Build a Digital Marketing Dream Team With Limited Resources

Creating an effective digital team for a small business can seem like a daunting task – resources are limited, budgets are scarce and each moment spent on every project counts. A planned approach is, therefore, essential to ensure you are resourcing for the right digital areas – the ones that will bring the biggest benefits to your business. I’ll take you through the 5 essential steps to build a digital marketing dream team focused on revenue and real, tangible results.

1. Identify Your Objectives:

Before you identify who will resource your digital marketing tactics you must identify the objectives you would like your team to achieve. Your digital marketing objectives should align with your overall business objectives – they need to be SMART (Strategic, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic & Time-bound). For example, your objective could be to generate 200 new leads in one quarter.

2. Choose Your Channels Carefully:

It’s best to focus on a select few digital channels that your dedicated digital marketer or team can manage effectively. To save valuable time only choose the channels that can help you achieve your business objectives and the ones your audience are active on.

For example, if you want to generate revenue you can try email marketing, if you want to reach a young audience you can create a Facebook page and if you would like to provide a customer service channel Twitter could be the option for you. Once you’ve chosen the most relevant channels, it’s time to select the digital team you need to manage them.

3. Make the Most of the Talent You Have:

Let’s assume you can’t afford to hire an entire marketing team or agency to build success digitally. It’s then important to look in-house at the talent you have. Use a digital diagnostic like TestYourDigital.com to assess your team’s current digital marketing knowledge. This will help you identify the disciplines individuals excel at and enable you to pinpoint the areas they might need training on.

Each organisation will require a different digital skillset mix. However, most businesses will need a wordsmith to create compelling content for their website, blog and social media channels and someone with an analytical mind to take on their SEO, create email campaigns and report on the results of their campaigns using Google Analytics.

4. Keep Your Expectations Realistic:

Don’t bite off more than you can chew – it’s not realistic to think you can market your business online in the same way Apple does. It’s important to be honest about your employees’ current digital abilities and the results they can produce with the limited time and budget they have available to them. Ask yourself questions like: ‘Do we need the skills of a freelancer? Do we need to set aside a hiring budget for a new member? Do workloads need to shift in order to prioritize new important digital tasks?’

5. Plan for Continued Success:

Digital isn’t something to pick up and put down. It is essential that you plan a strategy to maintain your digital presence and achieve the results your business wants and needs. Create a digital marketing calendar that outlines your planned activity and acknowledges who will project manage each activity and how. Then follow the plan and monitor your analytics closely to ensure you’re on the right path and meeting the objectives you set out for your business. Download our free eBook.