Build the Reorg Plan: Structuring Go Digit's Marketing Team Past 10 People
Objective: Given Go Digit General Insurance's current 8-person generalist marketing team and approval to hire 6 more people this year, build a reorg plan that assigns each of the lesson's five core functions a clear owner while keeping every manager inside the healthy span-of-control range.
You're the newly hired Head of Marketing Operations at Go Digit General Insurance, the Bengaluru-based insurer that listed on the NSE/BSE in May 2024. The 8-person team reports straight to the CMO with no directors, and budget just cleared for 6 more hires this year.
Use the lesson's functional-model guidance to decide which of the five core functions get a dedicated director now, draft the resulting reporting lines for 14 people, and confirm no manager ends up outside the 5-8 direct-report range.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, no account friction, easy to share with the CMO for sign-off
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
The lesson names five core functions (brand, demand gen, content, product marketing, ops) and says the 10-50 person stage is where director-level owners emerge for each, reporting to the CMO or VP.
Go Digit's 8 current marketers already lean into demand gen (5 people, unofficially) and content (2 people); 1 person handles everything else including brand, product marketing, and ops part-time. Budget covers at most 3 new director-level hires this year, not 5. Which functions get a dedicated director now, and which one stays folded under an existing role for another year?
Procedure
- List all five functions in rows, current headcount and current owner in the next two columns
- Mark which functions already have de facto ownership (demand gen, content) versus none (brand, product marketing, ops)
- Assign the 3 new director hires to the functions with the least existing coverage and the highest business risk if left unowned
- Draft the new reporting lines: 3-4 directors reporting to the CMO, 5-8 people under each director
- Note which one function stays generalist-owned for another year and why that's an acceptable tradeoff at this size
GO DIGIT REORG PLAN (14 people, 3 new director hires) Director, Demand Gen — 6 reports (existing 5 + 1 new) Director, Marketing Ops — 3 reports (new hire, absorbs CRM/attribution from the generalist) Director, Product Marketing — 2 reports (new hire, was previously unowned) Content Lead (not yet director-level) — 2 reports, stays under CMO for now Brand — folded into CMO's own remit for another year; revisit above 20 marketers
Healthy
Every function with real business risk (ops data hygiene, product marketing launches) gets a named owner before headcount doubles again.
Unhealthy
Hiring a Director of Brand first because it sounds senior, while marketing ops keeps running on tribal knowledge in one person's head.
What this means
At 14 people, not every function can have a director; the plan should protect the functions where the absence of ownership causes the most damage first, not the ones that are easiest to hire for.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| One generalist is quietly doing ops, brand, and product marketing part-time | Hire a dedicated Marketing Ops director first; it's the function silently blocking every other team's reporting | dev ticket |
| Budget only covers 3 directors but 3 functions are unowned | Leave Brand under the CMO for one more year rather than under-hiring for Ops or Product Marketing | 30 min |
Final deliverable
A 14-person reorg plan naming a director for each prioritized function, draft reporting lines under the CMO, and a note on which function stays generalist-owned for another year.
See a reference example
TBO Tek, Marketing Reorg Plan (excerpt) Director, Content — 7 reports (blog, case studies, TBO Academy enablement content) Director, Product Marketing — 4 reports (new hire, was reporting into Product before this plan) Brand — stays under the VP Marketing directly; team is 3 people, too small for its own director yet
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Assigns all 3 new director hires to functions with real unowned business risk, not to the most visible function
- Every proposed manager, existing or new, ends up with 5-8 direct reports or has a stated reason for being temporarily under range
- Explicitly names which function stays generalist-owned and why that's acceptable at 14 people