens. While a graphic may look pretty or a piece of text in an add is written grammatically correct, the marketing professional looks at whether the art or text is compelling and enhances the overall message. Many designers won’t want to make compromises in their art but marketers know that the compromises are essential. 

Likeways, many writers won’t want to run with content that is less than up to publishing standards, however, marketers will know how to get the message as precise as possible.

Typically, a strong marketing leader can elevate the quality of everyone on the team and if you’re going to run your marketing in-house you will need a marketing leader with a keen eye for marketing excellence, even if it flies in the face of artistry standards. 

Culture 

There is no question, if you desire to build a strong culture in your company, the more people you can hire internally who fit within your company culture and embrace your company values, the better that culture will be. 

An outside agency is not a part of your culture. Try as they may, they will never be as integrated and connected to your business as employees will be. And this may be okay.

If you partner with agencies and contractors who share your values, it may be that you’ve found an outside partner that can prevent you from needing to invest resources in internal teammates. This can save you money in the long term. 

However, if you find that agencies you work with don’t share the same values and those values are important for your business in all relationships, including outside ones, you will definitely find a higher level of satisfaction building your own team.

In-house marketing teams give you more control over processes and procedures. If you have strong processes this could be a really great benefit — of course, the opposite is true as well. You will have direct access to the entire team working on your campaign or promotional project and that direct access can help with turnaround times, especially revisions.

Ultimately, the choice between in-house and outsourced marketing comes down to budget, strategy, and company size. In general, smaller businesses tend to outsource marketing while larger businesses opt for in-house teams.

But there are no hard-and-fast rules, so make sure to weigh the pros and cons of each option before deciding what’s best for your own business.

What Roles Should Exist on Your Marketing Team?

A successful marketing team will include members with experience in various marketing specialties. Roles are typically categorized into four areas of marketing: creative, media, digital, and analytics. This breadth of knowledge will allow your team to generate leads, sales, and loyalty through integrated campaigns.

Not only does this allow individuals to showcase their capabilities, but it also gives them a certain level of control over their work and how much time is spent on it.

Generally, the more senior a person is within the team, the more focus they will have on their particular area of expertise.

Here are some roles commonly filled on in-house marketing teams:

Marketing Manager – The team leader or manager is responsible for overseeing the marketing team and making sure tasks are completed that advance the department’s stated mission.

The marketing manager’s job is to keep everyone on task while ensuring their work is contributing to the overall goals of the organization and is done in a timely manner. They are also responsible for communicating with other departments about how their work affects marketing efforts.

This individual should have a clear understanding of the marketing process, campaigns, marketing tasks, and strategy, and communicate this knowledge to their team.

Copywriter / Technical Writer – This individual is responsible for creating content that is both informative and engaging. They should be familiar with current trends in digital marketing and have a strong understanding of how to use them in their work. Copywriters understand how to persuasively write content that motivates someone to take action. They often use frameworks to write pages and understand a lot of sales psychology.

The goal of this role is to create high-quality, high-converting content that will attract readers, engage them in the story being told, help them solve problems, and provide the information they need to make a decision—all while staying on topic and within the brand guidelines.

The person filling this role should have a proven track record of creating content that converts. They should be able to write quickly, efficiently, and with high-quality results. It’s also important that they have a strong understanding of best SEO practices so their content can be properly optimized for search engine results.

Graphic Designer – The role of a graphic designer is to create visual content that tells the story of your brand. This could be anything from web banners to social media posts, infographics, presentations, and even print materials like brochures and pamphlets.

They should also have an understanding of basic design principles like color theory, typography, and layout. A graphic designer can help you create content that not only looks good but also conveys the message you want to send. They should be able to work with a variety of different mediums and have experience designing for a range of audiences, from consumers to professionals.

The person filling this role should have a proven track record of creating high-quality graphics that are visually appealing and on-brand while also meeting brand guidelines.

Graphic designers are an important part of any marketing team. They help to create visuals that tell your brand’s story, whether it be through logos, websites, or print materials. It is critical that you find someone who can understand your business goals and how they fit into the larger digital ecosystem.

Digital Content Strategist – A digital content strategist is a person who can help you develop an editorial calendar that aligns with your business goals and objectives. This person will work with your team to create a content strategy that will help you meet your goals and increase the visibility of your brand.

A digital content strategist should have experience in creating engaging and valuable content for social media platforms, as well as creative ideas for advertising campaigns and promotions during your marketing sales cycle.

This person will work with your team to create content that meets those goals, whether it’s through paid ad campaigns, social media, or video production. This person would also be responsible for creating SEO content, researching keywords, and monitoring the ranking analytics. 

