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B2B SaaS Marketing Team Structure

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B2b Saas Marketing Team Structure

B2B SaaS is exploding, and companies must adapt their marketing teams as their business grows. We have a front-row seat to the growing pains B2B SaaS businesses face, and have found that those who succeed have a blueprint for how to scale their marketing team structure.

This article divides B2B SaaS companies into three revenue tiers, describing what your marketing team might look like in each one. It is inspired by an insightful talk given by investor David Sacks.

In the chart below, I break down the likely marketing team in each tier. Afterwards, I go more in-depth into the revenue tiers and the responsibilities of each marketing role.

Company SizeLeaders + Team Members Notes
Small (< $25M)
  • Head of Marketing
    • Demand Gen +
    • Product Marketing
    • Sales Enablement
    • Events/Community
At this level, roles are fairly broad, with each team member handling the majority of their own department’s needs.
Medium ($25M – $100M)
  • CMO
    • Director, Product Marketing +
    • Director, Demand Gen +
    • Director, Sales Enablement+
    • Director, Brand Marketing +
      • PR & Analyst Relations
      • Events
      • Community
As your marketing team grows, roles begin to specialize within each team.
Large ($100M+)
  • CMO
    • Director, Product Marketing +
    • Director, Demand Gen +
    • Director, Sales Enablement +
      • Solutions Marketer  +
      • Competitive Intel
    • VP, Corporate Marketing
      • PR  +
      • Analyst Relations +
      • Events +
      • Community +
      • Creative +
After ~$100M, roles continue to specialize while others change. A market analyst is hired to evaluate the competitive landscape, different types of creatives are brought in-house, and brand marketing transitions to corporate marketing.

Team Structure for Small B2B SaaS Companies (<$25M Annual Revenue)

Smaller SaaS companies, particularly startups, need to work with a tighter budget, and with their smaller workforce, each team member is a generalist. This factotum approach means that top management—particularly the head of marketing—needs to familiarize themselves with every aspect of B2B SaaS marketing, and become active participants in every aspect of their business. They might manage their teams at an atypical micro-level, keeping a watchful eye on team members that juggle several day-to-day tasks.

However, overseeing small SaaS marketing teams is a balancing act. While keeping close tabs on employees is crucial, management must also trust their staff and empower them to make on-the-spot decisions and take immediate actions. These liberties are often essential to fast-paced agencies with weekly goals instead of monthly and yearly benchmarks.

Team Structure for Medium B2B SaaS Companies ($25M–$100M Annual Revenue)

At this stage, management can consider longer-term strategies aimed at sustained revenue growth. However, those growth plans come with a more complex business structure and an increasing number of responsibilities. Management and its current staff cannot fill all the empty shoes, and another round of hires occurs.

Those new hires might include Public Relations and Analyst Relations teams, which handle the company’s interactions with the outside community and communication strategies with external research and consulting organizations.

As a marketing team grows, it often enlists external help to gather data and advise on future campaign strategies, requiring specific personnel or entire teams to manage those external relations.

Team Structure for Large B2B SaaS Companies ($100M+ Annual Revenue)

Businesses are now experiencing substantial growth, and each marketing department is running with a healthy budget.

Deeper pockets mean greater freedoms to throw resources at long-term initiatives, such as expanding the potential customer base. However, attracting new customers might require adjusting the marketing strategy, beginning with a revamped branding approach.

Brand awareness becomes vital as the customer demographic widens to fit many personas. This strategy delivers an on-topic message that resonates with each audience and communicates what the business is doing now and what customers can expect moving forward. These new directives require more staff additions, particularly under the Corporate Marketing umbrella.

While this is an exciting time for the company, growth spurts serve as a double-edged sword. Scaling the company and establishing the organizational structure had been a (relatively) straightforward process until now. Managing the team is becoming more challenging, and keeping pace with an ever-changing team paradigm is typically cost-inefficient in the short run as the team absorbs the salaries of an expanded staff.

