Improving Productivity on Your Marketing Team (Checklist)
To say life as a marketing manager can be hectic would be putting it mildly. With so much going on and distractions popping up every five minutes, you may feel like you need to go into complete isolation in order to actually get anything done. In fact, that’s exactly what that crazy scuba-like contraption is for in the photo below: Hugo Gernsback’s 1925 invention "The Isolator" makes the wearer deaf to all outside noise, limits vision to a tiny window, and even has an oxygen hose. Before you go out and buy an Isolator for every member of your marketing team, try these simple strategies for promoting productivity, improving meetings, and encouraging creativity. Instant Productivity Boosters Block out creative time on your calendar where you unplug completely. Turn off email notifications, put your phone on Do Not Disturb, etc. Just make sure your team knows when you’re free to be interrupted so they're not stuck waiting for your input. Delegate. Assign tasks based on strengths, or skills you know your team members want to sharpen. It'll keep your top performers from being overloaded and help your whole team improve and stay engaged. Review lessons learned so you can continually improve your process and become more efficient. Save articles and inspiration in a Wrike folder via the Chrome extension instead of emailing them to your team as you find them. It'll cut down on interruptions and distractions while your team’s focused on the task at hand. Review your inspiration folder at the beginning of a new creative project to kickstart a productive brainstorming session. Give your team time to engage in “unnecessary creation” — Todd Henry’s name for exploring possibilities, picking up new skills, and working on side projects or experiments. You never know what cool ideas, skills, or side projects will benefit your daily work. Clarify goals and how each person contributes in your MRM (marketing resource management is the MRM meaning) plan. When every team member knows their importance, they are more likely to get the job done and done well. Streamline communications and simplify processes. Take a good hard look at the way your team functions and reevaluate whether every step and approval is really necessary. Prioritize based on your strategic marketing goals, and set fake deadlines for yourself for extra motivation. Better Creativity Add more color to your office. Yellow is particularly good for stimulating creativity and optimism. Encourage people to listen to music through headphones. It'll help them focus and get in the creative zone. Provide pens and paper so people can doodle, mind map, brainstorm, write by hand, or easily pick up and head outdoors. Embrace work naps. If your location permits, a quick, 15-minute snooze improves creativity, memory, learning ability, and helps prevent burnout. Meetings & Brainstorming Sessions Keep meetings short and only invite the necessary people to attend. Take it outside. Short meetings, brainstorming sessions — head to the park or go for a short walk while discussing new possibilities. Fresh air and light activity will make your brainstorming sessions more productive, and you’ll get better-quality creative ideas. Start meetings and brainstorming sessions with something fun, like a funny YouTube clip. People are more productive and creative when they’re in a good mood. End meetings by stating who will do what by when. Set at least one day a week as a "no meeting" day where nothing is scheduled. Quick Miscellaneous Tips Stock your office kitchen with healthy snacks and drinks instead of junk that will lead to a food coma or sugar crash. Automate tedious tasks, use marketing automation software, or create templates for routine tasks, documents, and email messages. Stop multitasking. Instead batch similar tasks together to quickly knock them out. Schedule a set time to deal with emails and other requests, instead of dealing with interruptions as they appear. Use an RSS reader to quickly catch up on marketing news and blogs you follow. Download our free marketing eBook Need a new tool to boost collaboration and productivity on your marketing team? Download our free eBook for a real-world guide to buying a collaboration tool that suits your exact needs. Get it now: Collaboration Software for Marketing Teams: A Buyer’s Guide What are your best marketing shortcuts and productivity tips? Share what works for your team in the comments below — we're always looking for new tips! "The Isolator" photo credit: A Great Disorder
How Do Social Media Marketing Gurus Become Super-Productive?
