Collaboration is essential for effective marketing, but many teams fall short. Whether collaboration is stifled by poor processes, a lack of leadership, or company culture, it’s costly. According to research data, businesses lose $40 billion every year from turnover caused by toxic workplace culture – a problem that can be solved with strong leadership.
Performance tanks when teams are bored, frustrated, directionless, or are working in a silo. Although there are many strategies to increase productivity, they’ll all fall apart without a strong leader to align teams and departments to a cohesive vision.
Unfortunately, when your teams are unstable and processes don’t align, even the most effective marketing campaigns can fail. Building a marketing team requires more than just hiring people with talent. It requires visionary leadership, solid systems, and a culture where everyone moves together.
Here’s how you can achieve this in your organization.
1. Hire an interim CMO for strategic leadership
Many marketing teams continually spin their wheels because nobody’s there to own the vision and provide direction. That’s exactly what an interim CMO can provide. A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is an executive-level strategist who will blend right in with your existing leadership without the added cost of another full-time salary.
If you don’t already have an in-house CMO, you’re missing out on the leadership that can make the biggest difference for your company. According to Harvard Business Review, companies that leverage a fractional CMO grow their revenue by around 29%. Here’s what typically happens in companies that hire an interim CMO:
· Unification. An interim CMO brings decades of leadership experience in setting unified goals across and within departments, prioritizing initiatives, and translating high-level objectives into executable plans.
· Cost-effective expertise. An interim CMO costs between 50-75% less than a full-time in-house CMO. This allows you to scale your operations and only pay for strategy when you need it.
· Rapid alignment. With a fresh perspective, a fractional CMP can implement new processes, meetings, dashboards, and KPIs in a matter of weeks.
By hiring an interim CMO, you’ll align your teams with your company’s vision and goals, and finally get all your team members on the same page.
2. Build systems
Your teams can only collaborate effectively when they have clear objectives and workflows that work. Poor workflows can increase turnover by 31%. It’s crucial to map your workflows to uncover hidden redundancies and clarify who does what task, when, and how.
Here’s how it’s done:
· Document each phase. Each campaign phase from brief to launch should be mapped to pinpoint unnecessary handoffs or approval loops. It can help to use visual tools like Lucidchart to visualize the process at a glance.
· Unify documentation and data. All documentation and data should be housed in one central location. Everyone should be looking at the same dashboard, campaign calendars, and KPIs in a central repository.
· Define ownership. There should be a single owner for every process or workflow, whether it’s content creation, paid media, or analytics.
When your workflows are backed by strong systems and structure, teams stop reinventing the wheel and focus on getting results, not guessing what to do next.
3. Hire for role clarity
These days, many organizations hire generalists to handle multiple roles, but that’s a mistake that will cost you lost opportunities for revenue. Complex needs like search engine optimization (SEO), UX audits, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and copywriting require dedicated experts. By clarifying roles, you can avoid misalignment.
4. Create a strong feedback process
Continuous improvement requires honest, structured feedback on a regular basis. Without it, problems will hide and grow larger. After each campaign sprint or major project, hold a meeting where you and your teams discuss what went well and what needs improvement. Document these insights and adjust workflows accordingly.
Consolidate project discussions and feedback in dedicated Slack channels or Teams threads, depending on which application you use. And if you don’t already have a central application for real-time communication, get that set up right away. Don’t leave any of these conversations to email or they’ll get lost. Timely feedback will reduce friction, boost team morale, and keep turnover low.
Eliminate workflow chaos
Building a marketing team that doesn’t waste time, talent, or budget means ditching the blame game and zeroing in on implementing clear leadership, processes, and feedback. By hiring an interim CEO and mapping and systemizing workflows, you can transform isolated teams into a unified powerhouse. When every task follows a documented path and every team member knows their role, collaboration becomes a powerful competitive advantage.
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