Is it time to restructure your marketing team?

In the UK’s financial services sector, marketing leaders face growing demands to deliver smarter, faster and more effective marketing efforts.  

Whether you’re a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Marketing Manager or strategist, restructuring your marketing department can be a pivotal step to align with new business goals, optimise workflows and enhance customer experience. 
 
Restructuring a marketing team is more than changing roles or team members; it’s about creating a marketing function that delivers measurable impact through a clear marketing strategy, stronger collaboration and better use of technology. 

1. Align your marketing team structure with business goals
2. Review and optimise functional capabilities
3. Rethink team roles, structure and collaboration
4. Conduct a skills audit to fill gaps
5. Streamline processes and workflows
6. Optimise your technology stack
7. Measure what matters with relevant metrics
8. Align budgets with strategic priorities
9. Enhance collaboration and culture
10. Review external partnerships
11. Tailor your approach to restructuring depending on your role
12. What this means for you

Align your marketing team structure with business goals

Successful restructuring begins with a clear understanding of your company’s business goals and target audience. Are you aiming to improve conversion rates, boost brand awareness or enhance the customer journey? Your marketing team structure should directly support these aims. 
 
This means your marketing activities, from content marketing and digital marketing to social media and email marketing, must be designed to engage the right personas at every stage of the funnel. When a restructure aligns with your business strategy, your marketing efforts become more focused and impactful.

Review and optimise functional capabilities

A modern marketing department spans multiple specialised skillsets and roles. During a restructure, evaluate whether your team covers key functions such as: 

• Content marketing and copywriting
• SEO and digital marketing initiatives 
• Social media management (including LinkedIn and other platforms) 
• Marketing operations and automation (for example, using HubSpot) 
• Customer experience and user experience optimisation 
• Marketing analytics and performance metrics 

Are some teams siloed or under-resourced? This may depend on your company size. For startups and small businesses especially, it’s important to strike the right balance between in-house expertise and external support. Adding new roles, such as a dedicated SEO specialist or automation strategist, might be necessary to optimise your marketing performance.

For more detail on skills and pay trends, our marketing and sales salary guide provides benchmarking data and insights into in-demand marketing roles.

Rethink team roles, structure and collaboration

Marketing team structure can vary widely, from centralised to decentralised models or hybrid approaches. Your choice should reflect the size of your organisation, complexity of marketing activities and level of cross-team collaboration required. 
 
It’s important to consider the mix of specialists and generalists on your team. For example, do you have a dedicated copywriter focusing on persuasive messaging, or is this responsibility shared? How well are your social media and email marketing teams aligned with overall marketing strategy and business goals? 
 
Good teamwork between marketing operations, content creators and digital specialists ensures smoother workflows and better execution of initiatives.

Conduct a skills audit to fill gaps

Conducting a skills audit helps to identify where your marketing team excels and where new skills are needed. Are team members up to date with the latest automation tools or HubSpot features? Does the team have the expertise to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) effectively and use those insights to improve conversion rates and customer experience? 
 
Understanding skill gaps also informs recruitment or internal training decisions. In some cases, restructuring can mean creating a new role focused on data-driven marketing or customer journey mapping.

Streamline processes and workflows

Efficiency in marketing operations comes down to optimised workflows and clear responsibilities. Review how your campaigns move from planning to execution and reporting. Are approval processes slowing down initiatives? Could automation reduce manual tasks? 
 
Agile marketing methods can be introduced to increase flexibility and speed, helping your team respond to market changes or stakeholder needs faster.

Optimise your technology stack

A fragmented marketing technology stack can cause inefficiencies and limit your ability to measure impact. During a restructure, audit your MarTech tools including CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, CMS and analytics software, to ensure they’re integrated and fully utilised. 
 
Platforms like HubSpot are invaluable for managing email marketing, workflows and capturing customer data across channels. Ensuring your team has the right skills and training to leverage these tools is just as important as the technology itself.

Measure what matters with relevant metrics

Setting the right KPIs is critical. These metrics should reflect marketing goals that tie directly to business outcomes, such as lead generation, conversion rates and customer retention. 
 
Avoid vanity metrics that don’t inform decision-making. Instead, focus on actionable insights from data that help refine marketing initiatives and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders and the Chief Marketing Officer.

Align budgets with strategic priorities

Ensure your marketing budget supports your top priorities, whether that’s investing more in digital marketing, social media campaigns or content marketing. A restructure is a good time to evaluate whether funds are being spent efficiently and whether budget allocation matches expected impact. 
 
