You may have the most skilled people in the world on your marketing team, but does that equate to a productive team? Surprisingly, many leaders in marketing will tell you no, that skill alone won’t improve the productivity of your marketing team.
However, there are some things you can introduce into your skilled marketing team to ensure peak performance and a more cohesive unit.
On-point management, a diverse team, and healthy company culture can aid better productivity on your team. Let’s explore these and go over ten tips in total for improving the productivity of your marketing team.
Revisit Marketing Goals and Measurements for Success
One of the first things you can do to improve the productivity of your marketing team is to revisit your team’s marketing goals and measurements for success.
How do you measure productivity on your team? How do you measure the success of your marketing efforts? If your marketing campaigns are successful, does that mean your marketing team is also? What are your marketing team’s goals?
It’s essential to revisit the above questions when your team’s productivity is lacking. If you find that you don’t have solid marketing team goals, measurements for success, or ways to gauge productivity, solidifying these things can give you a clear pathway to better productivity.
Ultimately, revisiting your team’s marketing goals and measurements for success can give you things to track to ensure your team is trending toward improved productivity.
Better the Management of Your Marketing Team
Next, you can improve productivity by bettering the management of your marketing team. Many people leave their jobs and companies because of management. Unfortunately, even when employees complain about managers and present evidence of unhealthy behaviors and interactions, many company leaders fail to take action.
Don’t be one of those company leaders. Instead, improve the management of your marketing team to increase productivity and keep team members there for the long term. If you need to replace a manager, do it.
Otherwise, encourage your marketing manager to take their skills to the next level. Empower them with the support and resources needed to improve their decision-making, communication, and relationship-building skills. Also, challenge them to take on management opportunities outside of their regular duties to learn more about top-notch management through experience.
Overall, better management will ensure marketing team members are well taken care of and supported, which, in turn, motivates them to perform at their highest at all times.
Solicit and Encourage Feedback From Your Team
Another tip for improving productivity is to solicit and encourage feedback from your team actively. One of, if not the best, way to find out how to get better performance from your team is to ask them.
Don’t just ask for feedback at the end of the year. Instead, ask for your team’s input throughout the year and encourage them to share their honest feedback on the following:
- How the team is collaborating
- Describe any recurring issues among the team
- If they have concerns with specific team members
- If updating team tools and technology is necessary
- How you can help the team be more productive
- How to personalize the team’s workflow
By encouraging feedback from your team, you’ll have an opportunity to learn exactly what your team needs to be more productive and get guidance on implementing those suggestions.
Assess Your Current Team
You may need to assess your current team to improve productivity. For instance, are they a cohesive unit? Is everyone getting along and willing to work together for the greater good of the marketing team? Are they able to solve conflict among one another?
Also, examine the skill sets each member has. Do the skills each team member possesses cover all that you need to deploy successful marketing campaigns? Are you missing a particular skill set, expertise, or personality that would enhance your marketing team?
To sum up, assessing your current team will give you insight into what’s missing to improve overall productivity.
Consider Bringing New Team Members on Board
In assessing your current team, you may realize that it’s time to bring new team members on board. If you consider getting new team members on board, be sure to take pride in diversity and inclusion.
Putting a diverse team together gives you a leg up in productivity because you have access to varying perspectives, solutions, and skills that will ultimately improve the way your team works together and how they’re able to serve your customers.
It’s best to outline a recruiting strategy to bring new team members on board. Then, look for top talent on social media, job boards, job fairs, and by asking for referrals.
Once you’ve chosen a few quality candidates, interview them. Use the interview to vet the candidate, learn more about their skillset, and gauge whether their personality will be a good fit for your team.
Finally, choose the best candidate, guide them through onboarding, and connect them to your team.
Bringing new team members on board can improve your marketing team’s productivity by bringing on personalities that encourage a positive team spirit. Hiring new employees also helps you fill specific team needs, so people don’t have to wear many hats.
Recognize When it’s Time to Let Someone Go
In addition to bringing new team members on board, it’s also vital to recognize when it’s time to let someone go. Of course, letting someone go is difficult. But, at the same time, it could be necessary to keep your team healthy, collaborative, and communicative.
If you’re experiencing the following with someone on your marketing team, consider letting them go:
- Their performance continues to decline after already discussing it with them
- They aren’t interacting with the other team members in a positive way
- Their negative behaviors and presence is disruptive to the rest of the team
- The marketing projects they’re a part of are suffering
- They’re not meeting deadlines consistently
- They refuse to take feedback and adjust
Although it may be challenging to let someone go, doing so may be the key to improving productivity on your marketing team.
Put an Emphasis on Improving Communication
Improving your marketing team’s productivity could just be a matter of improving communication. If your team isn’t communicating effectively, their production is most certainly suffering.
Sit down with each team member and explore their thoughts on the team’s communication. In addition, find out their preferred communication method and style. Understanding how each person views communication can give you insight into how to construct communication expectations that suit the entire team.
Emphasizing communication will help you define a blueprint for the best way to connect on your team.
Reevaluate How You Do Meetings
In examining your team’s communication, you may find that your team doesn’t see the point in team meetings every week. Of course, it’s essential to meet with your team, reconnect, and ensure everyone is on the same page. But, maybe not every week, maybe not for as long as you’re putting them on for, and maybe not with every single person on your marketing team.
It may be best to change the frequency of your meetings and examine how to make your meetings more productive and relevant.
For instance, retrospective meetings may be all your team needs. Experts define retrospective meetings as “meetings that occur at the end of a project to help teams pause and think about improving future performance.”
You can check in with your team as needed, but only enforce a team meeting requiring everyone’s attendance when a project is complete, and it’s time to evaluate what worked, what didn’t, and how to be better in the next project.
In short, reevaluating how you do meetings can help you stop interrupting your team’s workflow with unnecessary and irrelevant meetings.
Offer Professional Development Opportunities
Another way to improve the productivity of your team is to offer professional development opportunities. Some people lose motivation, and their performance declines because their job responsibilities don’t challenge them. In other words, their role is predictable, mundane, and just plain old boring.
You can reignite their dedication to your company, role, and responsibilities on the marketing team by equipping them with professional development opportunities. For example, you can make mentorship available to them, offer to cover part of their expenses if they want to go back to school, or award internal upskilling training opportunities to best-performing employees.
In the long run, your marketing team members will be more enthusiastic about work when they know you’re willing to help them get to the next step in their careers.
Revisit Your Company Culture
If your marketing team’s productivity is declining, it may not be because of the actions of your marketing team. Instead, it may be a result of toxic company culture.
Revisiting your company culture and evaluating its health is crucial to ensure your marketing team walks into a positive workplace environment that incites growth and productivity.
Help build a healthy company culture by:
- Prioritizing employee well-being
- Encouraging a healthy work-life balance
- Offering mental health resources
- Offering flexible work schedules
- Make sure workloads are manageable
- Putting people-centric management in place
- Being transparent and authentic at all times
- Emphasizing ethical workplace practices
- Implementing employee suggestions for improving company culture
Ultimately, revisiting your company culture is an excellent idea when determining how to improve the productivity of your marketing team.
Conclusion: Improve the Productivity of Your Marketing Team
Improving the productivity of your marketing team requires intention, strategy, and an openness to learning about what’s best for your specific team.
Start the process of improving productivity by revisiting your team’s marketing goals and measurements for success, bettering your management team, and encouraging feedback from your marketing team members.
You can also assess your current team, bring new team members on board, and let some go if necessary. Be sure to emphasize improving communication and reevaluating how you do team meetings.
And finally, offer professional development opportunities and turn your attention toward your company culture when it’s time to better your team’s productivity.
