Ever wondered as to what should be the size of the digital marketing team of a startup that has got its first round of funding from an angel investor or maybe first round VC.
Over the last four years I have come across only a few companies that have a serious mandate on the internet side and have really thought about the team structure before doing big digital media spends.
Here's my view on the size of a digital marketing team for start-ups with some funding(Angel/VC )
This is taking into account that I always tell start-ups to run their first Google, Social or Media campaigns on their own. This is primarily because of two reasons.
- Learning at any stage in life never hurts anyone.
- Mistakes, make you learn faster.
And the obvious reasons
- You will know what are things like bidding / CPM / CPC / CPA, beside keywords, Adgroups, Ad-Text etc
- When you are trying hire someone, you can have a meaningful conversation :)
- Your understanding of your competition will increase. That is if you keep a watch on what they are advertising on. (Keywords / Websites / etc)
- You will get to know a lot of publishers like Rediff / yahoo / MSN Etc
- Understand On Site conversion in a better manner.
Having said that the following team structure with future expansion possibility can be deployed.
Oh : Before I Start :Answer this first.
Q. Who should the digital marketing SPOC report into.
- CTO
- CMO
- COO
- CEO
Nopes .... I am not answering this one and shaking a hornets nest...
The ORG chart should look something like this.
Startup phase
What the above graphic basically says is the fact that at the start-up stage the promoter himself should be involved in all the marketing activities. So the promoter should setup a google account for advertising along with a Facebook account etc.
Media buys will be limited but interacting with the top publishers enables them to get more insight into the media industry so a direct interaction is important.
Note : google account means the following.
- Google account on credit card / Google account on credit with the help of google outsourced vendors in India who are managing the campaign on behalf of the company i.e."Do it for me" model of google
- When I am saying google, it should not stop the start-up from trying yahoo/bing Pay per click inventories as well.
First Round : Angel Fund.
Depending on the angel fund that the start-up raises, it is important to get a few people in place. It also depends if the angel fund gives you the mandate to create a in-house digital marketing practice in the first place or not. This decision is one of the most critical ones for start-up that have a eCommerce or internet based business.
One twist that can be done at this stage is to introduce an audit team.
so what is this audit team. Senior professionals from the search engine marketing companies that can be roped in as mentors or some company that can work on assignment basis of not managing the campaign but to come and do weekly audits of the campaign being run in-house.
This will enable two things.
- Keep the in-house SEM manager on his toes for (Budgets / Edits / Updates / strategy) etc.
- Ensure that there is learning from seasoned professional(s).
note : A similar audit team can work with you for your social media marketing campaigns as well.
Having said the above, One good implementation I saw in a startup was that the tech head used to run the SEM campaign along with the help of the marketing head till the time they got the first round VC funding. This enabled the company to get technology play implemented into their marketing campaigns day(1).
Depending upon the budgets to be spent the team can look at the following members along with the digital marketing team.
- Ad creative developer
- Content developer
- Technology manager
If the mandate is large and if the VC provides for a larger team then the decision to hire people should come from the business objective rather than the mandates of a startup.
happy team building ....