Well then, how do social media gurus manage to be productive and get things done right on time? They have their own productivity tools and technique, as well as marketing terms and concepts, that help them stay efficient in this vibrant environment. The good news is that social media professionals don’t mind sharing their tips. For example, one of them, a popular social media marketing expert and coach, Laura Roeder, told us what helps her stay on top of multiple projects and effectively collaborate with her team members. “Getting things done fast is perhaps the most important skill you can have to make your business move forward,” says Laura. “The flexibility of Wrike project management software allows us to be super-productive, and it helps our own business grow rapidly.” Read the full story and find out how Laura’s social media marketing team benefits from Wrike’s unique features.
The Ultimate Strategic Guide For Evolving Your Digital Marketing Game
Keeping up with today’s marketing challenges is tough. There is a lot of information to process and examine before formulating a strategy, plus many startups and small businesses have limited budgets. They have to focus on the most cost-effective marketing channels to see positive results. So as a marketer or aspiring entrepreneur, where should you focus? Here are a few tips to maximize your reach through digital marketing. 1. Know your audience and competitors This is the cardinal rule of marketing. Without knowing your audience, you can't effectively speak to them or grab their attention (What are they interested in? What are they looking for, and where do they go to find it?). In-depth knowledge of your target audience allows you to pinpoint your strategy for the people who are most likely to purchase your product, and most willing to contact you directly. So how do you get to know your customers? Step 1: Start with the data that you already have (past surveys and Google Analytics) Also, hold interviews with the major stakeholders to better understand what they like about your organization. Step 2: Once you have enough data, it’s time to create an audience profile worksheet. Step 3: After you’ve created an audience profile, use it as the basis for each and every decision. This will ensure your organization remains customer-centric. Also, whether you’re a small business or an established brand, you have to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. By analyzing your competitors, you can future-proof your business and have an idea of what’s in store. Analyze at least five close competitors in your industry. Keep these points in mind when conducting competitor analysis: What potential threats do your competitors pose? What opportunities do they create for you? Which mediums do they use to market their product or service? Are they doing content marketing, and how successful are they? What topics do they cover? Which keywords do they use? Tools like SEMRush, SuggestMtrx, and SEOchat can help you determine top competitor keywords. 2. Define an engagement strategy According to a survey of marketers conducted by Econsultancy.com, most respondents want to improve customer engagement and brand building by providing a positive experience — they're just not sure how to do it. This is where you have to rely on the data you’ve collected on your customers and competitors to formulate an engagement strategy backed by data (see point 1). Identify the channels (Facebook, Google+) your customers are active on Target those channels and attract customers with relevant content and positive customer reviews (social proof) Use gamification to increase brand engagement Connect with customers by responding to comments, queries and requests Surprise customers by sending them coupons and other incentives on their birthday or holidays Develop an omni-channel user experience 3. Retain current customers 82% of companies agree that retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones. The moment you see churn numbers start to rise, take steps to find out where the problem lies. Some questions to investigate: has your customer left you for a competitor? Are your communications no longer personalized? Or does your product no longer meet their needs? You need to know these answers to retain your customers. 4. Focus on search engine optimization Well executed SEO can bring in a tremendous amount of traffic to your website. According to Social Media Today, 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. But optimizing your website isn't easy, and it requires time and patience. Tips for optimizing your website: Learn how search engine spiders work Before you write content, do some research on keywords and build your material around them Perform A/B tests on your headlines and website copy Update content on a regular basis Share and promote your website address Include a targeted call-to-action on each page of your website Use Google speed insights to improve your site's user experience Have you wondered how much business you’ll be losing by not having your site optimized for mobile users? Well, the answer is A LOT. The number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to grow to 4.77 billion in 2017 — and those numbers will continue to skyrocket in the coming years. So don’t forget to optimize your content, website, and apps for mobile users. SEO will also lead to improvements in your content marketing results, since you can focus on creating articles, eBooks, and infographics that potential customers are most interested in reading — and can easily find. Knowing exactly what keywords and topics customers are looking for makes it easier to provide targeted, discoverable content. 5. Start promoting your brand on social media Social networking sites are a great way to help you stay connected with existing customers, and will encourage you to seek out potential customers. For instance, let’s say you’ve recently opened a coffee shop. Using geo search, you can find people who have tweeted about coffee close to your location, and then reach out and offer them a coupon to try your coffee. Apart from the points mentioned above, here a few other areas to concentrate on: Vary your content types, including videos, Slideshares, and infographics. Enforce a multi-channel digital marketing campaign with the help of tools like Pardot, Eloqua,and Bizible Include social media buttons on each page of your website Use email campaigns to nurture leads Offering solutions, education, and entertainment matters. Providing value to customers is the best way to engage and connect. Once you have generated leads, learn to manage them efficiently with tools like Integrate, Pipedrive, and ProsperWorks If you are promoting your brand on multiple channels, be consistent across them all. Instead of trying to do everything, focus your digital marketing resources on excelling in a few key areas. Success in marketing means you never stop learning, keeping up with the latest trends, and above all, listening to your audience. You can read about digital marketing until your eyes cross, but at the end of the day, there is no better guide than dialing in to your customers. Author Bio: Sandra Christie, a writer for @IdigicNet, has several published articles about social media that talk about general improvement of your social feed, and get more brand presence using it.
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.
The Best Funnel Marketing Techniques for B2B
Finding new leads can take a lot of time and resources without a concrete plan, which is why you need a scientific approach to funnel marketing. Read more to learn marketing funnel basics, how to set up your own lead generation machine based on tactics from leading brands, and create an impactful B2B campaign for your business.
5 Future Marketing Job Titles You Should Be Hiring For Right Now
Since buzzwords like social shares, mobile marketing, and (wait for it) Big Data are nothing new and don't really provide a competitive advantage any longer, the marketer of the future will be nothing like the marketer of the past... or present. Marketing has changed more in the past two decades than it has in the last 80 years and we are all just trying to keep up. From data to design to content to creative, customers are becoming harder and harder to impress.
Using Wrike for High Performance Marketing Teams
Wrike's flexible folder structure allows any team to quickly set up a workflow to operate more efficiently. We've seen marketing teams become particularly successful by setting up their Wrike folders to mirror the structure of their department. Our customer success team speaks with dozens of companies per week, sharing best practices and setting up workflows. New marketing teams set up shop in our enterprise project management solution every week in an effort to drive efficiency and stay organized. After chatting with so many of these customers, we know that marketing teams are notoriously understaffed and overworked. Additionally, they're inherently cross-functional, working with departments from sales and engineering to manufacturing and operations. A central work hub to manage all of the moving parts is essential to hitting deadlines. We've compiled some of the best practices and quick wins that marketing teams of all shapes and sizes have leveraged to boost productivity. Additionally, we've created a template folder structure for high-performing marketing teams that you can download and import into Wrike in order to get started ASAP. Edit our template freely to make it match your team! Here are the best practices of how to measure marketing performance from teams we've talked to: 1. Match your folder structure to the organization of your marketing team Most teams have various marketing team "buckets" which often include Lead Gen, Content Marketing, Product Marketing, and Email Marketing, just to name a few. Create a folder to capture all of these categories and create subfolders to match the various teams in your marketing org. If one of your 'buckets' has a multitude of responsibilities, add a layer of subfolders to capture these. Content teams are a perfect example. At Wrike, our content marketing team is working on blog posts, webinar scripts, infographics, and case studies, so they create subfolders to house the tasks related to each of these responsibilities. 2. Organize by week to keep the team on track Marketing teams generate a never ending stream of deliverables. Using multiple tags per task, top performing teams also organize their work by week in order to stay focused and ensure deliverables are generated by the time they're needed. If you haven't explored task tagging yet, pause your reading and take a look at this Help Center article. Wrike gives you the ability to put a task in multiple locations. This is essential for organizing your tasks by team bucket and by week. After creating the perfect folder system, all you need to do is drag the folder name and drop it on the task to add the additional tag. A quick overview can be found in this video about task and folder tagging. 3. Run weekly meetings out of Wrike (Click the header to read my blog post dedicated solely to this topic.) With the weekly folders you created to organize deliverables and tasks, you are now equipped to run weekly meetings straight out of Wrike. Instead of harassing everyone to submit slides for the weekly meeting, simply have teams go on Wrike and show the list of tasks they completed last week, then look at what will be done this week. For tracking purposes, you can either push tasks from week to week as they're rescheduled and pushed out, or leave the original week tags in order to see the history of where a task has been. This is a great way to identify bottlenecks and better understand which work is being prioritized. For better organization, consider including a Meeting Agenda and Action Items task in each week's folder. This will be the task where people can jot down notes, high level thoughts, action items, and other initiatives to ensure there is a place to capture feedback and follow up. During the meeting, make sure you designate a recorder to keep track of actions items on this task and ensure they are converted into tasks with assignees. Weekly folders can also help you understand bandwidth constraints on your team. When used in conjunction with Wrike's Workload view, weekly folders are the perfect place to jump to when a last minute request comes to the marketing team and you need to find someone to get it done. 4. Create MGMT team folder to tag top priorities Most marketing teams have a director who needs updates from her managers. In an effort to ensure managers are only relaying top priority and relevant information, build a "MGMT" team folder with a subfolder for each of the managers. Managers then tag their high priority tasks and projects in order to give their director and peers easy visibility into their most important work. 5. Add annual and quarterly goals in Wrike As you get set up in Wrike, make sure your team has clear goals and direction. Google has a great approach to planning quarterly and annual goals which centers on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). In Wrike, create high level goals (Objectives) and then specific big picture actions you want to take to achieve them (Key Results). Turn these Objectives and Key Results into folders and encourage team members to tag relevant tasks that will achieve these results into the corresponding folder. It gives clear visibility into how every task is helping complete a goal. This can be particularly powerful early in the quarter when you're planning all of the work that needs to get done. 6. Ensure commitment and ownership The key to making this work is to ensure that whole team has buy-in and is committed to the process. Compliance is not enough; 100% commitment is necessary. One way to ease the transition into Wrike and maintain your status as a high performance marketing team is to appointment a high-ranking team member as owner of the team's Wrike experience. The owner maintains folder structure, establishes team norms, and facilitates new processes introduced to Wrike. Your 3 Actions for Today Now, are you finished reading my tips, but don't know where to start? Here are the top 3 actions you should take today to get your marketing team performing at a higher level in Wrike: 1. Create weekly and categorical folders and tag all tasks by week and bucket. 2. Run your weekly meetings out of the weekly tracking folders. 3. Identify a team owner to manage the folder structure and hold the team accountable. Good luck, and let us know how your team improves with Wrike! If you want to see these 6 tips in action, check out our video on creating high-performance marketing teams with Wrike. Author Bio: Author Bio:Tim Chingos is a Customer Success Manager at Wrike. He likes to bring his dog to work and claims that she increases everyone's productivity. LinkedIn
Build Your Brand with The Marketing Blueprint (Book Review)
Thanks to Canadian entrepreneur and marketing consultant Jules Marcoux, CEOs and marketing directors can have exactly that. In what many consider to be one of the best marketing books around, Marcoux maps out exactly how to take brands to the next level and drive better results. In our continuous effort to give marketing teams an edge over the competition, we revisited this marketing agency blueprint for our own book review.
The 4 Pillars of Agile Marketing
In the last decade, Agile methodologies have been widely embraced by the software development and project management communities. Its iterative approach helps teams make direct progress toward an end goal, while allowing them the flexibility to adapt and refine their process as they go. Now, marketing teams are embracing the Agile pillars in order to thrive in a new era of customer engagement and expectations. Increasing demands on marketing departments require new approaches to marketing management and operations, and the benefits of Agile for marketers are clear: Agile marketing teams are more productive, more satisfied with how their teams manage work, and deliver better results faster. But marketers have their own unique challenges, and Agile’s principles must be adapted to suit their needs. Follow Wrike's Agile Marketing Manifesto to build a strong foundation for your marketing organization. Wrike's Agile Marketing Manifesto: The 4 Pillars of Agile Ongoing Customer Focus We anticipate changes in customer requirements and interests, and build processes that allow us to incorporate those changes even at later stages of the project. Clients and stakeholders are regularly involved throughout the project, from beginning to end. Collaboration & Communication Our team has open communication and is always aware of the status of work: what's been completed, what's in progress, and what's upcoming. Roles, responsibilities, and priorities are clear, and issues/roadblocks are quickly uncovered and addressed. Our team is self-organizing, setting its own goals and methods, without relying on upper management to dictate every step. Intentional Processes & Continuous Improvement We follow a clearly defined process, which is neither accidental nor ad hoc, and our process is sustainable and scalable within our organization. Our work processes are carefully designed to support agility, speed, and flexibility. We set aside time to reflect and improve our processes, removing any wasted steps to keep workflows efficient and proactively addressing any issues or bottlenecks. Results-Oriented Approach Instead of completing many different campaigns and initiatives, we prioritize efficiency, quality over quantity, and satisfying customer needs. We use the build-measure-learn feedback loop or similar approach, and focus on outcomes — not volume or other deceptive metrics — to ensure we're achieving strategic goals. Decisions are based on data, not opinions or habit. Quiz: What’s Your Team’s Agile Marketing Score? While the 4 pillars of Agile Marketing may sound simple, getting your team up to speed so you actually reap the benefits is tricky — and it’s tough to know whether you’re on the right track. Take our interactive self-assessment to evaluate your team’s agility and get some simple, practical tips for improvement.
Will Your Company's Social Media Marketing Efforts Pay Off? (Infographic)
In order to be successful marketing your business in social media, you need to invest time and resources, and understand what is targeting in marketing. This decision tree helps you see if you're ready to launch a full-scale social media effort that will lead to more attention and business leads. Will your company's social media efforts pay off? See the decision tree below. Embed this infographic in your site using the code below: Wrike Project Management Software What ingredients are key to social media success? What do you think the most essential ingredient is for a social media strategy? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
$250K to $1.2M in 18 Months: Hubstaff's 2-Step Process for Hyper-Growth
What makes companies successful? There are a myriad of factors for fast and sustainable business development, including building a powerful brand, forging strong partnerships, and having a flexible management system in place. But having a single, clear business goal is arguably one of the most important elements for success. A focused goal makes your team more purposeful in how they spend their time, and thus more productive—which paves the way for rapid company growth that's actually sustainable. As a 100% self-funded and fully remote team, we at Hubstaff have been using a simple, two-step process that has helped us grow and scale our business sustainably. And we're happier and more productive than ever: our marketing strategy examples helped us go from $250K to $1.2M in revenue in just 18 months. Here's how we did it: Step 1: Identify a single business goal As our co-founder Dave Nevogt says, a huge part of the battle of running a successful business is focusing your energy and resources on the right things. That’s why every year we set a very specific business goal and only take on projects that directly further this goal. Last year, our goal was to reach $70k in Monthly Recurring Revenue. To achieve this, we used the Theory of Constraints to break down our yearly business goal into quarterly goals. Then we broke quarterly goals down into weekly tasks: On our marketing team, for example, ROI on each task is measured by tracking time spent. Although a productivity tracking tool isn’t absolutely necessary, it does help make you (painfully) aware of how much time you’re wasting, which enhances productivity. Wrike's time tracking integration with