What Makes a Great Social Impact Marketing Team?

Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact

03-09-2024 • 35 mins

What makes an EXCEPTIONAL social impact marketing team?

Often, when we get this question from clients, they are trying to determine what ROLES to hire for.

But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Instead, it’s best to think about the QUALITIES and CULTURE of a successful marketing philosophy for your brand.

Because you can build a highly-skilled marketing team and still totally flop if:
↳ You don’t have vision as a brand
↳ You don’t let them create BOLD, scroll-stopping content
↳ You micro-manage and add arduous approval processes

In today’s episode of Designing Tomorrow, Eric distill’s what he’s seen work the best when building out your in-house marketing team at your social impact org.

And at the end, he outlines how he would structure the marketing department for social impact orgs at different sizes.

Jonathan STRONGLY disagrees with his recommendations at first, but starts to come around towards the end. Eric hopes to get him eventually.


Episode Highlights

  • [02:15] - The importance of brand strategy
  • [05:05] - Knowing your audience deeply
  • [07:55] - Creating scroll-stopping content
  • [13:42] - Balancing cadence and quality
  • [17:14] - Evaluation and curiosity in marketing
  • [20:45] - The role of leadership in marketing success
  • [22:47] - Building marketing teams across different organizational sizes
  • [24:26] - The role of content in marketing
  • [28:06] - In-house capacity vs. agency support
  • [31:54] - Challenges of scaling a marketing team


Quotes:

  • "You have to understand who you're talking to. Who are you actually speaking to, who's reading this?" - Jonathan Hicken
  • "If you start to just do marketing... and just putting content out there for the sake of putting content out there, but there's not a solid brand strategy... you're kind of setting yourself up for failure." - Eric Ressler

Resources:

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