How to set up your marketing team

Now that marketing at Yonder isn't just one big dumpster fire, I've been thinking a lot about how to scale the team and what structure might work best.

Our three main marketing buckets

Where I've landed, which is almost certainly going to change at some point, is that consumer marketing is made up of three main groups:

Product - building compelling products and positioning

Product marketing is my sweet spot, so it's been where we've spent most of our energy. It's all the foundational work you do before going to market, making sure that we build a product people will love and we position it in a way that's easy for our potential customers to understand. We'll likely start to hire into this function with a goal of having a PMM in every functional product squad at Yonder.

Roles that might fit into a product marketing function:

• Product marketing managers

• Country marketing managers

• CRM Managers

Brand - driving credibility and emotional connection

It's all the work we do to drive credibility, awareness and ultimately some emotional connection to what we're doing. The goal here is to optimise for what will entertain and delight, with a loose association to Yonder's product proposition. We don't sell Yonder or any of our benefits of features too explicitly here. The only exception here is through some of our earned media coverage which can be more informative than entertaining.

For considered purchases like Yonder, customers need multiple touch points before they’re ready to make their purchase. They might like what you’re doing but just have no need for your product right now. A good brand strategy helps to support these potential customers through their purchase journey regardless of where they’re at in their decision.

Some roles that might fit into a brand function:

• Social media and content managers

• PR and earned media managers

• Community and events managers

• Copywriters and designers

• Creative directors, videographers and editors

• Brand managers

Growth - the systematic process of driving new users

Typically through testing creative on digital channels like Meta, TikTok and Google. It's typically far more analytical than other parts of our funnel and is responsible for capturing the demand we generate through our brand work.

Some roles that might fit into a growth function:

• Performance marketing managers

  • Paid Social Managers

  • Paid Search Managers

• Performance videographers and editors

• Affiliate and partnership managers

• Data analysts

Cross-functional team culture

Something I’m specifically looking to avoid in our marketing culture is the feeling that some parts of the team are more important than others. Without solid product marketing, our growth teams won’t have clear messaging to build their creative around. Without really effective brand marketing, growth teams will have higher CPAs. Without growth teams, we won’t capture the demand we’ve been generating with our brand marketing. Every team has a vital role to play in driving growth for Yonder and no part of more or less important.

There are several roles that likely have to work across these functions, so managing how they prioritise and where they focus will be an important part of getting their structure right. Copywriters, videographers and creatives can add value at any stage of our marketing funnel. Whether that’s creating epic product videos for new features or ensuring we have enough creative fuel for our performance marketing. So while I haven’t yet worked out how to set this up, it’s something that’s front of mind.

Functional leadership

Longer term, I'll likely have a someone lead each function. A Head of responsible for driving outcomes specifically associated with their function.

For growth, that would be driving consistent growth, month over month with manageable CPAs. For brand that might mean driving brand results like recall, traffic, or brand search terms. I haven’t quite figured out what the KPIs should be for each function just yet.

This is a work in progress

If you’ve already worked this out, please just DM me know so I can stop worrying about it.