How To Build a Dream Marketing Team for Your 

Agency 
 
 
 
As you build out your digital marketing team, there are ​three key roles 
you should focus on: 
 
1. Content 
Your content team will use research to determine the best strategy 
for developing content including: 
 
❏ The type of content to develop 
❏ The most appropriate topics 
❏ At what stage to present that content 
❏ The best marketing channels to promote that content 
 
2. Acquisition 
This team is directly responsible for the initial acquisition of 
customers including the lead generation strategy and acquisition 
strategy. 
 
The most important goals of this team are: 
 
❏ 85% Lead generation 
❏ 84% Sales 
❏ 78% Lead nurturing 
❏ 77% Brand awareness 
❏ 76% Engagement 
❏ 74% Customer retention/Loyalty 
❏ 61% Customer advocacy 
❏ 58% Upsell/Cross-sell 
 
3. Monetization 
  
❏ Their goal is to maximize the revenue your teams and assets 
are generating. 
 
❏ This is where your team comes together to optimize 
conversions through split testing, improving email marketing 
strategies for better open and click through rates, etc. 
 
❏ Your monetization team will develop the plan to help you 
measure success over time. 
 
❏ Hire great marketers who specialize in things like analytics, 
blog content, video marketing, email marketing, etc. 
 
 
How to Find and Attract Talent 
 
1. Attract the talent you want. 

❏ Hunting for candidates is a start, but you should also focus on 
improving your culture and creating a better workplace to attract 
talent. 
 
❏ Instead of trying to take candidates from application to hiring in a 
simple linear approach, treat it like you treat your customer journey. 
 
❏ Grow relationships with employees the same way you cultivate 
customer relationships. This leads to loud and proud brand 
ambassadors. 

2. Target your competition. 

❏ Find the ones that are doing it right within your industry, then solicit 
the top candidates with similar titles and roles. 
 
 ❏ Use networks like LinkedIn to find these people. 

3. Get referrals. 

❏ Your current employees know exactly what it takes to do the job. 

 
❏ Offer them a bonus of some kind for helping you find winning 
prospects that fit the bill for your open marketing positions. 
 
❏ Your employees will be motivated to find the right people, not only 
because of the reward involved but also because they want to bring 
people who will make the workload lighter. 

4. Use social media. 

❏ Social media isn’t just a way to connect to customers. There are job 
seekers out there as well. 
 
❏ Your social channels make it easy to connect with talent from 
around the globe. Not only does it help you find that talent, but it 
opens the curtain so candidates can see if you’re a good fit. 
 
❏ Think of every customer interaction as an interaction with a 
potential candidate. 

5. Tap LinkedIn groups and online communities. 

❏ If you want to reach and engage top talent for your marketing team, 
you need to go where those people are spending the bulk of their 
time. 
 
❏ For marketing talent, look for discussion groups, forums, and 
communities where people are providing tremendous insight. 
 
 ❏ Target the people providing authentic value in discussions. 

6. Search specialized job boards. 

❏ If you’re looking for candidates with a special skill set, then find 
those specific candidates based on their skills on specialized job 
boards. 

7. Use targeted paid ads. 

❏ Paid ads may not necessarily reach the passive candidate, but 
everyone is on social media (especially Facebook). 
 
❏ You can use the targeting features of Facebook’s ad platform to get 
your job posts into the feeds of the people who most closely match 
the skills, interests, region, and even the hobbies you want. 
 
❏ It’s a clever way to try to establish culture fit during the candidate 
acquisition phase. 
 
❏ There aren’t too many methods for finding new employees cheaper 
than this approach. 

8. Screw tradition! 

❏ Go against traditional hiring means, and chase down the people you 
know. You probably know someone with a creative streak and 
some marketing talent. 
 
❏ Traditional wisdom might tell you to avoid hiring friends and family, 
but in a growing business who else could be more committed to 
your success? 
 
 ❏ There’s risk with any employee, but hiring friends (and even family) 
means there is already an established trust. 

9. Grab students. 

❏ Paid internships are always a possibility, but don’t turn your nose up 
at unpaid apprenticeships. 
 
❏ Work with a local community or 4-year college to set up an 
apprenticeship or internship program. 
 
❏ You can benefit from ambitious marketing students who might need 
or want that internship before graduation. 
 
❏ A good candidate can grow with you and become an all-star on 
your digital marketing team. 
 
❏ And hiring someone younger can give you a nice glimpse into the 
younger generations that your company might not have thought 
about beforehand. 

10. Look globally. 

❏ There’s no reason why your digital marketing team needs to reside 

within the physical walls of your business. 
 
❏ Not only does this broaden the talent pool, but your overhead cost 
is greatly reduced. 
 
❏ You’re not paying to physically house the employee (desk, office 
space, hardware, software, supplies, utilities, etc.). 

11. Look for talent everywhere. 

 ❏ The best talent out there, meaning the kind of people you really 
want to hire, aren’t actively looking for a job. 
 
❏ You should constantly have your radar up for hyper-talented people 
that fit your marketing needs. 
 
❏ They might not be doing the same job at the moment. They could 
be doing anything. Be on the lookout for talent everywhere. 
 
❏ Your next community manager could be a waiter, hotel staff, a 
volunteer firefighter, a retail sales rep, or call center clerk. 

Don’t hire based on experience alone 

Wherever you go looking for talent, keep one thing in mind: ​Do not just 
hire people based solely on their experience. 

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to build your marketing dream team based 
on stats and experience alone. Instead, hire people that will make up the 
best team to help you achieve your goals. 

1. Go for culture over skill. 

❏ It’s so tempting to hire someone with tremendous results and a 

mile-long list of achievements. But what if that person is cocky, 
self-centered, or confrontational? 
 
❏ No matter what kind of results they get, you want people who will fit 
in well with your company culture. 
 
❏ Your marketing team will never be able to reach its full potential if 
the team doesn’t mesh. 
2. Results are still important. 

❏ Marketers are much easier to hire than other professions because 

you can look at real numbers. 
 
❏ When talking to candidates, take the time to ask them data-driven 
questions such as: 
 
● How much they improved sales 
● Which campaigns brought results, and how they improved the 
campaign along the way 
● What the return on investment was for specific activities and 
campaigns 
 
❏ There’s no reason why the ideal candidate can’t provide you with 
hard and fast numbers that prove they can get results. 

3. Balance strategy and tactics. 

❏ Marketing is incredibly fluid. Nothing is written in stone. You need to 

build a team that has a careful balance of tactics and strategy. 
 
❏ The strategy ensures that your team is looking ahead over the next 
12 to 18 months, developing long-range campaigns with eyes on the 
future. 
 
❏ Balance that with tactics and a team who stays on their toes. 
 
❏ They should be capable of pivoting at the last minute on tactical 
deployments. 

4. Hire hungry. 
 ❏ The marketing landscape changes so fast that hiring based on 
experience alone can leave you holding on to people with obsolete 
skills. 
 
❏ You want to hire people who are eager to grow, learn, and share 
their knowledge. 
 
❏ They promote those who show an ability and willingness to do just 
that. 
 
❏ Those are the people you want on your team. 
 
❏ They’re passionate not only about growing professionally but also 
about growing the entire team for the good of your business.