Why do some digital Marketing teams win?

It’s a big question.

And after serving hundreds of clients in the most competitive industries, the answer is becoming clear.

All other things being equal, there are 3 team values that the most successful teams share – and the rest, don’t.

And while free (as in, not requiring budget), these values are priceless.

1. Commit All Team Members To Fast Implementation

High-performance Digital Marketing teams want to move quickly. To get things done. To get things LIVE.

And yet, one bottleneck can completely stall a project for months.

For example, meet Betty. Betty is on a digital marketing team and is responsible for reporting and data analytics. She’s signed up to the latest news and is among the first to know when a new version of a tracking code becomes available. She has early access to this code because she’s on an exclusive beta tester list.

This updated code will greatly help Betty measure marketing ROI and connects with every one of the digital marketing campaigns active now. When it’s installed, it will allow her to show the CEO the clearest picture of where high-value conversions are coming from, ever. And it should take a total of 1 hour of developer time, total. Just a simple copy & paste.

Brilliant!

So Betty gets the code ready and sends it for implementation. Away it goes with clear instructions for what to do. Yay!

But nothing happens. So she starts chasing. Two weeks go by. One month. Two months.

Finally, three months later, her code is installed.

She’s happy, but… in the end, she had to get tough on the web development team so they’ll be much less likely to help her in the future. And her one-on-one with the CEO has passed so her opportunity to show her quarterly insights for next quarter’s budget weren’t that clear. The CEO isn’t yet fully convinced, so they have a follow-up meeting scheduled.

What Betty didn’t know is that her company’s biggest competitor was also on the exclusive beta testing list. But they were able to get the code installed same day, 90x faster.

Make this advantage yours:

• Commit all digital marketing project members to Fast Implementation as a shared value
• Make sure non-marketing personnel like web developers have time to do marketing tasks, officially scheduled. There’s always something to do so recurring time allocations are likely best.
• Plan for contingencies. If one person isn’t available and is going to bottleneck the project, create a backup plan. Because people go on holidays, call in sick and leave organisations. Always have a contingency plan.

2. Go All the Way (or Don’t Go At All)

Question: how many projects have you seen progress to 75% readiness, then stall?

It can happen for a variety of reasons. Some good, some bad. But it’s a major cost either way.

And if the project resumes in the future, lots of rework needs to happen to bring everyone up-to-speed. Meetings are required to figure out where the project left off. Decisions have to be made about who’s available now and who needs to be hired. It’s a lot of admin.

And if the project doesn’t resume, all time and investment in it thus far has been for nothing. It’s a sunk cost. Don’t let this happen to you!

Make this advantage yours:

• Commit to finishing what gets started, to make sure all work that starts has productive value in the end
• Watch out for new threats to your project being completed. If a new item comes along that could derail progress, ask why the existing project is no longer important.
• Be very selective in what you start!

3. Embrace Effectiveness, Not Perfection (because Overproduction is Pure Waste)

Marketing deliverables must be effective for the purpose they suit. Once they are effective, it’s time to go live, because you’re better off going live now with something that’s effective (but not perfect) than continuing to invest your limited time and energy for marginal gains, if any.

And with so many other marketing items asking for your attention, stopping work at the right moment to move onto something new is a productivity hack that makes a big difference.

Make this advantage yours:

• Banish Perfection – it’s the enemy. Make Effectiveness your new measure for when something is ready.
• Define your constraints clearly to avoid activity tangents. What exactly does effective look like? What shouldn’t be there?
• Commit to MVP thinking: “what’s the minimum viable product we can get live to accomplish our goal now?”. Your team can always return to upgrade and enhance later, if necessary.

What do you think?

The post The 3 Practical, Powerful Marketing Team Values that WIN appeared first on Reef Digital.