Getting the best out of your team without burning them out can be a manager’s biggest challenge. You want everyone to put forth their best effort all of the time, while also ensuring they feel connected to their teammates and to the company. While work stress is certainly not going away, you don’t want anyone on your team to feel challenged to the point of burnout. Moreover, the quality of the work can’t be sacrificed for the mere sake of accomplishing more.
Of course, a productive team is better for the company’s success. If you’re looking for how to boost your team’s efforts without compromising their sense of well-being, read on. Below are three ways to increase your marketing team’s productivity smartly and efficiently.
1. Utilize Automation Tools
Wouldn’t it be great if some things just happened without you or your team’s manual effort? Well, thanks to new software developments leveraging artificial intelligence, certain tasks can essentially take care of themselves. When implemented effectively, automation tools can enhance how your team operates.
Rather than replacing a marketer on the team, automation allows you to scale operations. This means your employees can focus on more strategic tasks, rather than being bogged down with repetitive work. Automation can help generate and nurture leads and collect and analyze data. You’ll likely find that your team will become more aligned with your sales team, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
An example of marketing automation services in action is having a platform create and send off messages to your customers. These messages — whether it’s a birthday note or a limited time offer — can entice consumers while creating a personalized experience for them. You can schedule these text and emails within a do-it-all small business software, saving you time and effort. Through the same portal, you can review your consumer interactions and monitor them with ease. With this saved time, your team can concentrate on bigger projects that will move the company forward.
2. Establish a Workflow
Things work well when they’re done in a predetermined manner. Employees work toward goals, producing the same consistent output. As a manager, you don’t need to micromanage, as you know your team has it under control. As a result, teams collaborate better internally and amongst other teams when order is established. Establishing a workflow can enhance productivity while also leading to a reduction in errors and redundancies.
When thinking about the best workflow for your marketing team, take some time to lay out all of the current steps and processes. Ask your team where they feel like the work is repetitive or where they think something can be optimized. Getting their input and buy-in will only benefit the workflow, while also showing that you value their opinions. List out who on the team is accountable for which parts of the process, and ensure everyone has a designated role.
When the new workflow is established, don’t be afraid to make tweaks. Just because this is how you deployed it doesn’t mean that is how your team has to follow it for eternity! See how it’s working and get regular feedback from the team during check-ins. It’s better to discover how something isn’t working sooner rather than months later. Make sure any new employees are trained in the workflow, but don’t punish them for asking questions or offering suggestions. Fresh perspectives are so valuable.
3. Provide Opportunities for Knowledge and Skill Sharing
There’s no reason for one marketer on your team to hold onto a specific skill without sharing it with the rest of the team. Doing so only creates a dysfunctional working environment, one where competition and rivalry prevails. Instead, provide opportunities for knowledge and skill sharing. Employees will likely feel a sense of belonging and pride when they’re able to help others on their team succeed. This knowledge sharing can also increase your team’s overall performance, even long after the specific individual moves on to another team or company.
Developing a knowledge-sharing culture takes a bit of work on your end, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doable. If one of your employees recently worked on a deck and tactfully used video recordings, you may want them to explain how they did it. During a weekly team meeting, give them a few minutes to go through the process. This quick tutorial can save other employees’ time who may have been wondering how to elevate their own presentations. Have the employee write up a brief step-by-step guide and save it to a shared team drive for easy access.
Another way to boost knowledge and skill sharing is to encourage collaboration. Amongst marketing teams, it’s typical for employees to work in a silo. They are responsible for their own set of projects or clients, meaning they are working more with sales than with their own teammates. Setting up debriefs after projects or having a different employee share their work at each team meeting can foster collaboration. Make sure everyone on the team, including remote employees, are invited to share their experiences. This can help establish a sense of trust and acceptance.
Conclusion
Finding how to increase your team’s productivity levels will take some work on your end. You’ll need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team. This will allow you to better understand where points of confusion, conflict, or stress are most likely to occur. With this information, you can then work at designing a flow where everyone feels like a valued contributor.
