Have a team of digital marketers, social media managers, content creators, and SEOs working for you but don’t know how to manage their time efficiently? Hoping to build a cohesive team, but find yourself struggling to keep on top of things? If so, read on!

Set Priorities And Deadlines

You need to set your team’s priorities and deadlines. It’s easy for everyone to get distracted by the countless shiny objects in the digital sphere and lose track of what’s important. You don’t want this to happen, so take the time to set clear goals and benchmarks for your team.

For example, maybe you want to ensure all your social media channels are performing at their optimal levels and report on this regularly. Setting a goal of 500 engaged fans on Facebook each week is something that can be tracked objectively and measured against. If this is a stretch goal for your team, but you want to start getting measurable results, then setting this as your top priority will help you stay focused throughout the week.

Communicate And Collaborate

Your team will be working closely with outside agencies and vendors as well as each other, so it’s important you establish clear lines of communication as well as collaboration across disciplines.

This means, among other things, coordinating schedules and meetings, staying in touch with clients, following up on contractually obligated tasks, and resolving issues or conflicts efficiently. In order to do this, it’s important that you each maintain individual project files, but also keep a central copy in a shared project folder accessible to all team members.

Create A Vision/Mission Statement

Your marketing vision/mission statement should be concise but also comprehensive enough to cover all your key messaging and branding across all platforms. Having a clear idea of your company’s vision and mission (the reason you’re in business in the first place) will help you determine what content you should be creating and which platforms you should be using to reach your audience.

This is also a good place to establish your brand’s voice and personality, as well as the overall brand strategy. Your vision/mission statement should mirror your website’s H1 heading and make it easy for visitors to find and understand your content. Ensure this statement is easy to read and digest (but not too simplistic) and can be accurately represented in all your marketing communications (creative, written, and video).

Develop Key Personas

The purpose of key personas is to give your marketing a face (literally!), so to speak. It’s easy for your audience to get distracted by the sheer volume of content vying for their attention in the digital sphere, so having a face (or faces) to connect with will help keep them interested and engaged throughout the campaign.

As the name implies, key personas are the profiles of fictional characters that embody the various target audiences for your products and services. They should be uniquely named and have unique voice, objectives, and strengths that distinguish them from other individuals in your target groups.

Sometimes it can be hard to know how to approach a persona. Start by defining the problem you’re trying to solve. In most cases, you’ll want to start with a situation (a problem) and work your way to a solution (your proposed action).

Establish Roles And Responsibilities

Your marketing department will probably already have some structure in place, but you can and should establish roles and responsibilities of the various team members.

Establishing clear roles and responsibilities will help establish a working environment where everyone knows their duty and no one feels stifled or overwhelmed by the amount of work. Role definitions should be concise and accurate (ensure you don’t have any ambiguities), but should also give the employee a sense of ownership over the work they’re doing.

Define Marketing Goals And KPIs

It’s important to track your team’s progress toward reaching their goals and establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) along the way. Without this, it’s difficult to know if you’re meeting your objectives or not.

A marketing goal is a specific achievement you aim to achieve within a specific period of time. These goals should be measurable and attainable, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. KPIs are metrics (such as numbers of website visitors, emails opened, and video views) that you can measure to determine how successful your marketing campaign or program is.

Create A Culture Of Self-awareness

Your marketing department (or individual team members) should be keenly aware of their accomplishments, skills, and limitations. Only then can they make the proper adjustments and move forward effectively.

If you find that a particular area of marketing is weak, it can be difficult to identify the specific actions that need to be taken to improve it. One way to overcome this is to establish a self-awareness culture throughout the department. Regular 360-degree reviews that ask questions about each team member’s skills, knowledge, and performance are one way to ensure everyone is aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, people with the Marketing department might want to consider taking one day a week (or every other week) to review their work and identify ways to improve.

Review And Revise The Statement Regularly

Your vision/mission statement, along with your marketing strategy, will evolve and change as the world around you changes. The key is to review and revise your statement as necessary so that it reflects these changes and remains accurate and concise.