How to Structure a B2B SaaS Marketing Team
Last updated: April 25th, 2024
Building a powerhouse B2B SaaS marketing team goes beyond just hiring top talent – the key to your team’s success is understanding the critical roles and functions to hire for.
To help you out in this endeavor, we offer a full rundown of the roles and responsibilities vital to a SaaS marketing team. We’ll cover how to structure your team and also discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing to a marketing agency versus building an in-house marketing team. Let’s get to it.
Departments, Roles, and Responsibilities
The various roles and responsibilities within a B2B enterprise SaaS marketing organization can fall broadly into four departments:
- Demand Generation marketing
- Content marketing
- Product marketing
- Brand marketing
Keep in mind that your individual budget constraints will impact the structure of your marketing team. A smaller business is likely to have a smaller budget to spend on marketing and will, therefore, have to make do with a smaller team.
Some marketing positions can be rolled into one; for example, a content manager can perform the roles of social media specialist, content writer, and SEO analyst. But, it’s important to maintain an equal distribution of responsibilities between the four areas of work.
Demand Generation Department
Demand generation marketing focuses primarily on user engagement, lead acquisition, and customer growth.
Responsibilities in this department include:
- Identifying new customer acquisition channels
- Optimizing marketing campaigns to target ideal customers
- Implementing marketing automation processes
- Analyzing campaign results
- Finding ways to enhance customer journeys
- Seeking solutions to increase customer referrals
A SaaS startup can hire a demand generation manager to take on the responsibilities of marketing. Larger businesses could also employ a growth marketing manager, a digital marketing manager, and/or a marketing automation manager to handle the additional workload.
Content Marketing Department
Content marketing revolves around the use of content to generate interest in your product, educate users, and build a relationship with customers.
Responsibilities in this department include:
- Researching the target audience
- Completing keyword research and analyzing competitor content
- Developing a content strategy
- Creating high-quality content, such as blogs, articles, social media posts, infographics, or podcasts
- Optimizing content for SEO
- Editing and proofreading content
- Publishing and promoting content
- Monitoring the performance of content
A SaaS startup can make do with a single content marketing manager and an in-house or freelance copywriter or content writer. Larger businesses will need to engage a larger team to manage the required output. Consider employing a content planner or SEO specialist, one or more content writers and copywriters, and a content editor.
Product Marketing Department
Product marketing is the middle ground between product design and marketing. The focus is firmly on promoting the value proposition of the SaaS product by highlighting features, case studies, and product comparisons.
Responsibilities in this department include:
- Identifying the unique value proposition
- Developing content that educates and creates interest
- Ensuring marketing campaigns incorporate product value
- Ensuring product-market fit
- Using email marketing
A SaaS startup may need a product marketing manager on staff, but this role and its responsibilities could be incorporated into a broader product role. Larger businesses may also need an affiliate manager role or a product relations manager.
Brand Marketing Department
The brand marketing department focuses on building and maintaining brand image and awareness. They may be involved in anything from publicity events and community engagement to PR efforts.
Responsibilities in this department may include:
- Collaborating on the development of marketing plans
- Supporting content creation and editing
- Designing logos and other branding imagery
A SaaS startup is unlikely to have a dedicated brand marketing manager. If they do, this role and responsibilities can be rolled into the demand generation manager and content marketing manager’s responsibilities. A larger business is more likely to have the resources and need for a brand marketing manager, along with a PR manager, social media manager, events manager, and/or community engagement manager.
Marketing Upper Management
Depending on the size of the organization, at the top of the B2B SaaS marketing team structure will be a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Marketing Vice Presidents, and several Marketing Directors.
The CMO’s role is highly strategic – it not only provides oversight and guidance in developing the marketing strategy but also communicates with other members of the executive committee. The VP and Director roles hold more responsibility for managing overall marketing team operations.
The Allrounder: T-Shaped Marketer
It’s common in B2B SaaS, particularly within startups, to have a t-shaped marketer. T-shaped marketers are essentially jack-of-all-trades with a background in another helpful field, like web development or graphic design, which is why they are highly valued. If you want to invest in your in-house marketing, consider some cross-over skills outside of marketing-based upskilling that could benefit the team overall.
Tips for Building an Effective SaaS Marketing Team
Now that you’re ready to assemble your marketing team, here are some tips to do it most effectively.
- Define your target audience and research the market.
This will help you understand your core marketing goals, like what content you need to produce, what channels you’ll focus on, customer behavior, and their decision-making process. - Develop a comprehensive marketing plan.
