Successful digital marketing agencies can quickly grow to employ hundreds of staff. From humble beginnings, many of the most popular digital marketing agencies have gone on to be world-leading creative companies, delivering excellence in service to some of the world’s top brands. But how can you ensure you have all the skills at your fingertips to make a success of your own marketing agency? This article has the answers, sharing the key personnel you’ll need in order to make a success of your excellent marketing projects.
Big-Picture Thinkers
The senior members of your team will focus on project management and thinking of the big ideas that’ll end up as fully-fledged marketing campaigns. Often, these roles fall to the founder of your agency and some of their close associates, who’ll push ideas around in order to find the best strategy for a particular client. Junior staff members can, of course, add to this creative heart of your agency, providing ideas that senior team members might overlook. This part of your team is the soul of your agency, and their collaboration and creativity will determine the success of many of your projects.
Designers
With ideas outlined and strategies agreed upon, it’ll be down to the designers to mock up potential content that can then be tweaked and honed before being passed on to a client. Designers take many forms, but if you’re marketing digitally, you’ll want a team that contains graphic designers, animators, videographers, and photographers. All of these creative professionals will combine into a fierce and experienced group who will carry out your ideas and will deliver high-quality content to your clients.
Copywriters
No marketing campaign would be complete without some B2C writers, who are there to make products and services glitter with appeal and excitement. The size of your team of writers will depend on the kinds of projects you tend to pick up. Content marketing teams will naturally focus on SEO writers, whereas digital marketers who instead offer visual advertising may only need a single writer. Bear in mind that writers are happy to work on a freelance, ad hoc basis – so you may be able to maintain a large pool of writers without having them on your payroll.
Accountants
As an agency, you’ll constantly be tendering invoices on the completion of projects. Some projects may even have contractual obligations to pay you extra depending on the success of the projects you work upon. All this means that there’s plenty of accounting to perform in any large creative agency – and that’s something you’ll want to invest in early in your growth journey. It may help to train an individual who’s already in your company, sending them to an online MBA accounting course in order to train up in the skills needed to balance your books. Or you can turn to the job market to hire experienced, diligent accounts and CFOs who will happily lend their skills to your firm.
HR Professionals
All large firms require an HR presence in order to manage their payroll and to keep their workers happy. HR teams are even more essential if you’re balancing full-time workers with part-time and temporary workers, with freelancers and consultants also on your books. Smaller firms may only need a single HR professional, whereas larger firms may need to spread a higher workload across a larger team. Make sure you’re hiring individuals who understand your mission and the specific demands of deadline-driven creative work, as they’ll be most sensitive to the needs of your workers.
Sales
Drumming up business is something that successful creative agencies keep at the forefront of their minds. It won’t do to simply rely on word-of-mouth marketing – you’ll need a team to reach out to businesses who can share your services with them. Sales professionals are excellent at nailing your value proposition, leaving potential clients impressed by what you may be able to bring to their firms. Arm these professionals with ROI stats and KPI objectives so that clients are left in no confusion as to the value you’re able to deliver to their brands.
Technicians
Much of your work as a digital marketing agency will take place on computers and other devices. These can fill from time to time – something catastrophically for your workload and deadlines. It’s therefore essential for digital marketing agencies to invest in at least one technician or IT specialist to help them keep on top of problems that may develop with your software or hardware. Having an IT expert on speed-dial is another option, though there’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to come and meet you as soon as they receive your call.
Strategists
This team may well dovetail with your core creative team, but you may also wish to hire an individual who’s an excellent business strategist in order to help you develop an efficient business model, optimal pricing, and a guiding strategy that all of your team will follow years into the future. As your agency grows, so does the need for a strategist to settle and steady the ship. Look to experienced, senior strategists in order to bring in the talent that’ll help you direct all your energies in the same direction as a large group of a diverse staff. Their insights will help you increase your profitability over time.
Support Staff
If you’re based in an office space, support staff will also be essential to your digital marketing agency. Here, we’re talking about the cleaners and the secretaries – the administrative assistants and the people on the phones or managing social media. All of these roles may well go to early-career professionals, who could develop their skills internally in order to move into another of your teams. Don’t scrimp on support staff, seeing as they’re the professionals who ensure that the rest of your team can focus on their high-value work without administrative distractions.
There you have it: the key skills that every ambitious digital marketing agency will need in-house if they’re to progress, grow, and impress their clients with wonderfully orchestrated campaigns.