Hubstaff helps us plan and prioritize upcoming work, as well as track time and productivity levels on each Wrike task without switching between tools. Step 2: Use time data to pinpoint tasks that drive ROI today Time data is one of your most important business metrics. Use it to assess ROI, know what’s working and what’s not, and determine the best use of your team's time. Plus, you can more effectively plan and scale your team based on actual business needs. For example, if your development team is spending more time on customer support than on dev work, it’s time to hire more support team members. Your team’s time data can give you these kinds of valuable insights. At Hubstaff, we track time on all our tasks across all departments, from marketing and customer support to development. At the end of each week, month or quarter, we can see exactly how much time was spent on a particular task—and how much revenue it generated. Here is the formula our marketing team uses to measure ROI for each task: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) = (# of hours spent on that task) x (your hourly wage + other expenses, like software tools)/(# of paying customers acquired from the task) Let’s say, from the above snapshot, I spent 5 hours updating our FAQ, used a $25 tool, and my hourly wage is $35. Using our analytics, I discovered we added 10 paying customers from that task. Here is what the CAC will look like: CAC = ((5 hrs X $35) + $25)/10= $20 per customer After calculating that number (CAC), we ask ourselves one question: is Average Lifetime Value (ALV) > 3 x Customer Acquisition Cost? If the answer is no, is there any way to make this strategy more efficient and cost-effective? If yes, try to refine it and measure ROI again. If the answer is yes, that’s a task with proven ROI. Once you’ve calculated the ROI of particular tasks, it’s time to use the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. The basic idea is that 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your marketing tasks. You just need to identify that 20% and bet heavily on them. It’s also crucial to keep in mind that just because something drives revenue today, doesn't mean it will six months down the line. The rule of thumb is that if you see any tasks with proven high ROI, you should double down on them today. Added benefits of the two-step process This two-step process has clear benefits beyond the numbers. Before we applied it, we were slightly disorganized, using multiple strategies to drive growth and betting that at least one would do the job. Now our team’s mindset has transformed. We constantly come back to the bigger picture and question not only whether a task is worth our time and money, but whether it will help us achieve our goal in the quickest and most efficient way possible. Author Bio: Madhav Bhandari is a marketing manager at Hubstaff. He helps acquire customers with high ROI marketing experiments, action focused analytics, and product iterations. You can follow him on Twitter at @themadbhandari
Quiz: What's Your Team's Agile Marketing Score?
Improved quality of work, faster time to release, better team morale and alignment — truly Agile marketing teams are at a distinct competitive advantage. But getting your co-workers up to speed with Agile team roles so you actually reap these benefits is tricky, and it can be difficult to know whether you’re on the right track. That’s why we created an interactive self-assessment that will help you evaluate your team’s agility and get some simple, practical tips for improvement. Will your marketing team make the grade? Click here to take our short self-assessment and find out! Brilliant Agile Marketing Teams Run on Wrike Wrike's new solution tailored for marketing teams includes Custom Request forms, proofing & approval, visual dashboards and real-time reports to help marketing teams exceed customer expectations and launch successful campaigns. Learn more about Wrike for Marketers, or try it free for 2 weeks.
Wonderist Proves Dental Marketing Doesn’t Have to be Like Pulling Teeth
In an era when small businesses struggle more than ever, Michael Anderson's commitment to culture, process, and customer impact has allowed his agency to rise above their competition, and carve out a thriving niche in dental marketing.
How Aerotek’s Marketing Team Accelerates Planning Cycles by 1.5 Weeks
We recently caught up with Matt Andrews from Aerotek, a leading recruiting and staffing firm, to learn how his team has streamlined marketing requests, shortened planning cycles, cut email by 90%, and much more.
Join the Agile Marketing Revolution! (Infographic)
Is your team a lean, mean, Agile marketing machine? In today’s digital age, responsiveness and adaptability are essential for creative teams. Join your marketing comrades and take up the Agile cause! Revolutionize the way you build campaigns, capitalize on the latest trends, and capture your audience’s attention by following this Agile Marketing Manifesto. Check out the infographic below for Agile axioms that will help you adjust to change, attract stronger leads, and work as a dynamic team. Source: Space Chimp Media Is your marketing team ready for the advantages of Agile? Or are you already a standard-bearer for the movement? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
