That battle-tested marketing playbook you’ve been using needs to be pitched.
Yes, you used it as your go-to resource in days of old for traditional TV, radio and print – when you could run so much weight in media and predictably get so much outcome in terms of sales even if you didn’t know quite how it worked.
You kept using it in the “tra-digital” phase, when the internet was introduced and commercialized with advertising, when the shopping experience moved online and advertisers shifted 20%-30% of their budgets or so to digital.
But you can’t use it any longer. You can’t use it now. Why? The playbook is broken.
Marketing and advertising have changed dramatically over the past 10 years, and they are constantly evolving. Our industry has moved from traditional advertising – think linear TV and print – to digital, and as a result, our media ecosystem and marketing and advertising landscape have been completely disrupted.
Consumer behavior is different. In fact, the customer journey is more complex today: Television ratings are on the decline, which even linear TV sports couldn’t hold steady. More people are embracing the switch to streaming TV.
And another thing? Consumers are more comfortable shopping on their device now than in the physical world, which has only accelerated with the pandemic.
Not only have consumers’ lives changed, but our working lives have also changed as well, especially as we’re dealing with the current labor shortage, The Great Resignation (otherwise known as The Great Recalibration).
So how does a company become the place where employees want to work? How do modern marketers chart their course when it’s no longer business as usual?
Goodway Group is here to help. Now get expert advice from our Kandi Gongora, Michael Hayes and Amanda Martin with these 10 tips to building a modern marketing team that can weather and navigate change.
1. Create Employee Job Maps, not Job Descriptions.
Define what you expect employees in your job roles to accomplish in the short term and long term as they gain experience and develop and attain adjacent new skills. When you develop your talent, you retain your talent.
2. Hire the Right Employees at the Start.
What should you look for in a modern marketer? Make sure you hire those who are intellectually curious, driven to continually learn and grow and who are assertive – who have a “challenger” mentality and can lead your internal conversations and push your organization forward.
3. Believe in the Employees You Hire and Give Them Big Projects to Tackle From Day 1.
You spend a lot of money to recruit, interview and hire employees. So trust they’re good-intentioned and will work hard. Let them do what you hired them to do and manage by outcome, not tasks.
4. Show Your Employees Your Value and Treat Them Like Clients.
Develop employee profiles and think through all your employee interaction touchpoints so they’re as positive as can be. Give employees flexibility and offer unique benefits they can’t easily find elsewhere. Be sure to bridge the generational divide to meet employees’ expectations, no matter whether your employees are working in the office, remote or a bit of both. Instead of dictating how to work, allow your individual teams autonomy and control over deciding how to best handle the customer experience and ensure all the work gets done.
5. Make Your Organization the Place People Want to Go.
Talk to people at companies that lead the way when it comes to employee experience. Rethink how you operate. Seek out and incorporate the right communication, recognition and team-building tools to keep your corporate communication open, relationships strong and your business humming along smoothly. Consider supplementing with the latest innovative tech such as virtual reality. (At Goodway, all our employees have an Oculus headset so we can have new virtual reality experiences together and work and have fun in an entirely new way.)
6. Do the Legwork and Identify Business Challenges First.
A lot of people like to jump to solutions because it’s the easiest and sometimes more fun, but the truth is you must take the time to figure out what your organization’s business challenges are first, where you want to go and how you want to get there, and that’s usually grounded in defining the problems first.
7. Build Connections With Your Employees Through a Mix of In-Person Events.
Meals, meetings and team-building events can help clarify communications, combat employee burnout and build trust, credibility and satisfaction. Be sure to bring your employees along and involve them in your vision for the future and the process of change.
8. Analyze Current Employee Skill Sets and Fill In Gaps, as Necessary.
Have a mix of generalists who have a lot of different skill sets and specific subject-matter experts – forward-thinking leaders who can disseminate knowledge across your organization. Create an internal skills database so you have record of all your people can do. Decide what tasks to keep in-house and what to outsource based on what you can feasibly handle and the cost of talent. (These decisions are different for each company. It depends on who you are and where you want to focus your energy.)
9. Concentrate on Brand Building and Demand Generation at the Same Time.
Create knowledge of your brand at the same time as you’re creating interest in your brand. It must be balanced, a blend of art and science in the marketing world. You may shift your budget to performance-driven media because you can prove it works. But if you neglect brand building and your consideration pool isn’t fueled, one day, it could dry up. Never neglect one for the other. They must work together.
10. Test, Learn and Repeat Regularly.
Develop more than one future marketing and advertising playbook. Develop one for every vertical you serve – for industries such as travel to quick-service restaurant to automotive and more – to help your clients achieve success.
Want more future of work details and little-known tips to create a modern marketing team built to weather, navigate and take on the future?
Watch our informative, on-demand Future of Work: Building the Modern Marketing Team webinar now or contact us.