Every brand needs a great marketing team. From coming up with effective strategies that generate high-quality leads to reconfiguring your inbound funnel, it’s important that you have a group of people dedicated to growth and results. After all, this is the team tasked with communicating your brand to the world — and that’s a message you definitely can’t afford to muddle.

It would be every company’s dream to press a button and have an excellent team of dedicated marketers appears ready to work. But in the real world, it takes a conscious effort and a lot of planning to build an amazing marketing team. Keep in mind that if you take the time to do it right, you’ll get a team that works well together, gets things accomplished, and helps take your brand to new heights.

Let’s dive into what you need to do to put together a killer marketing team.

1. Know Exactly Who You’re Looking For

If you were building a team of superheroes, what sorts of powers would you want them to bring to the table? While your marketing team might not be tasked with saving the world, the same thought practice applies. You need to develop the key traits that have to be represented on your team to achieve success.

Any time you’re hiring for your marketing team, start with a very clear idea of the skills you need. Do you want your marketing team to be creative? Will you need someone who can write well? Someone savvy on social media? Someone who understands the fundamentals of digital marketing strategies? The better you can define your ideal candidate, the better idea you’ll have of who fits the bill.

Consider both the role that you need filled and the roles that you already have covered, as well as how these interplay. Just like building a comprehensive customer persona for your marketing endeavors, defining your perfect team addition is integral to finding them.

2. Interview Well

Resumes and portfolios can tell you a lot about what someone might be able to add to your marketing team, but it’s the interview that will really seal the deal. It’s crucial you take the opportunity to get an accurate feel for who a person is and their most valuable qualities.

Have a process, ask the right questions, and include the right internal people to ensure that all your bases are covered when it comes to vetting a potential employee. While it’s key to pay attention to their skills and experience, it’s also important to understand how their personality will fit into your team dynamic. One way to do this is through personality tests, which can help you dig a bit deeper into the person you’re considering hiring. A personality test will let you know if someone is more analytical or intuitive, if they’re more extroverted or introverted, and what kind of encouragement or feedback they respond better to. All of these insights will help you better determine if someone is going to be a key player on your A+ marketing team, or if they’re going to potentially disrupt its dynamic.

3. Set Clear Goals

All teams need a great leader. Put into place a team process that includes regular meetings and brainstorming sessions dedicated to elucidating your goals. Aside from making it clear to everyone on the team what they’re striving toward, this practice also provides you with a chance to check-in and ensure everyone is always on the same page — a major necessity when it comes to promoting a strong team culture.

In addition to setting goals, make sure to set aside time to review and determine if you’ve actually met those goals. Sometimes team members can get siloed into their own tasks and duties that it can be hard for them to know how their efforts are impacting the whole of the group. By prioritizing discussions around goals and goal achievements, you help make sure that all members of your team are able to put their work into context and see how it’s all paying off. It also highlights areas where a change of approach is warranted.

4. Give Value, Get Value

Providing your marketing team with all of the tools that they need to succeed is just as crucial as choosing the right team members in the first place. Check-in discussions like the ones mentioned above are a big part of this, but so is showing gratitude and incentivizing impressive performances. A team that feels appreciated is more likely to go above and beyond for your brand, especially when they know that they’ll be recognized for it.

Just like in marketing itself, the work that you put in impacts the results that you get. If your goal is to put together a killer team (and it should be!), then you’ll need to take active steps to get there. Start with the tips above, and you’ll be on your way.