Web / IT Support – The IT support person should be able to troubleshoot any technical issues that arise, which may include anything from server problems to networking issues. They should have a thorough understanding of how hosting platforms work together with domain providers and internet service providers (ISPs).

Your IT support person or website support role helps to actually create and make functional the things your other team members write, design, and promote. Web support roles are responsible for managing your website checkout process and cart flow, as well as any page redirects.

This person can be an asset to your team, but only if they understand their role and the overall mission of your organization.

Administrative Support / Client Care – A marketing administrative assistant provides support to their department. The employee may be responsible for database upkeep, general clerical duties, and other duties within the department.

They often answer phone calls or support tickets, reschedule meetings, coordinate with third-party contacts, and take care of many other tasks having to do with day-to-day operations.

If your clients usually contact you through email or a helpdesk-style software, your marketing administrator can help answer client questions about their marketing as a whole, their campaigns, or questions about their customer account.

An administrative assistant also helps keep office supplies organized and on hand, including making sure company technology is up to date on software and receives maintenance regularly. They also schedule and prepare agendas for meetings, help the marketing manager keep track of team birthdays and statistics, and more.

With a well-run in-house marketing team, you’ll be generating the results you’ve always wanted!

Visionaries and Builders are Different, and You Need Both to Market and Grow Successfully

Visionaries are the C-suite-type people of your company – they want to accept no limits, conquer all, and achieve success. They are driven by their inner fire and pursue their goals relentlessly. Visionaries are team players and work well in groups, but they are also competitive and will seek to come out on top. They focus on the big picture and how the team can reach it.

They are the ones who will push your organization forward and make it grow. They are also very ambitious, always looking for new challenges to conquer. Visionaries build teams around them that work toward the shared vision.

You might be a visionary. You might have big ideas and see the future of your company. But you can’t do it all. That’s where the builders come in.

Builders are the ones who can actually build the product or create the marketing campaign. The cyclical nature of business means that you need builders for execution and for longevity.

A visionary can’t build a successful business by themselves. They need a team of builders to help them bring their vision to life. Builders are the ones who take the visionary’s idea and turn it into a reality. They’re the ones who can actually build the product or create the marketing campaign.

And you need both.

Without a visionary, you’ll never have those big ideas that can take your company to the next level. But without a builder, you’ll never turn those ideas into reality.

So, what do you do if you’re not good at getting things built and you don’t have anyone on your team who is? You can hire additional staff or freelancers, leverage existing team members, or lean on an agency when your company has copywriting needs.

It’s important to know your leadership strengths and be proactive about your shortcomings. Being an expert at nothing and building a great team around you is the ultimate game-changer.

One of the most difficult things for entrepreneurs is admitting that they can’t do it all. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s the truth. You need a team of people around you who complement your skills and fill in your weaknesses.

There’s no one right answer. It depends on your company’s needs, budget, and the skills of your team. But if you want to build a great company, you need both visionaries and builders.

Remember – you need both visionaries and builders. It’s the only way to create a successful company.

Combining Roles is Possible if Needed

Combining different marketing roles can be a great way to maximize efficiency and productivity as well as resources. But it’s important to know your staff’s talents, goals, and work style before combining them. Wonder which departments should be involved in creating content?

There are a few key things to keep in mind when considering combining roles on your team. First, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of each team member’s goals, strengths, and weaknesses.

Second, you’ll need to be sure that the workload can be reasonably divided between team members. You’ll also need to have an understanding of what each person’s role requires and how it differs from other roles. This will help you determine if the new role will require more or less work.

Finally, you’ll want to make sure that there is good communication among team members so that everyone is on the same page.

If you decide that combining roles is the best option for your team, there are a few ways to go about it. One way is to have each team member take on responsibility for a specific task or tasks. For example, one team member could be responsible for content creation, while another could be responsible for social media outreach and responses/replies from customers and prospects online.

Another way to combine roles is to have team members work together on projects. For example, one team member could handle the research for all the social media and technical writing while another team member translates the research into written copy.

Whatever method you choose, it’s important to be clear about expectations and roles from the start. By doing so, you’ll set your team up for success.

By letting your team work in their zones of genius, you save time and other resources. If you have the need to combine roles on your team, here are a few tips:

• Know your staff. Understand their talents, goals, and work style. This will help you to better match team members with the right roles. Create a clear job description. A written description of each person’s role helps keep everyone on the same page and ensures that no one is doing more than their fair share of work.
• Set clear expectations. Make sure everyone understands what is expected of them. This can be done through regular meetings and check-ins, or by communicating clearly with a quick email.
• Be flexible. Don’t be afraid to adjust as needed. Things will never be perfect, but that’s okay. Be flexible with the roles and responsibilities of your team members. If a member is struggling with their role or if you find that they are overburdened, re-evaluate their position and see what changes need to be made.
• Communicate. Good communication is key to any successful team. Good communication means ensuring your team has the details necessary to carry out the task you’ve assigned. They need to understand the goals and the vision you have for the business, as a leader.
  If you are not communicating with your team, they will not know what is expected of them and can’t provide the best results. This can be done through regular meetings or check-ins as well as setting clear expectations on projects as mentioned above.
  
