The Rogue Marketer

Putting together an organization structure for a B to B marketing organization is tricky.  There are basically three fundamental choices:

- Organize by goal - Acquisition, Retention, Winback with a manager assigned to each area.  It offers clear accountability and metric ownership.
- Organize by task - Direct Marketing, Events, Public Relations, Advertising - This allows for the creation of subject matter experts that then apply their expertise to the development of programs that meet acquisition, retention and winback goals.
- Create a Hybrid - Marketing Planning/Analytics, Project Leaders, Discipline Leaders

I've tried all and continue to believe in the hybrid approach.  It's easy enough to create a plan that creates certain assumptions regarding the contribution marketing is going to make to revenue and softer measures such as awareness. 

What is difficult is staying current with the subject matter expertise required in Online Marketing, Google's Latest Acquisition, Salesforce.com, and the ability to use each of these platforms and media venues to achieve the goals of the organization.

I'd suggest looking at the marketing staff as holders of project capacity.  The goal of the marketing leader is to work with the planner/analyst to implement design a plan.  Each member of the marketing team is responsible for a discipline and a set of projects that they suggest based on their expertise and capacity.  The department acts as a matrixed team since most initiatives require an integrated approach.