By In a given week, I would write product descriptions, digital ad copy, pithy social media posts, a couple blog posts, and the abandoned cart email campaign. I loved having a variety of writing responsibilities. But there was a big problem: if I took a sick day, it would slow down the rest of my team.
Product, customer acquisition, social media, and lifecycle marketing would all be a tiny bit behind. As much as I loved writing and as much as my advertising counterpart loved living primarily in her spreadsheets, it just wasn’t the optimal way for a team to function. We were always waiting for each other to complete the previous task.
I would later work at another company with a similar workflow. As the content marketing manager, I ended up becoming the de facto copywriter. I would have loved running my own newsletter, but I had strict instructions to stay out of Marketo. At this larger company, the problem was bigger than occasional slowdowns during sick days. It meant that people responsible for driving millions of dollars in revenue didn’t know how to write a call-to-action that could convert. It meant I was writing copy for Google Docs instead of seeing what the campaign would look like and where it would be syndicated. (Wait, what’s syndication? No time, just write the copy, ship it, and move onto the next.)
And then I worked somewhere else. With a really, really productive marketing team. One person ran the company’s Clubhouse show — meaning, she researched topics, sourced guests, ran email promotions, and hosted an audio-based live show. Aside from that, she ran lifecycle marketing. Another person ran the TikTok account, which meant she shot and edited videos, wrote witty captions, and kept up with trends. She was the social media manager. Finally, another person ran the webinar series, sourced guests, occasionally built decks, and scheduled the promotional campaigns to generate leads. That was the CMO. All the marketers on this team were at least decent at copywriting, had some proficiency in design, and were all technical enough to work in their various marketing automation tools. In a given week, several blog posts, email campaigns, social media posts, audio and video shows, and product pages would be launched.
There was no “whoever is closest to the customer wins” mentality — because everyone was close to the customer. Or, rather, close to the audience. Everyone on the team was responsible for researching, creating and managing their program, and for optimizing that program for their audience. Further, clear ownership also meant folks were able to work autonomously. There wasn’t a daily stand-up meeting where each person would take turns rattling off their to-do list. Where tasks were in the project management workflow wasn’t relevant to a team that enjoyed discrete ownership.
Today at SparkToro, we have a similar workflow. I run the audience research newsletter. Rand runs the 5-Minute Whiteboard show. Sure, we’ll have opinions and ideas for each other’s programs, but this division of labor allows us each to flourish in the things we do best. (No matter how hard I try, I absolutely cannot conceptualize and record a Rand Fishkin-level video… and that’s ok. I’m not Rand Fishkin; I wear too much beige anyway.)
Side note: I first mentioned this program ownership structure in an interview with HubSpot for Startups. It’s a solid article in which Rand Fishkin and I talked about go-to-market strategy, how we do marketing at SparkToro, and how we all work effectively as a team.
Alright, so how does program ownership work in a team that has discrete job functions?
I’m not suggesting you change each person’s title to “Marketing Manager,” assign programs, and then touch base at the end of the quarter. (Although that might be interesting.) Realistically, adopting a program-oriented team structure involves cognizance of each person’s job function and assigning programs that are most in line with their skills and expertise. Here are some examples of how this structure could work:
Email newsletter for your content marketer: Of course, every marketer’s dream is for any and all touchpoints to result in conversions and paying customers. But this isn’t how a newsletter works. A newsletter is where readers expect to learn, not buy. So your content marketer should be the best-qualified to manage this from end to end. The rest of the team can suggest links or content to include, but it’s ultimately up to the content marketer (or the program owner) to create, collate, and circulate the newsletter.
Office Hours for your product marketer: You might have/want an Office Hours webinar series that teaches users how to get the most out of your product(s). Enter: your in-house product expert a.k.a. your product marketer. They best know your positioning, product, and user. They should know what users need help with, where they’re stuck, and how to remedy those problems.
Emerging platforms for… whoever? Maybe there was one person on your team who actually tried using audio-based Twitter-wannabe Airchat. Or someone who was first to take a Maven course. Regardless of whether each of these people are social media marketers, demand generation marketers, or whatever, they could be responsible for starting up an audio show or spinning up a course on behalf of the company. Emerging platforms could be blue-sky projects that benefit from transferable skills but mostly, require interest and willingness to see them through. Ownership doesn’t need to be constrained by job functions.
In fact, job functions don’t really need to constrain any of the above examples. What I’ve outlined are examples based on what I’ve seen work well on other teams and what works well for the SparkToro team.
This all sounds nice, but how do you actually hire and manage a team of program owners?
That really, really productive marketing team I described at the beginning of this post? Everyone still had clear titles and functions. And they were all good at these things:
Copywriting. This wasn’t a unicorn team of Ann Handley-level writers. But they were all pretty good at writing. And if you want people to work productively and confidently enough to own a given program, they need to be at least decent at writing. (I would argue that every marketer needs to be at least decent at writing, but perhaps that’s another social media rant for another day.)
Technical things. This wasn’t a team of Casey Henry-level technicians, either. But the TikTok manager knew how to edit videos. The CMO knew how to manage the webinar platform. In a program-oriented team, the program owner needs to know most of the technicalities associated with their program. (Although, of course, as SparkToro’s email marketing manager, I certainly rely on Casey Henry if there’s a technical issue I can’t solve.)
Finding interested people. Finally, this wasn’t a team of Geraldine DeRuiter-level audience oracles. DeRuiter has an uncanny ability to tap into a mix of trends, emotions and her own skills & interests, and go viral on any social platform. You don’t need to source and manage a team where everyone has that skill. But you do need people who have a sense of audience-savvy. People who know (or can find out) where the audience is hanging out, what that audience is generally doing on a given platform, what that audience is interested in, and how to talk to that audience. CoughAUDIENCERESEARCHcough.
…in other words, they all need to be good marketers. But also, they each need to have a strong sense of autonomy, or the willingness and ability to make their own decisions. I’ve found that it’s generally the most well-rounded workers that thrive in autonomous environments.
But this also means it’s on you, boss.
Do you even have a company culture that fosters autonomy? Or worse, do you think you foster autonomy but in actuality, you throw people into the deep end and express frustration that they didn’t tread water in the way that you like?
The program-ownership team structure is only effective if you support the individual humans and the work that needs to be done. You can’t expect to micromanage each detail, and you can’t expect people to make lemonade out of flowers, either.
But if you cultivate a team of talented people, support their creativity, and let them fly, I promise you magical things will happen.
Note: Subscribers of our Audience Research Newsletter got the first look at the ideas covered in this blog post. Join our newsletter to get all of the news & updates on SparkToro in one handy-dandy twice-monthly email. Sometimes frustrated people reply to Amanda about the font size. You too can reply to Amanda with your frustrated rants!