B2B SaaS Marketing Roles at a Glance

The size of a B2B SaaS marketing initiative will dictate its makeup, including the specific teams and the number of team members. However, as you may have noticed above, one of the primary differences between teams at different company sizes is the degree of specialization of each member, and not in the specialized departments themselves. Below, we give a more detailed description of each role.

Head of Marketing/CMO

The Head of Marketing, or CMO in larger B2B SaaS orgs, takes the lead as the team’s ultimate decision maker. They should know top management marketing strategies, set the resulting budgets, and understand the necessary KPIs for gauging performance. They must also keep an ear to the ground for user acquisition, conversion, and retention opportunities, which necessitates good collaboration with sales and products.

Their more specific roles will include:

  • Setting and monitoring goals
  • Creating team strategies
  • Preparing and managing marketing budgets
  • Analyzing consumer behavior and current trends to develop customer personas
  • Looking for new opportunities to boost market share by exploring new market segments
  • Developing hiring plans
  • Monitoring competition for price changes, new products and promotions, and acquisitions

Demand Generation

Demand generation is responsible for producing high-quality leads and supporting existing relationships with prospects and customers. It is one of the most crucial marketing functions for a SaaS company.

Responsibilities of the demand generation team will include:

  • Defining target user bases for each software / feature and the associated content delivery strategies
  • Assessing and analyzing prospective user processes and requirements
  • Designing and implementing digital marketing campaigns, both organic and paid
  • Identifying strong potential prospects to generate outbound leads
  • Managing inbound leads and converting them into sales opportunities
  • Tracking and analyzing marketing campaigns results to refine and optimize lead generation strategies

Product Marketing

Product Marketing acts as a liaison between product design/manufacturing and sales, assisting in managing the product roadmap and external communications related to new feature releases. They ensure testing teams thoroughly vet new features to confirm the intended benefits to target personas.

Product marketing responsibilities include:

  • Collaborating with sales and product teams to develop B2B SaaS pricing models and value proposition
  • Educating stakeholders on features of each software product you offer and their benefits
  • Aiding in sales tool development that aligns with the buying process and pushes prospects & customers through the sales cycle
  • Designing marketing programs that demonstrate product benefits
  • Performing market analysis to better comprehend the competitive SaaS landscape and develop product differentiators
  • Conducting internal and external sales presentations to promote products

Sales Enablement

Sales Enablement teams deliver learning materials, content, and tools to sales leaders and representatives to boost performance and drive revenue. The sales enablement manager also works with the broader enablement team to design and implement data-driven solutions to improve the sales process.

Sales enablement is responsible for:

  • Building a trusted relationship with sales representatives
  • Collaborating with management to design, execute, and monitor the sales enablement program
  • Determining sales enablement priorities and goals with stakeholders
  • Communicating enablement strategy and KPIs to stakeholders
  • Serving as a communications bridge between sales, marketing, and product development teams
  • Providing effective onboarding and training programs for sales reps
  • Collecting and relaying consumer feedback to update the company enablement strategy

Brand & Corporate Marketing

Brand marketing promotes any brand’s actions and tactics to build and sustain that brand’s position in the market. This department includes both PR and AR, as well community and events management. As a SaaS company grows, this department transitions into the corporate marketing department and also includes in-house creative staff such as graphic designers.

Brand and corporate marketing roles include: 

  • Designing product roadmaps
  • Establishing and maintaining brand visibility in the market by planning, strategizing, and executing marketing strategies
  • Establishing a product’s market position
  • Managing advertising and media planning campaigns.
  • Overseeing Public and Analytics Relations
  • Working with the Director of Marketing and Director of Sales to organize and staff customer and sponsored events (smaller companies typically use a single member for this role before scaling)

When You Need to Outsource Your B2B SaaS Marketing Team

As your B2B SaaS company grows, there will be times when you need to outsource in order to assimilate knowledge, skills, and marketing frameworks into your organization. Our agency specializes in lead generation, content marketing, and SEO specifically for B2B SaaS. You can contact us here if you’d like to discuss a potential partnership.

Evan Bailyn

Evan Bailyn is a best-selling author and award-winning speaker on the subjects of SEO and thought leadership. Contact Evan here.