Headcount Benchmarking: The Beginners Guide to Marketing Team Size Benchmarks

Introduction

Marketing is a critical function in many businesses today. It is responsible for being the first point of contact between the real world and your product or service. So, having the right team in place for this critical function can make a significant difference in your company's success.

Determining the ideal size for your marketing team can be challenging because it can vary based on all sorts of things (e.g. B2B vs B2C vs D2C, size of the business, number of markets). This is where marketing team size benchmarks come into play. In this guide, we'll outline all the things that you need to excel in your first marketing headcount benchmarking exercise, including:

• What are Marketing Team Size Benchmarks?
• Three Key Reasons Why Marketers Use Benchmarks to Determine the Ideal Team Size
• 10 Steps to Complete Your First Benchmarking Exercise
• Where Can I Find Marketing Team Size Benchmarks?
• Wrap Up

What are Marketing Team Size Benchmarks?

Marketing team size benchmarks are reference points that companies use to evaluate and determine the appropriate size of their marketing teams. These benchmarks typically provide insights into the size marketing team sizes from similar sized organizations within the same industry (e.g. competitors).

Benchmarks help businesses understand how their marketing team size compares to others, from which they can make important decisions about their own marketing team. In the next section we will look at a few scenarios when business leaders usually turn to headcount benchmarks to size up their own marketing department.

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Three Key Reasons Why Marketers Use Benchmarks to Determine the Ideal Team Size

1. Cost Reduction

Cost management is important for all businesses. Sometimes this can be a key focus area for management and that’s where benchmarks help to identify parts of the business where there may be excessive costs. For example, if the marketing function has more employees relative to external benchmarks, then it may suggest that there is an opportunity to optimize the marketing function and ultimately reduce headcount costs.

2. Improving Performance

By comparing their team size to industry benchmarks, management can identify areas where they may be understaffed or overstaffed in the marketing function, allowing them to make changes that improve performance. Sometimes this is also referred to as headcount or functional efficiency. Benchmarks help in the first step of this task, which is to identify whether there is a performance or efficiency problem in the marketing function. Then it is up to the management team to do a deep dive into the function to make the necessary changes.

3. Resource Planning

Many businesses plan for growth in the future. Most of the time there is a strategy and plan that will hopefully achieve this. Functional leaders (including Marketing) will first need to understand this overall business plan and then determine their own functional plan to enable success. This is where benchmarks are used to help understand the future resources needed for the business, such as forecasting how many employees will be required to support the business in five years when it has hopefully doubled revenue per the business plan.

10 Steps to Complete Your First Benchmarking Exercise

Benchmarking is just like any other process – Follow it and everything will be okay. These are the 10 steps that we recommend anyone taking on their first headcount benchmarking project to follow:

1. Define Your Objectives: Clearly outline the goals you want to achieve with your benchmarking exercise. Are you looking to reduce costs, improve performance, or plan for the future?
2. Identify Key Metrics: Determine which metrics you will use to measure your marketing team's performance and compare it to industry benchmarks. These could include team size, budget allocation, productivity metrics, etc.
3. Gather Data: Collect data on your current marketing team size, structure, and performance metrics. This may involve analyzing headcount data from internal systems, reviewing historical management reports, or conducting surveys.
4. Research Benchmarks: Explore various sources such as industry reports, consulting firms, online databases, and peer networks to find relevant benchmarks for your marketing team size and performance metrics (pro tip: the quickest and easiest way is to leverage a trusted headcount benchmarking data provider like CompanySights).
5. Compare and Analyze: Compare your data against the benchmarks that you've gathered to identify gaps and areas for improvement. Look for trends and patterns that may indicate opportunities to optimize your marketing team size.
6. Investigate: Once you have the initial insights from the benchmarks on where opportunities may exist, then you need to determine how feasible these opportunities really are. This will vary depending on the context of your organization and will require a deep understanding of the way things work in your marketing function.
7. Set Goals: Based on your analysis and investigation, set realistic goals for optimizing your marketing team size and performance. Remember that these goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
8. Develop an Action Plan: Create a detailed action plan outlining the steps you will take to achieve your goals. This may involve reallocating resources, restructuring your team, or implementing new processes.
9. Implement Changes: Execute your action plan and make the necessary changes to optimize your marketing team size and performance. Communicate these changes to your team and stakeholders to ensure buy-in and alignment.
10. Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor your marketing team's performance against your benchmarks and goals. Adjust as needed to stay on track and address any challenges that arise during the implementation period and into the future.

Where Can I Find Marketing Team Size Benchmarks?

There are several sources where you can find marketing team size benchmarks. Here are four of the most common places to find marketing team size benchmarking data:

1. Industry Reports and Studies

Many industry associations and research firms conduct studies and publish reports that include benchmarks for marketing team sizes across different industries and company sizes. One key limitation with this kind data is that it may not be specifically relevant to your organization (e.g. based on team size and / or geographic region).

2. Consulting Firms

Consulting firms often provide benchmarking services and can help companies compare their marketing team size to industry standards and identify opportunities for improvement. However, a challenge for many small to medium sized businesses is that engaging consultants can be an expensive exercise, which leads us to the next and probably best source available.

3. Online Databases and Platforms

There are online databases and platforms that aggregate data on marketing team sizes and provide benchmarking tools and resources for companies to use. These are usually what the consulting firms and industry report providers use. So, why not jump straight to the source and skip the middleman?

We would always recommend a specialist data provider for your benchmarking exercise – In this case CompanySights is the leading provider of team size benchmarks (including the marketing function).

4. Peer Networks and Communities

Networking with peers in your industry or joining marketing communities and forums can also provide valuable insights and benchmarks for marketing team sizes. This is usually the most cost-effective way to source benchmarking data, but it can be very time consuming and will usually require you providing your data in return for benchmarks.

Wrap Up

To wrap things up, marketing team size benchmarks are a valuable tool that can help companies to optimize their marketing department by ensuring they have the right team size to achieve the goals of the organization effectively.

By using benchmarks to evaluate and adjust their team size, management and marketers alike can improve resource allocation, performance, collaboration, and competitiveness. Whether you're a small startup or a large corporation, leveraging marketing team size benchmarks will give you the edge you need to succeed in your industry.