12 Key Marketing Roles
Demand generation is an essential part of a growing business. In today’s digital marketing environment, deploying a scaled demand operation and revenue creation engine requires a broad team of talent. Specialization of function allows for areas of excellence to develop maximum efficiency and effectiveness.
At BrightEdge our management experience comes from some of the most successful SaaS companies in Silicon Valley, most notably Salesforce.com, so our departments are designed to scale fluidly as we continue to grow at a formidable rate. Demand generation sits at the intersection of sales and marketing, and as the number of team members involved in the B2B purchase process grows - 34% according to the 2014 demand generation survey - so does the need to acquire and develop a multitude of demand generation skill sets.
Demand generation is all about understanding the user journey and understanding how different roles on your team support that journey to becoming a customer. Understanding clearly the broad spectrum of roles in your demand organization will also help a person evaluate their career options and make an effective career plan. Below are 12 key roles and positions essential to the scale and success of a demand-led organization. Note that the positions are also in the order of products rolling into the market to customers.
- Product Manager specifies what to make: owns the target market, market sizing, gross margin plan, schedule, and value proposition.
- Product Marketing Manager describes what the product manager made on the web site and in collateral: owns the description.
- Marketing Acquisition (advertising) gets people to notice and consider the product: owns the leads and the top of the funnel. Often co-owns the website with corporate marketing. Content marketing manager largely fits in this category.
- Public Relations Manager generates interest in the products, message, and the company with the offline and online press. Social media manager falls largely in this category.
- Corporate Marketing and marketing communications define and defend the brand: owns the brand, logo, and tagline. Often co-owns the website with marketing acquisition.
- Inside Sales works the leads created by marketing acquisition to create sales appointments: owns the middle of the funnel.
- Outside Sales hunts for leads: owns the cold calls and a quota.
- Account Executive works the leads brought in by inside and outside sales: owns the bottom of the funnel and a revenue quota.
- Sales Engineer helps with the product demonstration and trial: co-owns closing from the trial.
- Customer Service, Customer Support, Customer Success supports the customers’ use of the product: co-owns retention and renewal goals.
- Customer Marketing supports renewal, upsell, and expansion campaigns: owns engagement, renewal, and upsell campaign development, deployment, and tracking.
- Strategic Account Manager executes the renewal, upsell, and expansion efforts: owns a revenue quota and the retention goal.
If you are interested in a career in marketing and sales, look over the list of positions and match your talents with the primary activity, your personality with what parts of the work you would like to own, and what types of people you like to interact with: developers, marketers, salespeople, press, prospects, or customers. It takes a combination of all the skill sets associated with most of these 12 positions to build a scaled demand engine. If you feel you have what it takes, then join us on our journey as BrightEdge is hiring.
