One of the big reasons I joined Tucows earlier this year was the company’s strong desire to build a “new marketing” team within Tucows. The company gave very few resources to the small overworked marketing team they had in place for the last few years and, frankly, it’s amazing they got as much done as they did. Kudos to Jacqui, Adam, Scott and those that were gone before I got here. But now the cracks are showing and the company knows it’s time to rethink the “if you make it, they will come” approach to marketing (unfortunately common to many tech-heavy companies). And so I was brought in to rethink what marketing means for “Tucows”. That was music to my ears and I’ve taken the tune to heart. I’m rethinking not only marketing at Tucows, but how marketing in the 21st century would be done if we were given the chance to hit “reset” and start all over again.

Job One was putting together a “New Marketing” dream team. Here’s what I came up with in purple prose:

Fearless Leader — Someone to bring the big ideas, push the grand vision, clear the way, deal with the crap and generally make it possible for the others to get the hard work done. Mentor, agitator, shit disturber, action taker. What-have-you. That’s “me”. Formal title: Vice President of Marketing.

Go-to-market Guru — Takes the bright ideas generated in Product Management and created by Development and translates them into a compelling, coherent, customer-centric message. Acts as midwife to see those ideas into the world. Ensures that everything is right and ready so that the launch of new services or service enhancements goes off without a hitch. I’ve got one of these, he’s called “Adam”. Officially he’s the Product Marketing Manager.

The Campaigner — Getting products to market is a challenge (Adam’s challenge), but the company doesn’t make money until customers adopt the products and start using them fully. The Campaigner’s toolkit consists of email marketing, search strategies, persuasive web design, actionable tools for the sales team and any other trick in the book to test, track and tweak measurable marketing goals to success. The business card says “Marketing Manager, Campaigns”. “I need one of these. Is it you?”

The Conversationalist — This might be the best Internet job in Canada. Seriously. Chief blogger, deconstructor of mainstream media relations, champion of the human voice, content wrangler, cocktail party host, and the person who the voices of Tucows turn to for comfort and support when the going gets tough. I’m getting metaphysical here. “Read Joey’s description to see why I’m so excited about having someone like this on the team”. Officially you’d be the “Marketing Manager, Communications” if you “got the gig”

The Collector — The wizard of words and numbers — brings together the marketing database, makes sure the tools are there to measure everything we do, does the field research and generally allows us to know who we are talking to and what they care about. Also known as the Director of Research, a new role ably filled by Jacqui.

The Evangelist — This is all about passion. The Evangelist lives for your company’s products. They wear cow-hide vests, give out squishies, and write white papers — all while helping put geeks from around the world together to solve mutual problems. Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla holds the exalted title of Technical Evangelist here at Tucows. Someone get this guy in “Wikipedia” for Pete’s sake.

The Mechanics — Without the mechanics, nothing happens — Lead Designer, Lead Developer — the Glimmer Twins of web design. To the mix, we’ll eventually add a search expert and an analytics lead. Right now we have our master of all things HTML, CSS and Photoshop in Scott, but the other roles need to be filled shortly.

The Writers — Content is king. Without outstanding words and a deep understanding of the inner workings of Tucows APIs, control panels, and other technical underpinnings our customers would never be able to fully use our services. Clara and Debbie handle the role with style and grace and will undoubtedly see more front-line action now that they’re in Marketing instead of operations.

I’m sure these roles will map well to some companies and be less relevant to others. Still, this to me is truly my dream team. Over time these roles will turn into teams and maybe someday some of them will be entire departments. But for the time being, we’ll be a great team with a clear mission — and a dream. Feedback on my dream time or insights into your New Marketing Dream Team are welcome. See you below in the comment area!

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Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 17, 2006.