Businesses that focus on building a high-performance marketing team manage to sail through even the toughest business cycles effortlessly. So, if your business hasn’t been doing quite well during the pandemic-induced slowdown, it’s definitely not a good sign.
Such inconsistency clearly indicates the inability of your marketing team to plan growth strategies during changing market conditions. This makes your business vulnerable to financial difficulties during economic downturns and can be detrimental to its very existence.
With the massive changes in consumer behavior and the increasing dependency on e-commerce, marketing professionals can make or break a business. As a matter of fact, businesses such as New York & Co. and Sur La Table filed for bankruptcy due to a weak marketing strategy.
So, what does it take to build a high-performance marketing team? Here are 7 steps to achieve this feat.
1. Evaluate your Marketing Team’s Strengths and Weaknesses
Is your marketing team underperforming? If the answer is in the affirmative, start by evaluating your current team’s strengths and weaknesses. You can do that yourself or hire external product marketing and strategy development experts to handle it for you. If you are keen on doing it on your own, below mentioned are some tips to help you identify the gaps.
Useful tips
- Evaluate each marketing team member’s potential using performance management software.
- List out the in-demand skills that your marketing team lacks.
- Learn more about your team members from their interactions on your team messaging system.
2. Hire the Right People
By now, you probably have a good understanding of your current team members’ potential. So, you know what to look for while recruiting additional resources. Recruiting marketing professionals is an intricate process that needs to be done with utmost care and caution. After all, this team would be responsible for the organization’s success.
So, you need professionals who are well-equipped with advanced skillsets and know to get things done. Finding such people is easier said than done but have some patience because there is a large pool of talent readily available. The question is whether you have the brand reputation to attract such talent. In 2020, even the FBI and other law enforcement agencies used public relations to rope in top talent. Attracting top talent is key for your business and all companies. It is a major driver for success.
3. Ability to Understand the Product and the Customer
It truly does not matter how much time and effort your experts put into product development unless its potential is effectively communicated. Doing this requires a high-performance marketing team that understands both your products and consumers. Any failure to do this creates a barrier between the brand and the customer.
You’d be shocked to know that over 80% of consumers feel that brands do not comprehend their requirements. So, unless your marketing team understands customer requirements, its inability to do so could be a major stumbling block to carving long-term customer relationships.
Tips to overcome this:
- Encourage interaction between the Marketing and Product Development teams.
- Emphasize more on market research, data, and develop suitable mechanisms.
- Conduct regular customer surveys and feedback sessions.
4. Nurture a Sense of Responsibility
Your marketing team is responsible for being a central driver in generating revenues to pay for business and operational expenses such as salaries, rent, office supplies, etc… But are they aware of it? To be certain, business leaders need to subtly remind them of their impact from time to time. Since marketing teams play a significant role in the lives of everyone else at the organization, it is essential to do so. The more you speak of how their performance improves the wellbeing of the company, the more inspired they will be.
How can you do this?
- Set Marketing goals and list out its potential growth on the business and its workforce.
- Provide a platform for the Human Resources team to interact with the Marketing team.
- Regular interactions between Business Leaders and members of the Marketing team.
5. Digital Advancement for Better Market Insights
Marketing is all about bridging the gap between the business and the customer, which is impossible without a healthy interaction with prospects. So, your marketing professionals must collect the right set of data or procure it from reliable business data providers.
There are many data sources available, but successful marketing teams leverage high-quality technologies and techniques. You need a team and tools that are capable of using such information to understand consumer behavior and expectations.
What can you do about it?
- Procure the right data set for high conversions.
- Find out and subscribe to the best product research, data analytics, business intelligence, user behavior tools.
- Provide training sessions to enable your marketing team to make the best use of those tools.
6. Absolute Operational Support
Is your marketing team receiving the required support from your product development, pricing, IT support, and other teams? If not, your marketing team probably lacks the much-needed visibility into the company’s internal projects. This could adversely affect the formulation of a solid marketing strategy and may even delay its execution. So, issue directions to all your teams to prioritize requests from members of the marketing team.
This could be a meeting request to understand the product lifecycle with the development team or a brief discussion with the pricing team on a new strategy. Whatever be the request, ensure that the marketing team receives complete operational support from all quarters. This is essential because any delay could result in the loss of business opportunities and must therefore be avoided.
What can you do about it?
- Business leaders can fix this by issuing directions to all employees to prioritize requests from the marketing team. If required, make it a part of your internal protocol.
7. The Right State of Mind and Culture
Culture is extremely important. Marketing professionals often experience severe stress due to the very nature of their job, which requires devising market strategies, achieving targets, constant collaboration, frequent communication, etc… While they are at it, business leaders can make their lives easier by making them feel comfortable and taken care of.
What can you do about it?
- Make the members of your marketing team feel secure in their jobs.
- Work with the team to make critical business decisions.
- Identify individual shortcomings and schedule skill learning sessions.
No one’s perfect, but use the above techniques to improve your marketing team’s performance and make them stronger. Equip them with the right skill set and resources. You can create a favorable environment for the team to deliver their best. A high performing marketing team creates more opportunity, more revenue, and more possibilities for the entire organization.