• Delegate tasks accordingly. Make sure each team member is working in their zone of genius. This will help them to perform at their best and also keep your team balanced. If you find that one person is doing most of the work, consider delegating tasks according to each person’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, if one member has an excellent marketing background but limited technical skills, assign them projects that require more creativity or strategy.
• Have an open door policy and encourage team feedback. It’s important to have an open-door policy so that your team can feel comfortable with coming to you with questions or concerns. Encourage them to provide feedback on how things are going in the company as well as any potential improvements they might have. This will help you keep everyone on track and make sure everyone feels ownership over their work.
• Keep the lines of communication open to avoid misunderstandings. When you’re managing a team, it can be easy to get caught up in day-to-day tasks and lose sight of the bigger picture. Take time to regularly check in with your team members and make sure they have all the information they need to do their jobs. Keep an open mind when receiving feedback from your employees; don’t be defensive or assume that they’re wrong if they present a different point of view than yours.

By following these tips, you can successfully combine roles on your team and keep everyone happy and productive. Roles that have similar output, like writing roles (social media, copywriting, and digital content management) can all be combined, if you have the right person willing and able to take on all of those roles. Many graphic designers are also trained in some light coding, like CSS, and may be able to help import hosted graphics or aesthetic elements on the website from the back-end. 

What to Do if You Can’t Afford a Team

It can be hard to want to build an in-house team but not have the capital available. It’s one thing to know all of the roles and important content pieces of your marketing – but actually taking steps to find, interview, hire, train, and see results from a team can be daunting.

Sometimes business owners will try to have some of both – they’ll work with a few agencies on their marketing, and have a few in-house team members. Not only is that a significant management investment from a time perspective, but it’s also feeding the narrative that you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

Working with a team in-house is what to prioritize. You will have more control over your business as a whole, your marketing, branding, and overall trajectory. While it might be hard to commit one way or the other, we recommend that you continue to funnel more resources into your in-house team as they become available. This will move you and your business toward a marketing team that is completely run in-house. 

If you don’t have the budget for an in-house team, working with an agency is a great option. You can tap into their expertise and they can help you develop and execute a marketing plan that will get you the results you’re looking for.

While it can be difficult to find the right agency, start by looking for companies that have a proven track record of success around the areas and what you’d like them to manage. 

There are a few things to keep in mind when working with an agency, though. First, make sure you’re clear on what your goals are. What are you trying to achieve with your marketing? What does success look like? You should also be clear on what you want your agency to do for you. Do you need help with strategy and planning, or are you looking for someone to manage the day-to-day implementation of your marketing efforts?

Once you know that, you can find an agency that specializes in helping businesses achieve those specific goals.

Second, be prepared to give the agency some leeway. They’re the experts, so trust their expertise. If you’re too hands-on, you’ll just end up frustrating yourself and the agency.

Third, make sure your agency is transparent. They should provide you with monthly reports that show what they’ve accomplished, as well as an estimate of how much money they’re spending on your behalf. You should also get a sense of the strategies they’re using and how effective those strategies have been in the past.

Remember that you’re ultimately responsible for your marketing, even when you decide to outsource it to an agency. Even though you hired support, you need to stay involved and monitor the results to make sure you’re happy with what you’re getting.

Hiring an agency is a great option if you want access to a team of marketing professionals instantly. 

If time is of the essence, an agency is likely your best bet. You’ll have a faster timeline, and a quicker end result, with a little bit less control. You’ll get help with everything from branding and website design to email marketing and social media.

Plus, you’ll have someone to take care of all the day-to-day tasks so you can focus on your business. This can be cheaper than building a team in-house but isn’t always as efficient or laser-focused because they carry multiple clients at the same time.

If you don’t have the budget to hire an in-house team, outsourcing your marketing can make sense. You can build your revenue up to the point where hiring an in-house team is possible, and go from there! 

How to Create Your In-House Marketing Team

When you make the decision and commit to building your marketing team in-house be ready for the work that comes with it. The work comes first and then the reward.

One of the most important things you need to do is create a team that is efficient and knowledgeable in the areas of marketing we’ve already discussed. 

Your team will be responsible for:

• Planning your marketing campaigns
• Executing your marketing campaigns
• Following up on your marketing campaigns.

