This article is part of our ‘View from the Inside’ series, where we get insights from in-house recruitment marketers.
At Flare, we’re an external marketing partner, and whilst the challenges we face are very similar to in-house marketers, it’s not exactly the same. So, to give you a balanced view on the trends and challenges across the market, we’ve started this series to add as much value as we can.
This article has been created from a conversation with Charlotte Smith, Marketing Lead at neuco.
Charlotte joined neuco straight out of university as a Marketing and Operations Associate, learning the business from the ground up and going through the same training as a recruitment consultant. Charlotte is now the Marketing Lead as part of a revenue operations (RevOps) team. Marketing isn’t a separate department at neuco. It’s embedded directly into the revenue-generating heart of the business, sitting alongside business development and customer success.
Here’s what I learned from Charlotte about why this model works, and how it could change the way you think about marketing.
TLDR;
- Stop thinking in silos. Marketing, business development, and customer success should be part of one unified RevOps team.
- Credibility is earned, not given. Before you can be a strategic partner, you have to be a useful one. Understanding operations is the fastest way to build trust.
- Alignment isn’t a one-off meeting. It’s a weekly rhythm where marketing hears directly what sales is targeting and why.
- Reframe the conversation. It’s not about marketing help, it’s about helping sales generate leads. Language matters.
- Put marketing where the revenue is. If you want marketing to have a commercial impact, structure it to have a commercial impact.
What is Revenue Operations (and why should you care)?
RevOps is a way of structuring your business to ensure that all your revenue-facing teams are aligned around the single goal of driving revenue.
Instead of operating as separate departments with their own goals and priorities, they function as a single, cohesive unit. At neuco, this means Charlotte (marketing) sits alongside her colleagues who focus on business development and customer success. They are one team.
As Charlotte explained, this structure eliminates the disconnect. “I could directly see who they’re targeting,” she told me, referring to the weekly alignment meetings. “The companies, what made them a good company to target, and also any trends or areas that they were bringing up.”
That means marketing isn’t guessing what sales needs. They know. And they can act on it immediately, creating assets and campaigns that are directly relevant to the conversations their recruiters are having.
The foundation of trust is operational
Charlotte started in ops and her first few months were spent going through the same training as a recruitment consultant and learning the CRM from a recruiter’s perspective.
This operational grounding was fundamental. By identifying and fixing process blockages for the consulting team, she built a huge amount of credibility. They saw her as someone who made their lives easier. So, when she later started introducing marketing initiatives, she wasn’t met with suspicion; she was met with trust.
If you want your sales team to trust marketing, make sure marketing understands their world and has proven they can be useful outside of just creating content.
How it works in practice
The secret to making the RevOps model work is the rhythm. At neuco, the RevOps team has a weekly catch-up with each sector team to run through account development and business development plans.
It’s a commercial strategy session and marketing’s role is to listen and contribute. When the sales team flags a new growth area or a key target account, Charlotte is in the room to hear it.
This creates a powerful, continuous feedback loop. There’s no gap between strategy and execution. The business development team can find the companies, and marketing can create the content to engage them. It’s the antidote to random acts of marketing.
Lead generation sessions
One of the smartest things Charlotte has done is to reframe how she talks about marketing internally.
She recently reframed the regular meetings to become marketing for lead generation and business development sessions.
It moves the focus from what marketing is to what marketing does for the recruiters. As she put it, it’s about “reframing the mindset of everything that I’m doing is to help you and to help you get the leads.”
It’s a masterclass in speaking the language of your internal customer.
It’s time to break down the walls
For too long, marketing has been bolted on to recruitment businesses, rather than being built-in.
By embedding marketing within the revenue engine, you ensure it’s aligned, accountable, and commercially focused from day one.
If you’re a founder who’s frustrated with the lack of ROI from your marketing, or a marketer who feels disconnected from the commercial realities of your business, it might be time to stop trying to fix the relationship between sales and marketing, and instead, change the structure entirely.
A View from the Inside
The article above comes from conversations I had with Charlotte Smith, Marketing Lead at neuco.
Connect with Charlotte on LinkedIn.
Find out more about neuco.
Discover more View from the Inside articles below:
The first 6 months in a new marketing role with Lauren Turner from Fintelligent and Leaders in Care
If your marketing’s vague, your audience probably is too with Nathan Fenton from Roc Search
The importance of community in an AI world with Leah Smith from Linux Recruit
