How to build a Marketing Technology team

In the previous post, I highlighted some reasons as to why having dedicated marketing technology people is increasingly important for a well-functioning marketing team. Now, I will go over some best practices for building a martech team.

Once you’ve decided to set up a Martech team, you’ll need to consider the team’s tasks & responsibilities as well as the staff profiles required.

Typical Martech team duties

The exact responsibilities of each Martech team will vary depending on the company’s product and requirements. However, some of the typical things the team will cover include:

• Setting up event and conversion tracking
• Attribution 
• Ensuring reporting and analytics is working correctly
• Managing the integration of new tools
• Automating manual processes
• Data exports to marketing tools for greater segmentation and personalisation
• Developing MVPs 
• Building landing pages, emails and other templating tasks
• Making product requests and supporting Engineering with existing requests
• Proactively exploring new channels, platforms and tools

What skills are needed

Of course, designing your ideal Martech team staff profiles will also depend on the types of tasks your team will be working on. The most important distinction to make is whether your team will be undertaking any development work, or will purely be focused on technical configuration. 

All your Martech team members should ideally have a marketing background, or at least a decent understanding of digital marketing. 

Expertise in the typical martech areas of responsibility outlined above is also important. In my experience, attribution and event tracking are the most common things that the Martech team will work on. 

Broad experience with the technology landscape is preferable, as well as understanding how they work and a curiosity to explore new tools and technical solutions. 

In terms of soft skills, an independent mindset is vital. Martech teams are normally small and are working on tasks not touched by others in the company, so there is often no-one to ask for support (other than internet resources like Stack overflow). Adaptability is also indispensable, as Marketing technologists cover a lot of ground!

If your martech team will be working on developmental topics, you will also want some hard technical skills. In terms of languages, HTML/CSS, Javascript, Python and SQL are the most common. It’s also important to find people with a strong understanding of web connectivity and APIs for tool integrations, automations and moving data around.   

Bootcamps like Ironhack and Codeworks are ideal for finding people with technical skills who come from a non-engineering background. 

Best practices for setting up your martech team

Let’s finish with some do’s and do not do’s!

Collaborate with Engineering

You will need their buy-in when setting up your martech team (in order to get platform/tool access and other technical support). Try approaching them with the message “let’s reduce your workload” – makes it clear you want to reduce their boring tasks and find ways of collaborating better. 

Build a good relationship with the Engineering team

Show them your understanding of technical matters, then they will feel more comfortable giving up some control; and allow your martech team to work effectively and with greater autonomy.  

Start small and iterate

Good practice for any new project or team. Try to build your martech team with existing employees and use existing tech stack/infrastructure to prove the concept, then expand later. 

Try to replace Engineering

It’s best to focus your martech team on technical configuration and standalone tools, not core code updates to the website/app/backend. Leave that to the Engineering team.

Hire developers without proper structure

Developers generally want a specific environment to work in – with peer support, challenging tasks and opportunities for personal development. Martech teams can’t always provide this. 

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Thanks for reading! Good luck with building your Marketing Technology team.