6 Tips for Building a Better Marketing Team

One of the most important jobs for any leader is to marshal their resources to optimize performance. When creating a better marketing team, whether it’s your employees or outside marketing professionals, knowing how to get the most out of them can be a challenge.

Given that different people can be motivated by different things, understanding the balance between motivational carrots and sticks is paramount in sales and marketing.

Contrary to popular belief, not all sales and marketing people are motivated simply by money. Sure, it helps, and it’s always been a significant factor in many ways, but small and medium-sized businesses need to look beyond money to truly optimize a team’s performance. How does one do that, though?

1. Set Measurable Goals

There are thousands of books and articles about the benefits of setting goals. While you may consider it a waste of time (or are like me and don’t have a cup of coffee without a plan), goals really do one thing: keep people focused.

By setting goals, you know in which direction you are headed and can calculate the steps you need to take to get there. If you need help setting goals, search for S.M.A.R.T. (Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Relevant. Time-Bound.) goals for a great way to help hold people accountable.

Pro Tips:

• When you set goals, focus and prioritize. Remember, focus is one of the main reasons you set goals in the first place. Prioritizing is essential because nobody can work on 15 different priorities at once.
• Prioritize all the goals, yet pick only the top two or three to work on. Why three? Because three is about everyone’s limit. I don’t care how well you think you multitask. Once you accomplish the goal, work on the next priority.

2. Align Sales and Marketing

The larger an organization, the more its sales and marketing teams will likely lack alignment. Sales and marketing teams are often headed in different directions and working toward separate goals. And if you have seen a three-legged race or paddled a boat, you know what happens when two people don’t go in the same direction.

Make sure sales and marketing are committed to reaching the same goals. Much of this alignment will require building and maintaining open lines of communication. Regular check-ins can help foster clarity on initiatives and ensure efforts do not conflict (more on that below).

3. Give Good Direction

Good direction is the key to getting good results. Create a plan. Focus on the strategy. Use the plan and the strategy to decide what to do (and, just as importantly, what not to do). Remember, focusing on the goal is part of the plan. Communicating the plan and the strategy to get where you are headed is key to giving good direction.

You must know your people. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do they work best? What will help them get the best results? This is the job of a good leader. All people are different and want different things. Understand what motivates them, and if you don’t know, ask.

4. Set Deadlines and Check-Ins

With any goal or plan comes a deadline. Whether that deadline is stated (preferred) or ongoing until the goal is met, check-ins, milestones, and deadlines are part of the roadmap to achieving success and building an effective marketing team.

Again, knowing your people is key here. Check in too much, and they may feel you are micromanaging. While we all know how annoying it is to be micromanaged, it is actually bad from an efficiency standpoint because you are wasting resources. Check in too little, and you risk going off course.

5. Offer Praise and Recognition

Praise and recognition are great ways to build teams and motivate people. Sadly, too few people do this (or do it poorly). We’ve all worked with someone who loved to take credit for other people’s work or took it for granted.

Leaders who get the most out of their teams know how to praise and thank their teams. As a result, their teams tend to work harder for them. It’s not rocket science; people like to work with people they like.

6. Be Flexible

It’s only luck if everything goes as planned. I like to tell people two things:

1. Change is the only constant in my life.
2. Most leaders have responsibility for many things but control over very few.

You must play well with others. This has been true in every job and project, both paid and volunteer, for my entire career. How people recognize, adapt to, and overcome changes and situations that are outside of their direct control makes the difference between a leader’s success and failure.

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[Editors’ Note: To learn more about this and related topics, you may want to attend the following on-demand webinars (which you can listen to at your leisure, and each includes a comprehensive customer PowerPoint about the topic):

1. Advertising Aces: Maximizing Reach and ROI
2. Turning an Idea or Product Into a Business
3. Which Marketing Channels Should You Use and Why?

This article was originally published in 2020 and updated on May 29, 2023. This article was most recently updated by the Financial Poise Editors.] 

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