Creating an Evolving Marketing Team
As Marketing Changes, So Must We
Marketing is constantly evolving. The industry isn’t the same as it was 5 or 10 years ago. Even last year featured a changing and growing marketing environment. As the old saying goes, we must adapt or die—or else our marketing endeavors will no longer be relevant.
We must rethink our processes. We must redevelop our strategies. We must embrace change. Although many elements of marketing remain, such as direct mail, social media management, and branding, we need to shift our approach to better personalize our messages and reach more customers.
Paramount to this newer, more effective approach is building a top-notch marketing team. Twenty-first-century marketing professionals aren’t the marketers of yesteryear. The structure of today’s agencies and firms is a lot different than those of the past. A contemporary marketing team must be dynamic and adaptive unlike ever before.
If you’re building or helping to develop a marketing team, here are some tips to help you along the way:
1. Diversity is key. Diversity is a catchword across a range of industries and disciplines, from science and engineering to communications and the humanities. However, a truly robust marketing team will include people from all walks of life—and I’m not simply talking about minorities or individuals who belong to protected classes (although they’re certainly important as well). The members of your marketing team should think differently and challenge one another. They should bring fresh perspectives and ideas to meetings. You want your team members to thrive in situations where they’re uncomfortable and encouraged to confront different thought processes. There’s no better way to foster this sort of atmosphere than hiring a ragtag team of thinkers, feelers, doers, and everyone in between.
2. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. Synergy is another catchword across professions, but to truly achieve it, you must cultivate collaboration. Traditional workplace hierarchies dictate that ideas flow from the top down, but we all know this linear system is far less than perfect. Senior team members can learn just as much from junior staff as junior staff can learn from senior team members. A single employee (or designated role, for that matter) shouldn’t be responsible for all the ideas, strategies, and planning. As humans, we often learn from each other during unsuspecting moments. You want team members who constantly learn from one another and aren’t afraid to share their insights. Another way to think about collaboration is through disruption. Would you rather have a team that follows orders and achieves the same results week after week or a team that questions the status quo and pushes your organization to new creative heights? Collaboration allows your team to innovate and create without the pressure of hierarchy.
3. Ditch the past. Marketing is all about the customer experience—your team must strive to improve its interactions and engagement with customers. In other words, you want to create and disseminate content that’s individualized for specific people and audiences. To achieve such a level of personalization, however, we need to forget the marketing methods of the past. For example, direct mail is still an important tool despite our digital age, but to run an effective direct mail campaign, your messages must be tailored to the individuals receiving them. The same logic applies to social media or any other digital platform. Your team members can’t think like marketers did 5 or 10 years ago; your marketing team must include forward-thinkers who seek to refine and optimize the customer experience.
An effective, productive marketing team doesn’t arise overnight. By actively investing in the above tips, your team will grow into the one you want—and the one our industry deserves.
