Why You Need a Content Marketing Manager In Your Team

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

Content marketing has experienced an incredible growth in both magnitude and complexity in the past decade.

Ever since businesses understood its importance, new roles emerged within companies of all sizes.

From small startups to big corporations, content marketing now plays an essential role in forging deeper connections with customers and achieving great sales results.

Technology has brought new marketing channels into the picture, each one requiring the skills of a specialist.

Among the most common new roles we see nowadays is the Content Marketing Manager.

1. What is a Content Manager?

x²A Content Manager is someone who is accountable for all content marketing initiatives that drive traffic, engagement, leads, and customer retention.

This person requires the necessary knowledge and experience to orchestrate digital content strategies across all online platforms.

A Content Marketing Manager does research, creates, edits, posts, and occasionally updates old content. The responsibilities may vary from one company to another, but all of them revolve around content. As we all know, content is king, right?

The Content Manager may write content on their own, or may lead a team of talented content writers who have very specific content marketing tasks.

To do so, you can use freelance or agencies, or services like essaywriters.

The content marketing manager’s ultimate objective is to achieve the company’s business goals and be the brand’s voice.

This can only be achieved through fresh, informative, and appealing content.

Creativity is a must, but it should also be accompanied by leadership expertise, research ability, and of course, strong writing skills, to produce and publish quality content. Another skill to consider is documenting or data entry, data analysis. Which is why it is always a good idea to look into TestGorilla Excel interview questions when hiring for such a position.

The aim of hiring a manager in any department of your company is to have someone that inspires creativity and productivity.

The right management decisions could go hand in hand with a digital coaching plan that brings out the best in your workforce.

Whenever hiring someone new, consider not only what they can bring to the table by themselves but also what decisions your company could be making to bring out the most development in your team.

2. How much content does your business really need?

Content has been on the rise for a long time.

From the printing press to social media and websites, we’ve all seen the rapid transition to online content.

Multiple channels, however, aren’t the only factor that contributed to increasing content demand.

Think about personalized messages and experiences that brands offer their customers these days.

As new technology has enabled companies to deliver personalized content directly to their audiences, content marketing teams had to re-think their work strategy and start producing more.

This upgrade involves more planning, creating, and orchestrating a vast amount of content tailored to different segments, personas, channels, and customer journey stages.

That’s a lot of work.

According to “Content Marketing. Behind the Scenes” report by Planable, 44% of marketers produce over 5 pieces of content per week.

The research takes into consideration any valuable, relevant, and consistent branded content including news, videos, infographics, case studies, podcasts, blog posts, newsletters, eBooks, whitepapers, and other assets.

With so many formats and channels available today, content demand has reached a new peak.

Brands quickly understood that every piece of content that provides useful and engaging information to the users brings them closer to becoming loyal customers.

There is no doubt that content needs to be part of a company’s marketing strategy.

The next step is gaining a better understanding of who are the key content professionals and why you need them in order to build a strong content marketing team.

3. Why do you need a Content Manager in your team?

There is no secret that good content requires team effort.

Even if you own a small business and have copywriting skills, creating the content your audience is looking for and then optimizing the path to conversion takes a lot of precious time.

Taking into consideration that there are so many specialized professionals willing to take this responsibility for you, dividing your attention between building your business and building your brand is not the best idea.

In addition to this, it’s almost impossible to create an effective content marketing strategy without initial research, basic SEO understanding, and extensive knowledge on content distribution and measurement.

You will eventually find yourself in the difficult position of not being able to grow your business.

What about simply hiring a couple of gifted writers or collaborating remotely with content marketing specialists? — you may ask. This is where understanding a content marketing workflow comes in handy.

Content marketing teams need to have clarity over who is responsible for what, where to find the information needed to complete the content tasks, what’s the strategy, how to handle challenges that may arise, what are the deadlines, and how to measure results.

You need someone who will keep an eye on your project milestones.

The teams that don’t have clear workflows in place are much like a house of cards. Any addition such as channels, types, or clients could destabilize the entire thing.

A Content Marketing Manager is not a more sophisticated name for a copywriter. The third word in their job title clearly shows the main differentiator.

4. What does a Content Marketing Manager do?

We’re already established that a Content Marketing Manager guides the content marketing strategy, facilitates ongoing marketing planning, manages day-to-day content creation, editing and promotion, and reports on the results of each content marketing initiative.