By developing a detailed marketing plan, you’ll better understand the roles you need on the team to achieve your goals. - Identify essential roles and recruit the best talent.
Now that you have defined your target audience and developed a marketing plan that clearly outlines your marketing goals – you need a team. Identify which roles are essential to your marketing plan based on the required work output. Once you have a list of required roles, consider the skills and experience required for this work. Always aim to hire the best talent possible. - Foster a healthy work culture.
For your B2B SaaS marketing team structure to function well in the long run, you must foster a healthy work environment. Whether in a remote or an in-office setting, it’s all about creating space for open, honest communication. In addition, a creative and high-achieving marketing team will have a culture of innovation and collaboration instilled in them. Collaboration and communication between departments is essential, as is the freedom and trust to experiment with new ideas. - Use multiple channels and a range of tools.
Don’t rely on a single marketing channel – modern digital marketing requires you to cover multiple bases. This mainly depends on your target audience and where they spend the most time.
There are plenty of software and tools to help. For example, marketing automation tools can help you manage pipelines efficiently and data analytics tools can crunch large datasets in a pinch. All of these tools will save you time and potentially a little sanity.
Should You Partner with a Marketing Agency or Maintain an In-House Marketing Team?
There’s often much debate around whether or not to outsource your marketing efforts to an agency or to keep your marketing in-house. So, which is better – in-house or agency? Let’s run through a few key points that’ll help you decide.
Scale Your Marketing
Partnering with an agency offers the advantage of rapidly scaling your marketing plans. The major benefit is that you can hit the ground running from day one with a pre-made marketing team. In contrast, hiring and onboarding a team of capable marketers takes a significant amount of time. For every new person you employ, there’s a lengthy recruitment and interview process that can take many months, depending on the complexity of onboarding.
Cost Benefit
While hiring an agency can be seen as the more expensive option, you have to consider all the variables involved in hiring, training, and managing a marketing team. In reality, building an in-house marketing team isn’t necessarily less expensive, but it’s a long-term investment.
Industry Knowledge and Expertise
You’ll unlikely be able to hire a marketing expert who specializes in every marketing field and has the best industry connections. This kind of person is hard to find, but when you outsource, you have the combined knowledge of the entire agency team behind you.
Common Issues to Avoid When Engaging a Marketing Agency
In our experience, there are several common mistakes when hiring a marketing agency.
- Expecting instant results: Either party can be at fault here – perhaps the agency is promising fast results, or there is an expectation of instant results. Results will come from careful, deliberate planning and implementation. In every scenario and for every business, this takes time.
- Poor communication and goal setting: Open and frequent communication is essential for smooth operations. More importantly, it ensures that both parties agree on the goals and timeline. This is also connected to the initial client onboarding. Miscommunication at this stage only leads to further issues.
- Ineffective collaboration with other departments: Marketing is heavily interconnected with sales. Commonly, a failure to communicate and share information between the two departments is a major cause of problems.
Can’t Afford the Full-Suite Marketing Agency Services?
If you’re leaning towards hiring a marketing agency but find it too expensive, consider a more budget-friendly option: a fractional CMO.
At Powered by Search, we offer a fractional CMO service ideal for B2B SaaS companies looking to grow but facing limitations with their in-house marketing resources. With our service, you’ll get a strategic roadmap to reach outlined goals and weekly or bi-weekly coaching sessions to support and mentor your marketing team.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, the structure of your B2B SaaS marketing team plays a significant role in the success of your marketing efforts. Having the right people in place and fostering a happy working environment will ultimately make your marketing team excel. And when you have your “A” team, retain them by keeping them happy and investing in their professional development to drive your business forward.
On that note, if you want to better understand your business’s scalability in its current state, run through our SaaS scalability score self-assessment. This assessment looks at how well you attract, engage, and convert customers, and will guide you towards areas for improvement.
What you should do now
Whenever you’re ready…here are 4 ways we can help you grow your B2B software or technology business:
- Claim your Free Marketing Plan. If you’d like to work with us to turn your website into your best demo and trial acquisition platform, claim your FREE Marketing Plan. One of our growth experts will understand your current demand generation situation, and then suggest practical digital marketing strategies to hit your pipeline targets with certainty and predictability.
- If you’d like to learn the exact demand strategies we use for free, go to our blog or visit our resources section, where you can download guides, calculators, and templates we use for our most successful clients.
- If you’d like to work with other experts on our team or learn why we have off the charts team member satisfaction score, then see our Careers page.
- If you know another marketer who’d enjoy reading this page, share it with them via email, Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook.