5 Mistakes Marketing Teams Make with Collaboration

Marketing teams thrive on two things: coffee and teamwork. The former is the preferred lubricant that wakes teammates from stupor, while the latter is the grease that gets the gears of progress moving. But every now and then, even the most efficient marketing machine breaks down from lack of oil.

That’s when you get legendary stories of epic marketing failures such as these.

If you’ve ever been in one of these situations where teamwork (and project progress) grinds to a halt, it’s painful. If it doesn't cost much money to remedy, you might be lucky. However, there is typically a huge hit to your brand's reputation and trustworthiness.

Still, mistakes are avoidable if you know what to watch out for.

Let’s look at five of the most common mistakes that marketing teams make in their collaboration efforts.

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 1: Collaborating Via Email

We’ve long said that email was not created to facilitate project management.

You lose the context of what you’re talking about pretty quickly, or you get duplicate information with everyone chiming in on a single discussion.
Then you encounter problems with visibility — how can you tell the status of a project when you’re just reading email replies? (Short answer: you can’t.)
You will also run afoul when trying to look for attachments or specific details in email threads that are fifteen layers deep.
Then, of course, there are the unfortunate souls who hit the “reply all” button with disastrous consequences. Ask Bill Cochran, the creative director whose monumental “reply all” email blunder was turned into an actual ad for Bridgestone Tires during the 2011 Superbowl.

Use the right tool for the right job. Email is great for sending short packets of information. But once you need efficient collaboration, it’s time to take it somewhere else. Instead of relying on email, invest in one of the enterprise collaboration systems that make assigning tasks and project upkeep easier than hitting reply all, and where nothing falls through the cracks.

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No.2: Failing to Engage Your Audience

The old way of marketing doesn’t work anymore — you can’t just release your marketing campaign and walk away, hoping for good results. You’re wasting opportunities to bring your brand closer to your customers.

With all our work being done in an increasingly social space, it falls on a marketer’s shoulders to engage with audiences after launching a campaign. Engagement is the new currency.

"Social media gives you the ability to go back and forth with an audience in ways that didn’t exist years ago.” ~ Karena Breslin, Director of Digital Media, Constellation Brands

And not just on social media: nurture prospects with email drips, create landing pages to repackage webinar recordings and other content, and extend conversations beyond Twitter and Facebook to sites like Quora and Slideshare. Be helpful, be friendly, be an ambassador for your brand.

A great example? Carter Wilkerson asking how many retweets it would take to get a year of free chicken nuggets at Wendy's. The reply and its subsequent viral spread became Instant customer engagement.

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 3: Not Measuring the Right Metrics

We live in the age of big data and of data-driven decision making. Marketing campaign decisions are inextricably linked with the metrics that were used in previous projects. But what if you’re still only measuring Facebook likes and Twitter followers? You are missing actionable insights by collecting incomplete data.

“The Internet creates a sense that anything is knowable or findable — as long as you can construct the right search, find the right tool, or connect to the right people.” ~Marissa Mayer, President & CEO, Yahoo!

Extend Mayer's logic to measuring the right things — those that translate to actual business objectives — so you gain better info that can be used to craft more relevant and more engaging campaigns.

For more on which marketing metrics you should be measuring, read this post: The 9 Key Marketing Metrics Your CMO Actually Cares About.

And check out this 3-minute video on KPIs to use for measuring your content marketing efforts:

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 4: Communicating Poorly

If you’re a marketer, you have no excuse for poor communication skills. Your entire livelihood is founded on being able to express ideas succinctly and persuading people to act on what you say.

And yet there are marketing teams whose collaborative skills flounder under the pressure of the deadline,and there are those who fire off quick, angry messages when unexpected problems arise, just making the situation worse.

You need to take note of the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and WHY in communication before sending that email or instant message — especially if you’re collaborating with remote colleagues who can’t see your facial expressions when you deliver a curt reply. Don’t be reactive and trigger-happy. Be cautious. Be fair. And don’t stick your foot in your mouth.

Watch this video on how stress affects team dynamics (Length: 4:53) and what strategies you can use to cope with the stress:

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 5: Remaining in Silos

Probably the biggest mistake that marketing team members can make is to stay stuck in individual silos, never coming up for air, never sharing what they know. It’s the old problem of not realizing that your process or your own knowledge could be useful for others. Or it’s simply a lack of time to teach your team about best practices that you’ve already internalized. Since it’s all in your head, no one else has access to your wisdom.

The world is moving too fast for silos. Knowledge has to be shared in order for teams to function optimally. And that’s why management methods such as Agile and Lean have become such tremendous “disruptors” with a prioritization on collaboration rather than silos and hierarchy.

To be part of a marketing team that moves rapidly and pivots when called for, there must be a culture that supports sharing and teamwork. There has to be a conscious effort to document processes, share best practices, and offer to help the entire team where you can.

Is your marketing team committing one of the 5 collaboration sins?

What other mistakes do you feel are fatal to marketing teams? Hit the comments and share away!

Marketing 7 min read

Scrum in marketing: making enterprises adaptive

Every year and even every month, new technologies, markets and competitors spring up, and today’s businesses have to be agile to be able to face the impending challenges. In such an unstable environment, traditional principles of managing product development may lead companies to failure. If the product requirements change drastically from the time the product is designed to the moment when it is released, it can result in the delivery of outdated products. Otherwise, ineffective change management processes may destroy product development, and the product will never be delivered.New methods in project management Nowadays to be successful, a company has to be fast to adapt. Driven by business priorities, managers use progressive methods of product development aimed to cure the mistakes of traditional approaches. Some of these methods acquired the name of agile project management. These methods originated in R&D departments and now are introduced in marketing as well. Markets change quickly, forcing you to reposition your product. When you introduce an innovative product, it’s not clear how you should promote it and what the customers really need. Very often when innovative products are born, manufacturers and customers may not know how or why the products will be used, so it’s not evident what specific features of a product will or will not be valued. Playing in such markets entails a process of mutual discovery by customers and vendors – and this just takes time. According Clayton M. Christensen’s book “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” research has shown that the vast majority of successful new companies abandoned their original business strategies after trying to implement their initial plans and learning what would and would not work in the market. This shows how important it is for a company to quickly evolve its strategy and tactics.What is Scrum? Scrum as a marketing project management methodology Marketing is often executed in project-based manner. That is why a lot of generic project management principles perfectly apply to marketing and why marketing should also be optimized, similar to project management techniques. Agile cycle approaches to marketing may help to overcome problems experienced by marketing executives. One of these approaches is the Scrum methodology, which has originally been developed as an agile software development method for project management. Now Scrum is successfully employed in Agile business transformation by hundreds of different companies, such as Yahoo.com, Wildcard Systems, H&M, and John Deere, in many different fields, with outstanding results. Scrum adopts an empirical approach, accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or successfully defined in a predictable and planned manner. The focus of Scrum is on maximizing the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements. This method is praised for making the team more productive, reducing risks and maximizing the business value of a developed product and minimizing the period of the development time. Scrum is based on defining sprints - time periods (usually 2 to 4 weeks) during which the prioritized work (sprint backlog) should be done. During a sprint, the team gets together for daily meetings where team members discuss what they have already done, what they are going to do till the next meeting and what prevents them of doing something that they planned to do. In other words, Scrum meetings are supposed to keep teams on track and help members get their work done. At the end of each sprint, there is a brief sprint retrospective at which all team members reflect about the past sprint. According to Ken Schwaber, co-creator of the Scrum meeting method (along with Jeff Sutherland), the purpose of a daily Scrum is to keep teams focused "on their objectives and to help them avoid being thrown off track by less important concerns." Now Scrum is often viewed as an iterative, incremental process for developing any product or managing any work. Indeed, short and regular meetings can be as important for small marketing teams as they are for production teams. Members of a marketing group may be working on a variety of projects, but they're all working toward the same goal – marketing the company and its products or services. Therefore, every member of a team has to know what the others are working on and what direction the whole team is moving in. Collaborative project management software for Scrum in marketing The Scrum approach to marketing becomes even more efficient when empowered by Enterprise 2.0 technologies. New- generation software, especially tools meant for project management, bring collaboration to marketing and can make it more productive. These applications (I will call them Project Management 2.0 software) let team members easily share information on the projects and tasks they are involved in and help every team member see the whole picture of the company’s marketing strategy. Project management 2.0 software makes collaboration and management more transparent, letting everyone know who is accountable for what and by when. Scrum in marketing makes the possible problems visible at early stages and allows coping with them quicker and with minimal losses. One of the major Scrum principles is “no problems are swept under the carpet.” Every team member is encouraged to describe the difficulties he is experiencing, as this might influence the work of the whole group. Discussing problems early also helps to reduce financial risk. With the beginning of every sprint period, the business owner can change any of the marketing project parameters without penalty, including increasing investments to enlarge consumers’ quantity, reducing investments until unknowns are mitigated, or financing other initiatives. A new approach to marketing requires flexible planning, which is possible with the help of collaboration software. In the ever-changing business environment, short-term marketing plans based on sprints can be much more effective. Marketing managers get an opportunity to switch from one promotion method to another, if the first one proved to be unsuccessful during the sprint period. It also becomes easier to clarify due dates of every small, but important task, to each member of a team. For example if a team is getting ready for a fair, it should be clear about who is responsible for preparing handouts, who will make a presentation about a product and who will design the company showcase. With Project Management 2.0 software, like Wrike for example, it becomes possible for everyone on the team to contribute to the plans, edit and update them. New-generation software brings stakeholders and partners into the collaboration process. Their input and feedback will help shape the marketing agenda along the way. The clients can be involved, too. In fact, the principal aim of every marketing team is understanding customers’ needs and helping clients achieve their goals. In today’s enterprises, achieving the heightened customer loyalty – what brand marketers refer to as “emotional lock-in” – is especially challenging when an organization is dealing with tens of thousands or even millions of customers. Empowered by the new-generation software, Scrum lets you involve your clients in the marketing process and take advantage of the wisdom of the crowds. Collective intelligence helps to improve the quality of products and services and make them fully satisfy the consumer’s needs. Scrum lets you promote your product not for a client, but together with your client. Customers can be involved in various ways. For example, they can literally participate in the development process by sending their feedback and contributing to the plans. So, as we can see, innovative management methods brought to marketing make a company more agile and let it respond quicker to the needs of the emerging markets. It makes a company even more successful when empowered with Enterprise 2.0 tools that bring collaboration into organizations. They help improve communication and turn it from one-way (from a company to its customers) to two-way (from a company to its customers and back), helping to improve products and services. Now you know the Scrum basics, you can see how helps a company make its marketing policy nimble and lets it promote its products with lower costs, avoiding unnecessary money and resource spending and helping to reveal possible mistakes in the initial planning. The result is maximization a company’s benefit.

