Marketing has fought tooth and nail to prove its relevance across diverse fields. In 2023, it’s no longer up for discussion that hardly any startup or business can actively drive growth without it. The question now on every CEO’s lips is how to maximize, survive and thrive when it comes to experiencing sustained and stable growth. Good question but we think the right question to start with is: How to build a high-performance marketing team that can deliver all the aforementioned, especially as 2024 is fast approaching.

 

In this blog post, we will discuss ways to build, rebrand and upgrade your marketing team to a high-performing one in 2024 with just a few simple pointers in the right direction. 

 Before you throw sprinkles of doubt around thinking “I’m not so sure that’s necessary”. Here are the statistics for this year and if your company did not grab a fair share of that market size, love to break it to you: You need a high performing marketing team:

• According to statista, as of October 2023, digital media usage ranked at 4.9 Billion which is 61.4% of the world’s population.
• According to Coinbound, as of 2023, email marketing has an astounding ROI of 4400%
• SEO stands as the channel with the highest conversion rate for both B2B and B2B companies in 2023.
• According to Coinbound, 61% of consumers make purchasing decisions from their smartphones, highlighting the importance of mobile-friendly websites. 
• As of 2023, social networking is the leading type of social media with social video platforms like Youtube, TikTok and Instagram reels dominating the mainstream
• X / Twitter is ranked the best channel for Brand Marketing in 2023
• Influencer Marketing is expected to do $21.1 Billion at the end of 2023, a jump of 29% compared to $16.4 Billion in 2022
• According to survey sparrow, 81% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer service.

 

Let’s be honest, there are a lot of statistics. The companies that understand the worth of assembling a marketing department that cuts across different marketing professionals such as SEO specialists, Social Media Marketers, Product Marketers, Customer Service and the likes are the ones currently sitting at the forefront of reaping its benefits.

 

 

Here’s another truth, the issue most of the time is a cross breed of the talents hired, the marketing team structure, company expectation, company culture and business goals. You want to bet what one thing globally renowned companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Heineken and even more national specific, Moniepoint, Piggvest, Chowdeck, Cowrywise, Jumia etc don’t play with? That’s right! Their entire marketing team. Big businesses are concerned with eating deeper into the market and increasing their grip on it.

Let’s fix that and work out how you can build a marketing team that can take its share of target audience, work in an optimized environment and enable top notch conversion for your company. First things first:

Company Culture

A survey was carried out on the relationship between employees and employers and 75% of employees said their boss was the most stressful part of their job. In environments like that, most likely the employees would not put in their best efforts which then spirals into affecting the overall performance and growth of the organization. Typically most companies gloss over this and head straight to the part where they can hire individuals who they think can effect a complete turn around. Every single company hire starts from this very crucial point. 

 

When people talk about company culture, there is a tendency for it to start to seem like each company has to break its back to carve one out. There’s a hack to getting it right when it comes to setting the standard for company values and work ethics. The formula is simple: Work – Life – Open door policy – Company Goals – Encouraging connectivity.

 

On a bigger scale, what this looks like is, enabling an environment where the health (mental, physical and spiritual) matters and it doesn’t feel like your employees have to give up their personal life in pursuit of company success. This of course, while making it clear what the company expectations and goals are per time; welcoming ideas, contributions and even contrary opinions on company issues. Lastly, encouraging connectivity across departments, making it easy for seamless collaborations for future marketing campaigns. 

 

In 2024, more and more people will decline working in organizations that don’t make provisions for employee wellbeing. You’ve seen how it played out this year. The “calling out” trend isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. In fact, I can bet that it’s here to stay for the long run… with Gen Zs holding this standard in very high regards. Essentially, the take home is that inner work will always come first, before bringing anyone in.

 

Hire Strategically

Your Marketing hire is your first external step of bringing specialists into your company. This is where most companies go wrong. Some hire based on platform-specific roles, others based solely on expertise-specific roles or market trends. Sticking to either of these alone is a recipe for disaster when it comes to hiring, which is why sometimes you’d find companies with all the “specialists” but little to zero growth in comparison to the hires.

