In order to create great digital experiences, you need to first have a great team in place. If you're reading this, you've probably already come to the conclusion that you need a Martech team, whether it's to build a brand new Martech solution or to maintain an existing strategy.
Marketing automation can be proved very useful for companies if used correctly and if the correct decisions are being made. You can achieve outstanding results such as consistent higher ROI and conversions. Marketing automation can help dramatically increase productivity, which in turn will help you to optimize cost.
If you are thinking of implementing marketing automation in your company, there are some factors that you need to consider in order to make it work for you, but you will need qualified candidates. The main point here is that even if everything will be automated, there are some things for which your opinion and a team of well-trained employees will be necessary.
At this time, comes the need to hire the right people to do a specific job. This will be a big investment for you and your company. Therefore, your human resource manager needs to create a clear job description and interviewing process to hire the right team members.
Based on the experience we have outlined steps to build a Martech team with key roles and challenges that will come your way in building the team. Certain steps you need to follow:
It’s a very important step where you need to define the skill and roles you need to build for implementing an amazing Marketing Automation solution. Some of the skillset we have identified are:
Not only the roles can change but the frequency of the skills required would depend on the size of the project, engagement value as well as complexity involved.
So this leads to the question: Should you build your team in-house? Or outsource?
If your organization is large enough, there's a good chance you have the resources to hire an entire team.
First, map out the talent you already have available to you internally, and identify the gaps in skills that need to be filled. Then, before jumping immediately into recruiting for the specific roles outlined above, consider if you might be able to hire someone that is more of a generalist. For the skills that won't be needed often enough to keep someone busy full-time, can you find one person to wear several different hats? If so, can that person be effective enough at those different skills for your Martech solution to be successful?
After exploring your options, it's time to move into the recruiting and hiring process. Good Salesforce talent can be hard to find, but it's out there! A good place to start is on LinkedIn, searching for people with Salesforce capabilities that may be in or connected to your network. Networking in the community can be very helpful if you're looking for local talent: consider meetups, or local events if the timing is right. Getting reference also will be a good source to find talent. Posting knowledge articles and promotions post on LinkedIn are a good way to connect various sources and sourcing resume for profiles.
If your organization is smaller and you don't have the resources to hire an entire team for building and maintaining your Martech, your best bet may be to work with a partner.
If you do not have resources, it might make more sense to align your Martech project with a provider like Airum or Custom Centre rather than building an entire team to implement, monitor and maintain the solution. Even if you do have a knowledgeable IT staff, it may not make sense to use them for this if they are not used to working with the technologies needed to assist with Martech.
By working with the right partner, you can rest assured that your Martech solution is in the hand of experts. When evaluating partners to work with, you’ll want to first make a list of the things that matter most to you. You probably want more than just a great end result; more than likely, you also want to become smarter from the experience and retain knowledge, as well as have confidence that you’ll be able to develop the next solution.
Identifying what you want to get out of the experience besides the one off project will help guide you in choosing the type of company you want to work with. Some companies will focus solely on turning the martech platform around quickly. Others, like Mightas, focus on improving digital capabilities and maturity—while also delivering an excellent experience to your customers. If that entices you, look for partners that provide and create value for customers.
We also encourage you to choose a partner that contributes to Ohana. This will have a great impact on the Salesforce community and, ultimately, improve the overall ecosystem.
Building a Martech team can seem like a daunting and challenging process, but the good news is that you're never alone. When we started building the team at Social Beat we took time to consider the phases that occur after Martech license is sold, a new solution will need to do more than just automate martech—what integrations are required, what will come next in terms of digital transformation? Thinking about value, maintenance and growing your digital maturity may influence your hiring/staffing goals.