Execution in you marketing team

So, online marketing, that is what will make your business grow. Your strategy has been defined. Your organization works data-driven and you know who your target audience is, what your target audience needs, where you can find your target audience, and through which channels they can be reached.

The starting point for your marketing strategy is in order. That is important. Based on this data, you are able to start working with your marketing team.

Let’s begin, you think; but how? How can I execute my strategy? How will I yield concrete results? And fast? How shall I go about it?

Marketing?

It seems like a good idea to first take a closer look at the concept of ‘marketing’ once more. Thinking back about marketing at around the turn of the century, I imagine a company’s marketing department producing a large number of folders, presentations, offline launch events, and external and internal newsletters. The marketing department was often the ‘arts-and-crafts’ organization within a company; besides marketing they also took care of the external and internal communication, PR, and when business cards had to be printed or a celebration needed to be organized, then that was also done by them.

All joking aside, this old-style marketing department also contributed to bringing the products or services of these companies to market. But eh… it must be clear that you need to really catch up fast if your marketing department nowadays still looks like and functions as an arts-and-crafts or communication club!

Due to the nature of marketing nowadays, something different is needed.

First of all, the role of marketing has changed significantly. The goal of marketing is to contribute to the company’s growth. When marketing cannot show results on a company level, it loses its right to exist.

The task of marketing has become a strategic one, namely to generate leads. These leads are essential for the sales or business developments department to get them into contact with potential customers. Without leads there are no sales. That explains that marketing has become a fundamental part of business operations, as opposed to it being a separate department with no clear contribution.

Secondly, the circumstances have seriously changed, from mainly offline marketing to a mostly online affair.

To deploy marketing at a strategic level and to actually contribute to your company’s results, a large dosage of Execution Power is needed.

Execution power

To actually get marketing to contribute to your company’s results, to really have it make an impact, Execution Power is needed. But that is what lacks in most marketing teams. It often just papers over the cracks. We rarely come across a company where the marketing team is the driving and pushing force behind the business results.

This way, too little focus is placed on results. There is no integral structure within the process where all components of marketing are linked. They are not making short cyclical changes and for them to do this might even seem impossible.

For example, imagine it is not possible to implement fast changes to a website, let alone, correctly perform A/B testing. There is a lack of insight into data, and as a result campaigns are not optimized regularly enough, and they are kept running without making a profit for far too long. There is no implemented process for the company to (rapidly) learn and optimize iteratively.

So, the answer to the question: “How should I go about this?” is: by setting up a clear structure which creates preconditions for your marketing team to be able to be successful. Through management skills, employing and developing thought and mentality within your marketing department and marketing activities, you ensure that you work in a structured and result-oriented manner. Just as you deploy your other business components.

The eight preconditions for Execution Power within your marketing team
Such a structured approach consists of the next eight preconditions for success. They are each equally important to implement.

1. An execution plan
   Apply a structure in which all online marketing elements form an integral whole. A plan. This is the basis for all your marketing efforts. Make sure that all planned activities continuously have a start and an endpoint, so that you develop an almost automatic focus on the result.
2. Project management application
   You use a project management application. We use Monday.com, both for ourselves and for our customers. That way, you focus on ownership, planning, scope, and budget. Just as with projects, it is good to have certified project management knowledge and skills in your marketing team. Make sure that the whole team is involved in both the content and the process parts of the project. This is much more efficient than having separate roles for content and process. At least, that is our experience.
3. Short iterations
   Short iterative work, following a process of building – testing – measuring is the best practice. This way, you retain focus on the correct priorities and (conversion) optimization.
4. A set huddle structure
   Align at a set, quite intensive frequency. We work with fortnightly operational huddles and monthly strategic huddles. On top of that, we hold a fifteen-minute start-of-day with the core marketing team. The focus on collaboration, results, and implementation enables us to quickly move ahead.
5. Essential skills and mindset
   In terms of skills, make sure that at least the following team members are on board: (growth) marketeer, website development, content marketeer, product owner (this is often the business owner in small and medium-sized enterprises) and sales. These skills have to be present at the table and have to be part of it from the very beginning. It is important that these team members are in contact continuously. To compromise this means that you will immediately sacrifice implementation, clout, and thus business results. A project management mindset and mentality should be at the basis of the team’s activities. Every member of the team is also a project manager. We never appoint a project manager for our projects; we make sure that that mindset and skill are available to the team members. We do not believe in full process managers but in the cooperating foreman.
6. Embrace low-code/no-code
   Is your marketing team hampered by technique? Then you have a serious problem. The good news? There are rock-solid low-code/no-code solutions available today, that your marketing team can get the most out of. This ranges from website solutions without dependence on expensive web developers, to software that gives you a detailed insight into all your results, to marketing automation. Plug & Play.
7. 100% buy-in of the business owner
   It is vitally important that the business owner forms an active part of the marketing team. Alternatively, this can be the marketing manager with a mandate to make decisions for the business owner. It is an illusion to expect that the marketing manager can manage on his or her own. The marketing partner needs short and cyclic input and decisions from the product/business owner. This is the fuel that runs the marketing motor.
8. Know what it is about
   All our best practices have one thing in common: the business/product owner knows everything about the contents of the project and the marketing activities. He or she dives in deep, is curious, thinks along, delivers input, and is critical. We generate significantly lower results when a manager is only involved in process management. We often have to conclude that he or she can even be the delaying factor.

Are these eight elements in order, then you have created a well-oiled machine that can start facilitating growth for your business.

The result

I can hear you think: “Well, that is quite a lot!” And yes, you are right. Generating Execution Power in your marketing activities is a serious matter which, when approached correctly, can yield serious results.

Applying our Growth Plan, we use this approach with our customers, based on the above mentioned eight elements. With our Growth Plan we continuously work as a full-stack marketing team towards a predefined goal. Customers like this, because they know that they will not have to invest in it forever and that we do not initiate unnecessary campaigns.

With the Growth Plan we make sure structure is applied. This leads to Execution Power, and thus, results.

Do you want to know more about the Growth Plan and what this can mean for your business

Schedule your Growth Call with our Growth Consultant.