This checklist is a tool to help you check your progress (and see areas that you still need to work on) in building your team and enhancing the delivery of your digital marketing services.

1. 30 point checklist for
building a digital
marketing team
30 Point Checklist 1 2 / 3 / 2 0 11

2. 30 Point Checklist
The Purpose:
This checklist is a tool to help you check your progress (and see
areas that you still need to work on) in building your team and
enhancing the delivery of your digital marketing services.
The Process:
This checklist was built from the following experiences:
•Building, managing and selling a digital marketing firm
•Selling and delivering hundreds of digital projects and campaigns
•The experience of integrating a digital marketing firm into a traditional
marketing communications firm
•Discussions with hundreds of digital marketers across the United
States
•Hands on work with digital and integrated firms in building and
enhancing digital marketing and integrated marketing teams
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3. 30 Point Checklist
The 30 points on the checklist can be categorized into
four categories: Planning, Process, Platforms and
People. We call these four categories the “Four P’s of
Building a Digital Marketing Team.” The “Four P’s” asserts
that talented people, leveraging the right platforms,
supported by good processes, while guided by proper
planning are a huge competitive advantage for any
organization.
We hope this checklist is useful to your team building
efforts!
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4. Planning
Planning is vital to the success of a project or campaign.
Planning is the function of developing objectives,
formulating strategies and identifying deliverables to
complete a project or campaign to the highest degree of
satisfaction possible given resources and timeframes.
“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets
planning.” – Thomas Edison
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5. Planning
1. Objectives are clearly defined
2. Strategies are clearly articulated
3. Deliverables are clearly defined
4. Adequate technical documentation is
completed
5. Plans are followed. If plans are not followed,
change order processes are in place to ensure
expectations are reset and profitability is
protected
6. Planning processes are adapted to the needs
of the project
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6. Planning
7. Detailed project plans are created
8. Resource planning and allocation is
completed
9. Project and campaign teams are purposefully
selected and stay together though out the
effort
10.Key learnings are collected
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7. Process
Digital marketing has a very complex production element.
Complex production environments require processes to
ensure expectations, deadlines, budgets and quality
standards are met.
“If you cannot describe what you are doing as a process,
then you don’t know what you are doing.” – W. Edwards
Deming
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8. Process
11.Delivery process is documented
12.Processes are adopted and enforced
13.There is a defined project management
function
14.Project managers have appropriate balance of
marketing/technology knowledge
15.Project management given authority in
proportion to responsibilities
16.“Utilization” standards in place for all positions
17.Account management protects profitability and
properly manages stakeholder expectations
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9. Process
18.Best practices for user experience design are
in place
19.Creative function respects budgetary
boundaries, technical requirements and
project deadlines
20.Business development sets appropriate
expectations and sets team up for success
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10. Platform
Platforms are tools, technologies and
programming languages/skills utilized to
successfully deliver digital marketing projects and
campaigns. There are too many platforms to be
good at them all. Informed choices must be made
on choosing the right platforms and partners in
order to be profitable and to serve stakeholders
well.
“Choices are the hinges of destiny.”- Pythagoras
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11. Platform
21.Platforms are purposefully selected based on
the majority of stakeholder need
22.Appropriate training is implemented for
chosen platforms
23.Partners are carefully selected for platforms
that are not “in-house” platforms
24.Processes are established to help partners be
successful
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12. People
People are the most important part of a service
organization. Superior talent, enabled by solid planning
and processes, while working with the right platforms, will
consistently deliver high quality services and products.
“I don’t really know where we should take this bus. But I
know this much: If we get the right people in the right
seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure
out how to take it someplace great”. – Good to Great,
page 41, Jim Collins
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13. People
25.Internal stakeholders develop and align on
detailed job specs/scorecards for each role
26.Candidates are qualified according to
specs/scorecards by all interviewing parties
27.Timely, detailed feedback provided to
recruiters/recruiting managers
28.The “candidate experience” makes top talent
want to work at the company
29.Company is committed to consistent team
building and personal development activities
30.Talent forecasting processes are in place
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14. 30 Point Checklist
TeamBuilder Search helps firms build their digital marketing teams. The company was started
when two digital marketers realized recruiters, without deep digital marketing experience,
struggled to help firms build their digital marketing teams. TeamBuilder Search’s mission is to
be the recruiting firm that best understands and best fulfills the need for recruitment of top
digital talent.
Please feel free to contact us for more information or just a casual conversation. If you are a
firm building or enhancing your digital marketing team, we have free tools like talent
forecasting worksheets, interactive delivery process gap assessments and talent gap
assessments we can share with you. We would also be happy to speak on the Four P’s of
Building a Digital Marketing Team to your organization.
Mark Whitman
mwhitman@teambuildersearch.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/markawhitman
614-410-6674
Jen Wells
jwells@teambuildersearch.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenwells
614-410-6675
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