The ideal B2B SaaS marketing team structure is one that’s divided into a few categories and focus areas: product marketing, content marketing, demand generation, and brand marketing. However, you may want to segment your marketing team structure by your most important channels. For example, you may want to have an SEO team that’s structured within your demand generation department, which focuses on demand generation through organic search, partnering closely with the content marketing team.
Key Takeaways
- The ideal B2B SaaS marketing team structure includes a leadership team as well as a few key departments: demand generation, product marketing, content and SEO, growth marketing, customer marketing, and marketing operations.
- On average, SaaS companies spend anywhere from 7% to 15% of their annual budgets (usually based on revenue or funds raised) on marketing. This may or may not include salaries as part of the human resource need.
- B2B SaaS companies can take advantage of hiring a third party to learn how to create ideal marketing teams for their company. As well as get the immediate expertise to create and scale SaaS marketing campaigns quickly.
Ideal B2B SaaS Marketing Team Structure
The following is an example of an ideal B2B SaaS marketing team structure:
1. Leadership Team
Having a comprehensive leadership team is still important for both smaller SaaS companies as well as more established SaaS companies. The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or VP of Marketing should focus on measuring all activities related to setting and achieving annual OKRs on behalf of the company and teams.
The goal of the leadership team should be to:
- Sets overall marketing strategy and goals (using OKRs or another goal-setting method).
- Aligning the marketing initiatives with company objectives.
- Overseeing all team structure, budget, and cross-department collaboration (e.g., sales, product, customer success).
Related: How to Grow Your SaaS Business
2. Demand Generation Team
The demand generation team is going to be focused on creating MQLs or free trial sign-ups depending on the type of SaaS company that you are. The goal of this team should be to concentrate on driving leads, pipeline growth, and revenue.
Some of the roles and responsibilities may include:
- Demand Generation Manager: Focused on developing and executing campaigns to attract qualified leads.
- Paid Media Specialist: Manages paid acquisition channels (e.g., Google Ads, LinkedIn, ABM campaigns).
- Email Marketing Specialist: Designs nurture campaigns and drip sequences for lead engagement.
3. Product Marketing Team
A product marketing team may be solely focused on things like competitiveness, pricing, and other factors that may influence buyers. The product marketing team works very closely with engineering and product leadership, helping to identify gaps that need to be filled through feature development and product development. The team should be focused on positioning and messaging for the SaaS product.
Some of the roles and responsibilities may include:
- Product Marketing Manager (PMM): Focused on developing deep value propositions, competitive analyses, and go-to-market strategies.
- Content Strategist/Copywriter: Creates messaging, crates use case collateral and produces whitepapers, and other sales enablement materials.
- Sales Enablement Specialist: Equips sales teams with presentations, battle cards, and training. Attends every software demonstration.
Related: Marketing for SaaS Startups
4. Content & SEO Team
If you’re going to be focused solely on organic search as one of your primary channels for lead velocity, then having a content team that’s solely focused on SEO content may be of high benefit. This team is going to be responsible for driving organic traffic, educating prospects, and supporting inbound marketing.
Some of the roles and responsibilities may include:
- Content Marketing Manager: Responsible for overseeing the quality and production of blog posts, case studies, videos, and other gated assets.
- SEO Specialist: Ensures content ranks for targeted keywords and enhances organic reach through research.
- Video Content Creator: Produces explainer videos, product demos, and webinars.
- Social Media Manager: Amplifies content and engages with the audience across platforms.
Related: SaaS SEO Guide
5. Growth Marketing Team (Optional in Smaller Teams)
Growth marketing may focus on product-led growth tactics that enable both the marketing team as well as the sales team. This is an optional function depending on the type of SaaS product that you have. If the software business is focused more on long-term contracts, product-led growth opportunities may not be the right direction to go. Usually, this team is focused on experimentation and optimizing conversion rates.
Some of the roles and responsibilities may include:
- Growth Marketing Manager: Would lead all A/B testing and identify scalable growth tactics.
- Web Optimization Specialist: Ensures the SaaS website converts visitors into leads effectively.
Related: SaaS Marketing Metrics
6. Customer Marketing Team
A customer marketing team is one that’s focused solely on cross-functional collaboration to enable engineering teams, product teams, and sales teams to retain customers as well as grow the customer base. The team is usually focused on retention, upsell opportunities and advocacy of new features or products.
Some of the roles and responsibilities may include:
- Customer Marketing Manager: Develops campaigns for product adoption, feature engagement, and upsell opportunities.
- Community Manager: Builds user communities and engages brand advocates.
- Customer Success Content Specialist: Focused on creating onboarding guides, help center articles, self-service hub articles, and product tutorials.
Related: SaaS SEO Budgets
7. Marketing Operations Team
A marketing operations team may help marketing teams that require heavy data sets to effectively market into a specific cohort, segment, or industry. For example, a team that’s performing a lot of A/B testing, has large User bases, and has complex retargeting campaigns. The team would be responsible for tools, data, and processes that enable marketing success.
Some of the roles and responsibilities may include:
- Marketing Operations Manager: Manages the marketing tech stack (e.g., HubSpot, Marketo).
- Data Analyst: Tracks key performance metrics, marketing campaign ROI, and customer retention/sell insights.
- CRM Specialist: Ensures seamless integration between marketing and sales systems.
Structuring Your B2B SaaS Marketing Team
Before structuring your B2B marketing team or expanding operations for a specific marketing segment, testing should be done to confirm the validity of the required team. As an example, most SaaS companies choose to hire third-party agencies to help prop up particular marketing campaigns to ensure the validity of the channel, then hire in-house.
For example, as a SaaS SEO agency, we often work directly with marketing leaders to create SEO campaigns. Once successful, it’s not uncommon for the marketing leader to want to create their own in-house SEO team.
All of the above departments would usually look like the following:
- Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Marketingsome text
- Demand Generation Team
- Product Marketing Team
- Content & SEO Team
- Growth Marketing Team
- Customer Marketing Team
- Marketing Operations Team
A B2B marketing team may seem fairly “flat” in the sense that each department usually has a manager who reports directly to the Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Marketing. And then one or two individual contributor roles that execute specific tasks, pieces of work, or campaigns.
Common Questions
Questions and answers about your B2B SaaS marketing team structure:
How much budget should go into a B2B SaaS marketing team?
SaaS companies will spend the majority of their budget (in terms of human resources) on engineering teams. However, marketing teams require budgets in order to perform their work. On average SaaS companies spend around 7% to 15% of their annual budget on marketing.
More aggressive allocation may happen when SaaS companies are looking to spark significant growth or have advantageous annual goals.
Should we hire a SaaS marketing agency?
A SaaS marketing agency can help with a number of things. In addition to having the expertise to set up mid-to-large scale marketing campaigns rather quickly, they can also help you to structure your marketing team.
One of the added benefits of working with a SaaS marketing agency is that they often have to have very similar roles that you would hire if you were in-house. There are also significant tax benefits to hiring a third-party marketing agency, too. As a startup SaaS company, this may be the way to extend your runway and get more opportunities to collect vital data on your customers to drive long-term success.
To answer the question, yes, you should hire a SaaS marketing agency as there are a number of great benefits to doing so: learning how to structure campaigns successfully, having a tax benefit due to working with a third party, and getting the opportunity to learn how to structure your team effectively.
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