Marketing 3 min read

10 Elements of a Successful Content Marketing "Engine" (Infographic)

Content marketing is critical component of many companies' marketing strategies. For those who are trying to build up what I call a "content engine" or for those who are looking to do a tune-up on their marketing vocabulary, this infographic provides ten areas that need to be addressed. Use the infographic below to understand the areas and to assess your company's situation with regards to content marketing. Which areas need the most attention? You can share this infographic with your team! Share this post, or copy the embed code below to put it on your site: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Which areas are the hardest to fix? Let us know in the comments!

Marketing 5 min read

5 Steps for Making Your Marketing Team More Efficient

From the mobile boom to the rise of social media, the realm of marketing has grown far beyond just promotional emails and consistent content. It's not a one size fits all solution, but here are five surefire ways to start building a more efficient and collaborative marketing team.

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5 Mistakes Marketing Teams Make with Collaboration

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 1: Collaborating Via Email

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No.2: Failing to Engage Your Audience

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 3: Not Measuring the Right Metrics

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 4: Communicating Poorly

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 5: Remaining in Silos

Is your marketing team committing one of the 5 collaboration sins?

Related Articles:

Lionel Valdellon

5 Mistakes Marketing Teams Make with Collaboration

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 1: Collaborating Via Email

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No.2: Failing to Engage Your Audience

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 3: Not Measuring the Right Metrics

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 4: Communicating Poorly

Marketing Collaboration Mistake No. 5: Remaining in Silos

Is your marketing team committing one of the 5 collaboration sins?

Related Articles:

Lionel Valdellon

Related articles

Scrum in marketing: making enterprises adaptive

10 Elements of a Successful Content Marketing "Engine" (Infographic)

5 Steps for Making Your Marketing Team More Efficient

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