These days, customers can usually find all the information they’re looking for about a company online or on social media. That’s why having an efficient marketing department that provides everything they need is essential for a company’s communication to work.
From your website’s design and architecture to its content, the choice of social networks and how they’re managed, it all goes through their hands.
The internet is the first place we turn when we want to learn something about a person, company, brand or organization. Is your company ready to provide those answers and meet the needs of your target audience?
Let’s look at what a marketing department can do so you can answer “yes” to that question.
· Why does your marketing department need to be united and work as a team?
The marketing department is one of the links that hold companies together.
It has to coordinate with almost every other department, especially Sales.
This is probably where it needs to push hardest, encouraging sales reps to get up to speed with the digital sales tools available, for example through Social Selling training.
Each person on the team has assigned tasks that must run with the same precision as the gears of a machine. What does this achieve?
- Coordinated execution of plans.
- Meeting agreed deadlines.
- Getting the most out of your social ads and Google Ads campaigns.
- Reacting quickly to the company’s one-off needs.
- Etc.
Every business is different, so the list of benefits may be longer (it surely is in your case) and different.
It’s simply worth being aware of all the responsibility your marketing department carries, so you realize that acting as a team is the best way to be more productive.
· Tips to make your marketing department efficient
As I said in the introduction, customers go online to look for what they need: Google, social media, blogs… and your marketing department’s top responsibility is to give them the answer they’re looking for.
Let’s take a closer look at how to do it.
*1. Set SMART goals
Did you know that 26% of employees don’t know exactly what the goal of their work is? (Kronos, 2017). This figure is curious and alarming because having SMART goals is precisely the first step toward efficiency for any person or team.
So study the strengths of each member of your marketing department and define their goal together. Besides, for anyone, knowing where they’re headed and reaching a goal is very motivating.
But it’s not just that each person needs their own goal: there’s also the department’s goal, which will be aligned with the company’s.
In other words, there need to be very clear and well-defined goals for each employee and for the marketing department.
For example:
- Company goal: Increase revenue by 20% over the next 2 years.
- Marketing department goal: Generate 50 new leads every month through digital channels.
- Marketing team member goal: Increase the eCommerce conversion rate by 5% within 12 months.
*2. Improve the department’s internal communication
To reach shared goals, you need to speak clearly, directly and openly.
We all know that many meetings are endless and boring, and few are effective. Another common way of communicating is sharing Excel files in the cloud: everyone downloads them, works on them locally, uploads them again, and then they no longer match their colleague’s version. Total chaos, in short.
A marketing department, especially a digital marketing one, should keep up with the new tools on the market that help us optimize each of our needs. How many of them that help with communication are you using?
At the end of the post I’ll mention a few that are easy to use.
*3. Set clear, well-defined workflows
Without a doubt, teamwork, as it should be in a marketing department, is much more efficient if everyone knows when it’s their turn to act. It also helps people anticipate the next task coming their way.
In my opinion, timelines are a great help when defining these workflows.
But do you know what the best part is?
Once you define a general workflow, you’ll be able to repeat it in your next project, apart from specific changes, so you’ll save time, improve learning and collaboration, and be more efficient!
*4. Hold daily stand-up meetings (standups)
If you want to avoid those tedious weekly meetings I mentioned above but (obviously) need to know how your team is progressing on the project you’re working on, I suggest standups.
Standups are short meetings, held standing up, that last no more than 10–15 minutes.
Their first peculiarity is just that: they’re held standing up. Don’t sit down, because then they’ll drag on and won’t be as effective. Of course, since they’re short, they need to be direct and to the point. That’s why the recommendation is for each person to answer 3, or at most 4, questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you going to do today?
- What difficulties have you run into?
- What do you need to overcome them, or how did you solve them?
Now let me ask you: when do you think is the best time for these meetings? First thing in the morning or at the end of the day?
It’s a very personal matter that only you and your team can answer. My business partner and I hold them at the end of the day and plan the next day.
*5. Tell the urgent apart from the important
Mao Tse-Tung said: “The urgent undermines the important“. What a simple way to state such an overwhelming truth!
Something important is what takes you toward your goal, and it’s subjective: you decide. Something urgent is what has a deadline for completion.
Easy to tell apart, don’t you think? So why do we tend to put the urgent first? Maybe because we’re not clear about what’s important? If we’re at tip 5, this won’t happen to you because you’ll already have gone through points 1 and 3. In other words, everyone in your marketing department knows the goals and the workflow.
Iago Fraga proposes a formula that I really like:
If the result is:
- Closer to zero, the less urgent the task.
