There are four shapes a marketing organization takes and each optimises for something different: channel, funnel stage, segment or product. Companies usually inherit one rather than choosing it, which is why so many marketing reorganisations are really a change of shape being made one hire at a time. This page is the four, what each is good at, and the reporting lines each produces, including the dotted ones. The count matters: on the worked example a company where 22% of people carry a second line has 43 dotted lines and about $2,428 a month of standing check-ins to go with them.
By channel, and by funnel stage
Channel structure gives search, paid, social and email their own owners and is the easiest to staff and the easiest to over-hire, because every new channel looks like a new person. Funnel structure splits awareness, acquisition and retention and is better at making one person accountable for a number, but it needs enough volume for each stage to be a job. Under about ten people, funnel usually wins.
By segment, and by product
Segment structure gives enterprise and self-serve their own marketers and works when the two buy in genuinely different ways. Product structure mirrors the product organization and works when products are sold separately. Both create the same problem: shared services like operations, design and content have to serve every segment or product, and those are the dotted lines the chart has to show.
The reporting lines each shape creates
Channel and funnel structures are close to purely functional and produce few dotted lines. Segment and product structures produce one dotted line for every shared service seat, and they multiply as the segments do. Counting them before the reorganisation is the difference between choosing a shape and discovering one: 2.4 dotted reports per manager is workable, twice that is a company where nobody has a clear week.
Questions people ask about marketing organizational structure
Which shape should a company of twenty marketers use?
Usually funnel with channel specialists inside it. Segment and product shapes earn their dotted lines above that size.
Can we change shape without moving people?
Partly. Changing dotted lines is cheap and reversible; changing solid lines is a reorganisation and should be treated as one.
How do we keep the chart right through the change?
Draw it from records rather than slides. On the worked example that is under three hours of upkeep a year against six hours of redrawing.