Marketing Research Chart: Division of team responsibilities

When we asked respondents how they assigned responsibilities to their marketing teams, the most common response was having all team members share all marketing responsibilities. The next most common assignment was hiring specialized roles for individual tactics, such as social media or public relations, as indicated by 29% of respondents.

Q: How are the responsibilities of your department divided among your marketing team?

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Marketers seem to have a greater need to wear multiple hats, and to collaborate by sharing marketing responsibilities. This marketer is a “jack of all trades,” and must have an understanding of the latest best practices in online and offline lead generation tactics.

Here are a few items to consider as you further evaluate this data:

Is this an effective workplace structure?

Upfront, having a collaborative approach appears to be an efficient way of handling responsibilities. However, when the workload outweighs the manpower, can a lack of resources make it difficult (or even impossible) for multitasking marketers to truly master all lead generation activities, implement best practices, and improve effectiveness?

To move the highest volume of qualified leads through the sales cycle, how does your team prioritize lead generation tactics?

Is there any benefit to having separate employees manage specific efforts?

It appears team collaboration has become an important function for today’s marketer. This creates a need for marketers to learn best practices for multiple lead generation tactics, and have the ability to multitask.

If you are among the 48% of respondents whose organizations divide responsibilities by function, how many team members have just one distinct role? What benefits have you seen through specifying tasks, rather than completing them in a more collaborative manner? Do you anticipate more or less specification of assigned tasks moving forward?

What are your other thoughts on this data? Share your own analysis in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post. Include your feedback as either a comment or a link to a blog post where you offer advice based on this data.

For more information about lead generation tactics, be sure to download the free excerpt from the 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report.

Useful links related to this research

Marketing Management: 7 steps to optimize your marketing team

Marketing Management: What is your company doing to increase knowledge and effectiveness?

8 Challenges Undermining Your Marketing Team