Benchmarking your spend against industry norms for financial services, large organisations, startups or small businesses can help justify adjustments.

Enhance collaboration and culture

Restructuring impacts people as much as processes. It’s important to manage change thoughtfully to maintain morale and team identity. Promote a culture of open communication and shared goals to break down silos and encourage teamwork across marketing, sales, product and customer success teams. 
 
Positive collaboration improves not only marketing outputs but also the broader customer experience.

Restructuring impacts people as much as processes. It’s important to manage change thoughtfully to maintain morale and team identity. Promote a culture of open communication and shared goals to break down silos and encourage teamwork across marketing, sales, product and customer success teams. 
 
Positive collaboration improves not only marketing outputs but also the broader customer experience.

Review external partnerships

Evaluate your reliance on agencies, freelancers or consultants. Are these external partnerships still aligned with your marketing goals? Could bringing certain functions in-house provide better control or faster turnaround times? 
 
Striking the right balance between internal and external resources will optimise your marketing operations.

Tailor your approach to restructuring depending on your role

While the principles of a successful marketing restructure apply to any organisation, the priorities and perspective will differ depending on whether you are leading marketing, supporting from HR or overseeing the business as CEO. Understanding these different viewpoints will help you take decisions that are strategically sound, operationally efficient and culturally positive.

For marketing leaders and CMOs

If you are a marketing leader – such as Head of Marketing, Marketing Director or CMO – it’s your role to set the vision and shape the marketing strategy. You are also responsible for ensuring your marketing team structure is built to deliver against business goals, with the right mix of skills, roles and workflows in place. 
 
Your focus should include:

• Aligning your team structure with business goals such as brand growth, digital transformation or international expansion 
• Reviewing capabilities across content marketing, CRM, performance marketing, brand and marketing operations, and addressing skill set gaps such as SEO, marketing automation or data science 
• Choosing the structure that best supports collaboration – whether centralised, decentralised or hybrid – and making sure leadership spans are sustainable 
• Identifying growth drivers versus cost centres, and addressing underperformance caused by structure rather than people 
• Conducting skills and talent audits to protect top performers and ensure succession plans are in place 
• Auditing processes, workflows and your MarTech stack (such as HubSpot) to ensure they enable productivity rather than create complexity 
• Building strong stakeholder relationships across sales, product, finance and operations so marketing is seen as a strategic partner 
• Managing cultural impact by communicating openly and creating clarity during change 
• Setting KPIs and metrics that measure meaningful impact, not just activity 

For HR professionals

As an HR leader, your role is to enable marketing leaders to make informed, people-centred decisions. You help ensure the new structure is fair, legally compliant and designed to retain and develop talent. 
 
You can add value by:

• Ensuring the new team structure is logical, scalable and consistent with job grading frameworks 
• Supporting clear job descriptions and career paths that align with the marketing strategy 
• Mapping skills and identifying training opportunities before considering redundancies 
• Leading on change management plans to reduce uncertainty and resistance 
• Reviewing restructuring decisions through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens 
• Managing legal and risk considerations to ensure compliance with employment law 
• Monitoring engagement levels and supporting retention, particularly of high-performing team members 

For CEOs

From a CEO’s perspective, a marketing restructure is about business impact. You want a marketing function that drives measurable ROI, strengthens the brand and supports growth. 
 
Key areas of focus include: 

• Confirming that marketing directly supports your top business goals  
• Reviewing efficiency and ROI, ensuring resources are directed towards activities that deliver measurable outcomes such as revenue growth or improved conversion rates 
• Assessing leadership capability within the marketing function, particularly the chief marketing officer 
• Ensuring marketing is integrated with sales, product, operations and customer experience to create a consistent customer journey 
• Checking that the external brand perception reflects your vision and market position 
• Making sure the marketing team can adapt to regulatory changes, technological developments and evolving customer behaviour 
• Preparing the structure to support strategic initiatives such as M&A or international expansion

What this means for you

By understanding the different priorities of marketing leaders, HR and CEOs, you can make more informed decisions and create alignment across leadership. When these perspectives are brought together, the result is a marketing function that is strategically aligned, operationally effective and ready for the challenges ahead. 

Restructuring is not just an organisational change; it’s an opportunity to optimise how your marketing function supports business success. By aligning team structure, skills, processes and technology, you can create a marketing department equipped to deliver measurable results in a fast-changing market. 
 
Our financial services recruitment team can support you with salary guides, insights into in-demand skills and market intelligence to inform your decision-making. If you’re considering reshaping your marketing team for the future, get in touch to see how we can help.