What does a marketing director do?

What are a marketing director's responsibilities

A marketing director's responsibilities are deciding where marketing effort and money go and making sure the team delivers. They sit above the managers who run campaigns and below, or in place of, a chief marketing officer.

• Write the annual marketing plan and the quarterly priorities
• Own and allocate the marketing budget
• Hire and lead marketing managers and specialists
• Choose agencies and marketing technology
• Agree pipeline targets and lead definitions with sales
• Report marketing's contribution to the leadership team

Marketing director vs CMO and head of marketing

A CMO sits on the executive team and owns marketing as a business function; a marketing director runs marketing delivery, either under a CMO or as the most senior marketer where there is none. At a startup, head of marketing usually means the same as marketing director.

• Startup: a head of marketing, sometimes guided by a fractional CMO, sets strategy and does much of the work.
• Mid-sized company: the marketing director is the top marketer, often reporting to the chief executive.
• Large company: a CMO leads, and several marketing directors own regions, products or disciplines such as brand or demand.

Where does a marketing director own pipeline targets

A marketing director owns the part of the pipeline that marketing sources or influences, under targets agreed with the sales leader. In B2B this has largely replaced lead counts as the measure of the role.

The detail matters. Both leaders need one definition of a qualified opportunity, one rule for which team gets credit when both touched a deal, and a shared review of the numbers. An illustrative arrangement: marketing commits to a quarterly number of sales-accepted opportunities from its programmes, and sales commits to follow up every one within an agreed time. Without that, the teams argue about credit instead of fixing the funnel.

What does a marketing director weigh as a buyer

A marketing director usually holds the budget for marketing software and agencies, so they weigh any tool against everything else that money could fund. They want evidence it helps the team produce better work, not just more of it.

Expect questions about how many people will use it, how it fits the stack, who owns set-up and how results will be reported. Managers often bring a tool to the director first, so a short summary they can forward helps the decision move.