Today, I want to talk about how to make marketing a team sport. In some of our prior posts, we’ve talked a little bit about how the model is changing from an individual activity Rainmaker model to a team sport where multiple people are working together within your overall marketing program.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hi. Today, I want to talk about how to make marketing a team sport. In some of our prior posts, we’ve talked a little bit about how the model is changing from an individual activity Rainmaker model to a team sport where multiple people are working together within your overall marketing program.
So, the question is how do you pull that off? Well, it all starts with presenting the “why change?” argument and what does the future look like? What will this team look like when you get it all together and why is that a good thing for the organization? Now, there are a lot of good reasons why they are building a unified brand, developing a one-firm approach, more flexibility and so there are a lot of good reasons, but you need to present that to people so they understand and have a reason for thinking, “Yeah, that might be a good idea for us to change.”
Then you need to get the policy buy-in for a change for the overall change or a test. Now, our experience is that sometimes it’s a lot easier to get buy-in to test out this team model than to make a wholesale change, but other organizations already have a sense that this is the right thing to do and are ready to go, but you need to get that policy buy-in.
So, because it’s going to be a change, it’s going to impact a lot of people. The third step is to identify the gaps in skills. So when you look at your overall marketing plan, where do you have strength? Do you have a lot of people that are good speakers? I remember this one organization that really had multiple people who were very good speakers and you can leverage that in your marketing, but are there areas where you don’t have the skills?
Maybe a marketing automation or maybe developing the overall strategy or research on your clients? Those could be areas of skill gap, for example. So, get those identified, get them down on paper. Then you can figure out how to engage the resources to close that skill gap. Sometimes those resources are right under your nose.
There are people who have an interest in being involved in marketing, but no one’s asked them. They have a desire, but that hasn’t been used. So, sometimes you can just find them. Other times you’ll have to do some training or you may need to get outside resources to build out your team. Draft a resource, perhaps it’s an independent consultant or a firm or an agency who can provide these kinds of specialized skills you’ll need.
Then finally, with that team, you can begin to put together your operational plan. Who’s going to do what and how often? Now, one of the key things to remember here is make sure you don’t have incentives that work against you. For example, if people are tracked on their billable hours, make sure that there is an allocation for that and that’s something you’ll have to do at the policy level so that people can justify spending their time.
But the bottom line is when you put all of it together, it’s a much more efficient way to run a marketing department in the era we’re in now, where the client is a lot more informed and has a lot more opportunities than before. Now, if you want to dig deeper in this, I recommend going to HingeUniversity.com/courses
Take a look at the variety of things that are offered there, and you’re going to see that there are a lot of things that can help build up your team and give them the skills they need to be successful. Thank you and good luck.
