Marketing department structure goes wrong in a predictable way: the roles are hired in the right order and then nobody writes down which number each of them owns, so demand generation and content both answer for pipeline and neither answers for it alone. This page is the structure with the ownership attached, role by role, at the sizes most companies pass through. The arithmetic is the same as the rest of the chart, a span of about seven and a second layer past that, but the part that matters here is the ownership column, because it is the one a chart alone will not give you.
The order roles arrive in, and the number each owns
Content first, owning organic traffic and the assets sales needs. Demand generation second, owning pipeline sourced by marketing. Product marketing third, owning positioning and launch. Marketing operations fourth, owning the systems and the reporting everyone else argues about. Events, brand and community follow the business model. Each of those four owns exactly one number, and writing it beside their box on the chart is the whole of best practice here.
Where two owners collide
The two collisions that recur are pipeline, claimed by demand generation and by whoever runs events, and the website, claimed by content and by product marketing. Both are solved by naming a single owner on the chart and giving the other a dotted line, which is cheaper than the standing meeting that otherwise appears to arbitrate. On the worked example a dotted line costs about a fortnightly half hour of manager time.
The second layer, and when it is a promotion
Past about seven people the head of marketing has more one-to-ones than a week holds, and one of the groups gets a lead. That is a real promotion with a real span, not a title change: the lead now carries three or four people and their own number. Drawing it before the hire is what stops it being handed to whoever has been there longest.
Questions people ask about marketing department structure
How big should a marketing team be relative to the company?
It varies far too much by model for an average to be useful. Size it from the numbers it owns and the span rule, and let the chart show the result.
Should marketing operations report to marketing or revenue operations?
Either works if only one of them writes the review. The dotted line goes the other way and should be on the chart.
What structure suits a product-led company?
Product marketing and lifecycle earlier, field events later. The order changes; the one-owner-per-number rule does not.