- Closer to one, the more urgent the task.
- Greater than 1, you’re late.
It’s a very interesting approach, isn’t it? You don’t need to calculate every task that comes into the department every day, but for repetitive ones it may be worth getting out the calculator and measuring.
Also, keep in mind that the more important tasks you complete, the fewer urgent ones you’ll have to deal with, because you’ll be closer to your goals.
*6. Create a well-defined strategy to reach your customers
In digital marketing, we talk every day about the importance of having a strategy.
That’s why, with a well-built Social Media Marketing Plan, you’ll make sure every action you implement in your marketing department goes straight toward the goal you’re pursuing.
I won’t go into it today, because that’s a topic for another post, but you do know that your customers are online and that they use social media. So be very clear about:
- Who your buyer persona is.
- Which social networks they’re on, at what times and on which days.
Now you have your strategic starting point.
*7. Use content marketing to attract your customers
There are two key issues I always talk about that your content must address:
- You need to meet the needs of your customers.
- We have to be able to anticipate and answer the questions of our target audience.
This is the foundation for attracting the users your marketing department wants to reach. They don’t care what happens inside your company, or whether your executives are going to China to close a fantastic deal. What they want to know is how that trip benefits them.
So when you create content, if you want to highlight your relationship with that Chinese partner, do it from the angle of the benefits it brings your customers.
*8. Rely on an email marketing strategy to close customers
Mailrelay is the tool I use to send my communications to customers.
A tool like this lets you create an email marketing strategy that guides your potential customers through a sales funnel until they end up making a purchase.
Don’t lose sight, either in this post or in your real working life, of the fact that what we’re after is achieving the company’s goals. And to achieve them, remember that not everyone in your database likes the same content.
Segmentation is vital in email marketing, and getting your prospects the information they want, at the exact moment they’re ready to receive it, is what makes this strategy succeed.
*9. Show success stories to your potential customers
Whether your reputation is better or worse, before making a purchase decision we like to be sure that the product or service is the best one we can afford.
That’s why one of the most important tasks of an efficient marketing department, that is, one that is focused and moving toward its goals, is to show case studies.
So get out your editorial calendar and start thinking about:
- Content format
- Publication date
- Keyword
- SEO
Just make sure you talk to the customers you’re going to name so they authorize you to mention them (they usually say yes).
*10. Analyze, interpret, report and improve
Measure, measure, measure. You can’t know whether your marketing department is doing well unless you analyze the metrics, the KPIs.
As we’ve said several times in this post, we can’t lose sight of the fact that everything we do has a focus and a reason: achieving the goals we’ve set.
Get the data and interpret it. Put it into a report and share it with whoever needs it. Use simple language, because other departments aren’t used to marketing jargon.
I always say this is a step we can’t skip because it’s how we show the work we’ve done. Without it, all you get are subjective opinions, and you run the risk of being told your strategy isn’t working.
· 3 tools for an efficient marketing department
As we’ve seen throughout the post, there are several aspects that make a marketing department effective. Let’s go over them so I can recommend a tool to help you keep everything organized and focused.
Slack: the tool to improve your department’s internal communication.
Slack is an online application designed to optimize internal communication within a group of people.
It’s based on sending instant messages, which means you can cut down on emails. Why avoid them? Because they aren’t real-time and replies can overlap, making the group conversation confusing.
Of course, you can create a channel for each project you have underway and keep all the necessary documents there, since it integrates apps like Dropbox, Drive, Zoom and a few more.
Do you like the idea?
Asana: the tool to manage your team’s workflow
Asana is an online application that lets you manage and organize the workflows of the team you lead. It helps you stay on course and always focused on the goals and targets you’ve set for each project.
In fact, with it you can plan tasks and track them, always for each member of your team.
A pleasant, visual and very practical way to always deliver work on time. (Remember that the more important tasks you complete, the fewer urgent ones you have and the more time you gain.)
Zendesk: the tool to provide excellent customer service
Zendesk is a great tool for always staying in touch with your customers. This software lets you integrate communication with your customers through chat, phone and even social media.
You surely already know how important good customer service is for your company’s reputation. So take a look and see what you think.
· To wrap up
Of course, there are many more digital tools you can use with your team. It’s just a matter of choosing the one that’s most useful for your department structure and marketing manager in achieving your goals.
On top of these tools, today I’ve suggested 10 actions you can implement right away, with no hassle. So tell me, are you ready to have a truly efficient marketing department that’s the envy of your company?
A good marketing information system helps centralize data and makes it easier to keep a close eye on the KPIs of the whole department.