 

Hiring strategically means looking inwards to table your company’s goal / objective, understanding what stage your company is at and what area you need to double down on. For instance if your company is looking to focus more on acquisition, engagement, conversion and retention, what you should be in the market looking for is a product marketer whose focus is on the product’s roadmap. Crafting stories around the brand that resonates with the audience, educating the audience and collecting feedback. A complete cycle. 

 

However an even more strategic hire would be combining this hire with specialists who would do the nitty gritty work on content strategy, Google Ads, Social media strategies, SEO, Customer service, Design etc. What this does is place your first hire, a PM (Product Marketer) in a managerial position responsible for overseeing the progress of each marketing channel.

 

Now the thing is, this is supposed to be easy, I mean it should ordinarily be easy peasy, here’s the thing IT’S NOT. Most of the time, companies want to hire and they want to do so fast, leaving them with little to no time to do due diligence or to hire marketing professionals based on data. Yes, this also happens to companies with HRs.

In 2024, there will be higher interactions with AI from the employee’s end, with a rise in AI written application letters and CVs,making it difficult to sift through those who are more fit for the job. Based on this, there will be a matching increase in the search for marketers who are highly trained for potential roles, marketing functions and in work ethics.

 

A good time for you to reach out to us to help you hire the right marketing talent based on your company goals. Blurpe guarantees a 6 months onboarding session with one goal: to ensure that from our talent pool, your hire is the perfect fit, before and after. While also guaranteeing a replacement at zero cost, if the marketing talent laxes on the job during the probationary period.  If you want to hire strategically, you should get in touch, just send a message here.

 

 

Data is King. Automation is even better. Stick with it.

For a highly optimized and high performance marketing team, your decisions will no longer be based on assumptions or feelings. That passed with this year. In 2024, every marketing strategy has to be backed by data guiding the marketing effort of your entire marketing team. It’s definitely a plus that social media platforms have analytics embedded in them making it easy to know what works and what doesn’t. Outside of that, you can use google analytics for SEO optimization.

The point is, to boost business growth, your team has to prioritize data. One highly overlooked form of data is customer feedback. You can use evaluations from your customers to gain actionable insights as to what they want and what is lacking in your product. Data never lies so there is no use going outside of it. This helps your team tailor aspects of their marketing efforts such as content format, digital ads, social media etc.

It is also not a win if you spend half the time you spent gathering data doing the manual work. Automating these processes gives your team more time to focus on less manual activities, put more effort and double down on channels that are yielding more results. Win-Win!

 

Creativity and Transparent Marketing

The normal channels might just be maxed out. Everyone can smell a sales call from a mile away. When it comes to trust, transparency is the currency. Letting your brand and company values shine through in marketing communications, customer service and even product shows uniformity and willingness to speak on relatable terms with your target audience. All touch points customers will have with your product or service matters and at each point transparency matters not some inflated, high-end or non-communicative marketing approach. 

 

In building a high performance marketing team, allowing for “out of the box” strategies that would help reach your customers at their pain points is highly welcome. 7 out of every 10 people love surprises, your customers would love to be reached via channels they didn’t think possible. An example is piggvest embodying santa last year and giving customers christmas gifts. Allow your team to get creative.

 

Conclusion

The marketing cycle remains the same: Attract, Nurture, Convert, Retain. Your marketing department will yield more returns if you focus on enhancing customer experience. The two end points, Attraction and Retention are essential touch bases. In my opinion, what happens in between is a united effort of all marketing channels including your product to give the customer solid customer experience that takes them a step further from retention: Referral.

To build a high performance marketing team, you have to choose to ditch the traditional method of hiring. Rebrand your team either by upgraded sessions with professionals in the field, which by the way should be a norm in companies come 2024, focus on the quality of your hires (you can reach out to us for that) and everything else I just wrote to you about.