To get a grasp of how other companies understand the complexity of content marketing jobs, we’ve turned to one of the world's largest professional networks.

Apparently, “Content Marketing Manager” is a pretty hot category as LinkedIn reports more than 23,000 results for this job.

LinkedIn search results

A Content Marketing Manager job description varies depending on each company’s needs, but we found 5 common elements.

Every Content Marketing Manager should be able to:

Build and manage a rich content strategy that attracts a qualified audience through various channels and formats (landing pages, blog posts, whitepapers, ebooks, reports, webinairs, infographics, etc.);
Work hand-in-glove with the marketing team to refine internal processes and assure that all the content is consistent and adheres to brand and style guides;
Maintain an editorial calendar and ensure content is optimized for SEO and user experience;
Measure the results of marketing activities to create relevant reports and improve future campaigns;
Have great management and soft skills that will improve the workflow of the content marketing team & lead to a smooth collaboration with the other departments such as the design team or sales. Sujan Patel, co founder at Right Inbox, believes that content marketing and sales are both really important in their own right. No one is going to argue with that. That said, they are far, far more powerful when united.

With these responsibilities in mind, it is also useful to set some realistic expectations when it comes to establishing your company’s budget for a Content Marketing Manager’s salary.

According to Glassdoor, the national average salary for this role is around $65k/yr.

Additional cash compensation such as bonuses, commissions, tips, and profit sharing ranges from $936 to $25,502.

The salary of a content marketing manager (source: Glassdoor)

As organizations invest more in digital marketing and branding, companies often find themselves in direct competition with one another to secure talent.

In today’s landscape, the functions performed by marketers are becoming more complex, while professionals are experiencing a higher demand for their services than ever before.

Content marketing experts have already established themselves as a valuable asset, so be prepared to negotiate in order to hire the best person for your company.

Remember that the basic architecture of a content marketing job description should include the following:

Job title
Amount of Experience Expected
Description of key responsibilities
Tools they’re expected to use
Key professionals they’ll manage or work closely with
Salary Range
Information about the company

When your team grows, start considering additional positions such as Chief Content Officer or Marketing Director.

Of course, this is only available for those content teams with multiple hires in the same role (multiple social media marketers, video marketers, designers etc.).

Until you reach that point, let’s take a look at what successful Content Managers have in common.

5. What are the most important traits of successful Content Managers?

Apart from being stellar content writers, Content Marketing Managers need to be able to manage all creative resources within a company.

To excel, they must be curious: curious to test new tactics, take risks, and explore innovative topics.

Technology and trends today change at the speed of light, placing new demands on content marketers’ shoulders. It takes a true love of learning to be up to the task.

We’ve compiled a list of the most frequent requirements for you to keep in mind when considering someone for a Content Marketing Manager role:

Bachelor's degree in Marketing or equivalent working experience
Outstanding writing skills
Data-driven and highly analytical
Proficiency with Wordpress, Google Analytics & social media analytics
Experience with online community building
Time management skills
Basic SEO knowledge
Excellent interpersonal & leadership skills

6. How can a Content Marketing Manager help your business grow?

If you’re not convinced how a Content Manager can help your business develop, let’s take the example of West Roofing Systems, a commercial roofing contractor based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Their team decided they wanted to set themselves apart from the competitors by revamping their website to serve the purpose of educating clients on all things commercial roofing.

The first step was to hire a dedicated content marketing manager. From there, they began producing two blog articles per week dedicated to answering customers’ most pressing questions on all things commercial roofing.

It wasn’t long until they left no question unanswered.

Prior to hiring a Content Manager and creating the results-driving content they needed, West Roofing Systems averaged 200 hits per month from organic search traffic, most of which could be attributed to branded search terms.

Within two months, they had doubled their organic traffic.

Two months after that, they doubled it again. Three months later, they doubled it again.

By the end of their first year, their organic traffic had increased by an astounding 2,147%.

Needless to say, no journey is the same. Your company may not register the same results as others since there are so many factors involved, but you have to give it a try.

Hiring the right person is the first step towards testing all the channels, formats and strategies suited to your business and finding what works for you.

Systeme.io offers an all-in-one solution for your marketing needs. ;)

With Systeme.io, you can build funnels, create email marketing campaigns, customize your emails, automate your process, launch a blog, create an eCommerce website, and more.

You can do all of this for a price that is affordable and on a platform that is super beginner-friendly.