If that doesn’t seem like three very different responsibilities you may want to give pause to leading this team because those three are vastly different.

If you realize that fulfilling those responsibilities is a big undertaking, you can proceed to creating your team.

But, what should be your first step in building such a team?

First, you need to balance your workload with agency responsibilities. Not everyone on your team needs to be a marketer. You may have some people on your team who are better suited for executing the strategy than developing it.

Second, you need to add marketers to your team who are thought leaders in their niche. These are the people who have already been successful in their field, and who can teach your team what they need to know in order to replicate their success. They will also be more likely to take ownership of their work and be invested in your company’s success.

Look at the roles we detailed above and see if you have any existing team members with those skills. If you don’t have team members with those skills, you can hire employees with those skills. If you do have existing employees with those skills, meet with them and see how they feel and what they think about shaking up their position a bit.

With a team that is focused and driven, you can achieve great things by taking this approach. If you don’t have the time or resources to create a new position, try something else.

Consider changing your team’s responsibilities, moving them into different roles within their current role, or providing more training. This can help give your employees something new to work on, which will make them feel more engaged and invested in what they’re doing.

Help Your Team See Where Their Work Fits

The best way to get a marketing engine to run efficiently and effectively is to put every piece in the right place. When building a car, you don’t need to convince a piston where it should go. When building a marketing team, it is essential that you help each person see where they fit and why.

Being firm in roles and responsibilities can feel heavy handed. Figure out a way to communicate the firmness of your decision in where each person fits while simultaneously affirming the skills and abilities that will allow them to thrive in that position. 

Your people are the difference makers in your business and that will be true of your marketing campaigns as well. Knowing how and where they are each meant to fit will be the key to keeping them motivated and inspired.

This is why it’s so important to clearly define the roles of each person on your team, as well as how the work of each role contributes to the marketing campaign as a whole.

Each employee should know where their part of the process fits. They should understand the pieces of the marketing blueprint, and all the steps necessary in order to create a campaign that converts.

This is where the marketing blueprint comes in. A marketing blueprint is a visual representation of the process of creating content, designing it, and distributing it. It’s what your team needs to see in order to understand how their work fits into the entire process.

It helps them see how their individual tasks contribute to the final product, which makes them feel more connected to it (and therefore more motivated). Here’s a copy of the exact marketing blueprint we use at The Blocks Agency.

It’s important to have clear responsibilities so that everyone knows what they need to do and how their work contributes to the final goal.

No matter how capable and committed each member of your marketing team is, they will need you to continue to challenge them, cast vision, paint a picture of a preferred future, and provide feedback to affirm their contributions. If you’re going to create an in-house marketing team your actions will be the driving force behind the overall productivity.

Your success in leading will be the primary influence in their success marketing.

Teach Your Team to Create Cyclical Campaigns

As you lead your team, you’ll need to keep in mind that the best strategy for marketing is cyclical, because it’s a great way to stay top of mind with your customers. A cyclical campaign is a marketing strategy designed to entice potential customers to respond again and again. You can create a cyclical campaign by creating a promotion that repeats over time — say, every six months or every year. Consistency is important, and by teaching your team to re-use content, work efficiently, and use a great collateral system (like Campaign Donut), you’ll be able to scale more easily. 

A successful marketing strategy can help a business seize growth opportunities and boost revenue. By working in a cyclical format, you can run your marketing campaigns over a long time period so all of your pieces work together. Creating content and planning campaigns can be tiring – encourage your team to stick it out and carry the campaign across the finish line. 

The more you cycle through your marketing, you’ll be able to finely tune the copy, graphics, and other elements to drive conversions even higher than the previous campaign. With the continuous editing, revision, and republishing, your campaigns will increase in efficiency and effectiveness.

The cyclical nature of marketing is important because it helps you to create a consistent message, build relationships, and ultimately sell more products.

Consistently reaching out to customers means they stay warm – they know who you are and what your company stands for. Not only that, but they’re also more likely to buy from you again in the future when they need another product or service from your company.

Conclusion

You’ve decided you want to run your marketing in-house. Good for you! It’s a daunting task, but it can be done if you have the right team and the right tools. In-house marketing campaigns can be an effective method for small or large businesses looking to cut down their budget, but these campaigns are not always effective.

Despite having the best intentions, your in-house marketing team can face many challenges over time if they lack the proper training and direction.

In addition, many small businesses lack the resources to hire a full-time marketing team. While this can be a challenge, it doesn’t mean that your business should stop trying to find ways to market itself. Having a business plan is a great first step, but keeping your team on target with just a plan can prove to be difficult.

With the right people hired for the right roles and the right leaders in place, your in-house marketing team can become solid, and lead you to higher profits, more leads, and higher converting campaigns!