Annual, monthly and even weekly marketing strategies are important for the success of any organization. Executives will often spend hours creating these intricate plans at the end of every year, but not every strategy is successful. Why does this happen?
The answer lies in your team. You may have the best marketing strategy ever created, but unless you manage your team correctly, things have the potential of going South.
Building a marketing team takes time, and even once you have the right players, getting everyone on board and invested can be a challenge. Here are a few ways to not only get your team behind your marketing strategies, but also invested in their success.
1. Start with your process.
How easy is it for your employees to find the information needed to complete a project or even get one started? According to The Experience of Work: The Role of Technology in Productivity and Engagement report, “employees spend 25% of their time searching for information” and managers spend “more than half of their time executing routine tasks.” If you want your marketing strategy and team to be successful (and to not be part of those statistics), you need to free up their time to focus on what matters. This boils down to having processes in place for your projects. A designated process for each project makes it easier to find needed information, helps things move faster with less errors, and makes on-boarding easier.
Using a project management system (PMS) makes incorporating and maintaining processes easier and more efficient. Through the use of automation, these tools can streamline processes, and even eliminate manual tasks, easing some of your team’s workload so they can focus more on what matters. There are a myriad of PMS tools available, so take some time to do the research and find the one that will work best for your team. Once selected, create a system for managing projects, documenting processes and saving files.
Insider tip: Never let one team member hold all the knowledge on any specific project, tool or client. If he or she were to leave the company, all of that crucial information goes too. Thorough documentation and reporting help to mitigate this issue.
2. Improve peer-to-peer communication.
Along with your project process, clearly establish roles and responsibilities. This will help improve communication within your team, as members will know who to reach out to (and when) in the project workflow. This will optimize everyone’s time and get people the answers they need to do their work.
With more and more teams going remote this past year (and now staying remote), make sure your team has the digital tools they need to communicate. Tools like Slack, Zoom and Microsoft Teams allow team members to chat, collaborate and even meet with each other throughout the day.
Employees are more engaged and satisfied when they’re made to feel that their opinions and thoughts matter, and when they have team members to turn to for help. Check out these stats that really drive this point home:
- Workplaces with a reputation for healthy communication and workplace collaboration practices could reduce turnover rates by 59%.
- Companies and organizations that communicate effectively are 5x more likely to retain the best employees.
- According to recent digital collaboration research by McKinsey: “Online collaboration tools and digital workplaces facilitate increased productivity by up to 30%.”
3. Who’s on your team matters.
When a team is functioning at its best, it is easier to capitalize on speed and agility. Teams who can pivot easily to accommodate for changes in strategy are the ones that were able to adapt a little easier to the new work environment brought on by the pandemic.
Set your team up for success. The positions on your team should include the right mix of talent and skillsets based on projects and strategy. Many marketing teams are on the smaller size according to research by G2, with 78% of marketers having a small marketing team of between one and three people. These teams usually included a writer (52%), a social media manager (36%), and an SEO specialist (34%). If a project needs a particular skill that a current member does not have, freelancers, contract workers or even marketing agencies are a great way to augment your team.
Review, adjust and move forward
As we approach mid-year, now is an excellent time to not only review your current marketing strategy and process, but also take a look at how your team is working together. Make the necessary adjustments, whether it’s providing new collaboration tools, updating or creating new processes or even adding a new member to your team to fill in a much needed skill (we are always happy to help augment your team as needed!). Taking the time now to assess and adjust will make for a much better second half of the year.