Marketing and Growth roles
Raising awareness of an offering, attracting clients and sustaining their relationship with the business require different contributions. When recruiting in marketing, connect the role to an audience, a stage in the journey and a decision to make.
Understand the market and organise relationships with audiences
Marketing studies the market and clients’ expectations to define the actions that support the offering. It works on visibility, acquisition and retention. Marketing leadership chooses priorities and coordinates these activities in line with the business’s objectives.
The remit needs to be developed with other functions. Agree with Sales on what constitutes an opportunity to pursue and with Product on responsibilities for presenting and developing the offering. For a shared outcome, name each team’s expected contributions rather than assigning the entire journey to a single role.
Understanding the different roles
Position the offering and make the brand clear
Brand & Communication works on visibility and consistency in how the brand expresses itself. Product Marketing connects the offering with its market, particularly through positioning and presentation. When choosing the remit, distinguish how the business is perceived from how a specific audience understands a product.
- Brand & communication
- Product marketing
Develop visibility and acquisition
Acquisition focuses on the activities that bring an audience to the offering. Channel specialisms allow this work to be explored in greater depth. Describe the target audiences, available resources and expected outcome before asking for mastery of every channel in one role.
- Acquisition & paid media
- SEO / SEA
- Content
- Social media / community
Develop relationships over time
CRM organises client relationship data and activities, with satisfaction and retention objectives. Its remit needs to specify the contacts involved, the communications expected and the stages of the journey to support. This distinguishes it from a need focused on bringing in new prospects.
- CRM & lifecycle
Experiment and support execution
The Growth approach relies on testing and prioritising growth activities. Marketing Ops organises the processes and technologies that support execution. Separate the choice of experiments, their implementation and the reliability of the data used to examine their results.
- CMO
- Growth marketing
- Marketing ops
Job profiles in this family
- Growth Marketing ManagerThe Growth Marketing Manager improves customer acquisition, activation and retention through data analysis and experimentation.
- Product Marketing Manager (PMM)The Product Marketing Manager clarifies the product’s value for its buyers and coordinates its launch with product, marketing and sales teams.
- CRM / Lifecycle ManagerThe CRM / Lifecycle Manager organises communications with acquired contacts to support their activation, retention and, where relevant, reactivation.
- SEO manager (Search Engine Optimisation)The SEO manager leads the website’s organic search strategy and coordinates technical and editorial work to improve its visibility.
- CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) or Marketing DirectorThe CMO leads marketing strategy, allocates resources and coordinates teams to build the brand and develop demand in the company’s markets.
- Acquisition / Paid Media ManagerThe Paid Media Manager manages advertising campaigns and their budgets to help the business acquire customers and understand its results.
- Social Media / Community ManagerThe Social Media / Community Manager organises a brand’s presence on social media. Depending on the role, they publish content and manage conversations or coordinate these activities.
- Marketing OpsMarketing Ops organises the tools, data and processes that enable the marketing team to run and measure its campaigns.
- Brand & Communication ManagerThe Brand & Communication Manager helps define the brand guidelines and coordinates brand messages and communication activities with teams and senior management.
- Customer Marketing ManagerThe Customer Marketing Manager turns B2B customer experiences into testimonials, references and evidence that sales and communications teams can use.
- Field Marketing SpecialistDepending on the post, a field marketing specialist prepares and delivers events, webinars or local campaigns with sales teams, then tracks their results.
- Partner marketing managerThe partner marketing manager designs and coordinates campaigns run with partners, then analyses their results to guide joint activities.
Identify the problem before choosing the channel
The offering is difficult to explain to prospects
If teams struggle to articulate the product’s value, work on the target audience, uses and positioning. Clarify the role expected in this area before asking for more acquisition campaigns.
Acquisition depends heavily on a single channel
If this dependency becomes a concern, define the other approaches to examine and the resources to test them. The need may involve channel expertise or coordinating trials, depending on what the team already knows how to do.
Relationships with contacts lack continuity
If communications stop after an initial conversation or a purchase, describe the stages to support. A CRM remit can cover this work with the relevant sales or client support teams.
Campaign results are difficult to compare
If teams use incompatible data, examine definitions, collection and handovers. Work on marketing operations should make measurement usable; draw conclusions cautiously when the data does not allow the effect of an action to be isolated.
Clarify what the role needs to succeed
Name the audience and stage of the journey
Specify whether the role should raise awareness of an offering, create an initial interaction or support existing clients. Several objectives can coexist, provided they are prioritised.
Define production resources
Clarify who produces content, creative assets and technical adaptations. A person responsible for a channel needs to know which resources they can rely on to carry out their work.
Agree on a shared interpretation of results
Choose metrics with the teams that will use the results. Describe the known limits of measurement and the decisions that can be made on the basis of each test.
Frequently asked questions
Can a marketing generalist cover several channels?
Define the depth expected in each: choosing actions, producing materials, managing providers or analysing results. Clarify priorities and the support available. A list of channels is not enough to make the workload and level of expertise clear.
Sources
- Apec : Directeur marketing
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics : Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers
- Apec : Gestionnaire CRM
- Apec : Traffic manager
- Apec : Brand manager
- HubSpot : Everything You Need to Know About Marketing Operations
- Amplitude : The Comprehensive Guide to Growth Marketing
- Product Marketing Alliance : What is product marketing?