Optimizing the marketing efficiency can help you get unprecedented returns on your investment, even 100% in some cases!
Hence, fueling your marketing team’s motivation and keeping their performance levels high should be your #1 priority.
But there is a challenge.
Over the top industry disruptions, rapid technological development, and break-neck market competition – the jobs of marketers have become more complex!
However, despite these challenges, some market leaders across the globe are able to grab eyes for their products. And of course, they sweat every bit for these results and keep their marketing strategies spearheaded at all times!
So, let us dig through the top productivity improvement strategies and find out how you can join the league.
What is Team Productivity?
Team productivity refers to all the valuable activities performed by a team in a specific amount of time. Team productivity can also be referred to as the sum of all individual efforts. Now, productivity does not mean draining all energies out of your team or making them work round-the-clock. It involves offering the right hardware and software tools to help your marketing professionals complete their day-to-day tasks and maintain the right work-life balance.
Marketing team productivity has many metrics or growth indicators that show whether your efforts are headed in the right direction or not:
Brand Perception
When your customers and prospects develop positive brand perceptions, your marketing efforts are directed in the right direction!
While brand perception and reputation stem from multiple factors, team productivity and workplace motivation are their vital parts. Use social listening tools to track your brand perception.
Audience Reaction
When we think about it, it doesn’t take much to gauge the audience’s reactions these days. You can simply share your campaign over social media platforms, streaming websites, and public platforms, and get reactions within minutes!
Sales or Intended Output
Numbers are an important motivation behind every marketing strategy. If every marketing effort meets the intended results and in a sustained manner, you know that your team has been doing good work!
While these factors might determine team productivity, they cannot be considered specific metrics for tracking productivity or performance.
Related: Sales Productivity: Tips From the Top Salespeople
Up next, we discuss those metrics and show you how to use them.
How to Track and Measure the Productivity of Your Team?
Before we discuss how to increase productivity in your marketing team, you must know how to “measure and track” it. Because, if you don’t know how much money you have in your pockets, how can you even think of doubling it by the next quarter, right?
So, take a look at some ways to measure and track team productivity!
Set Productivity Benchmarks
Without setting productivity benchmarks, you are at risk for creating business processes and workflows that might not make sense for your enterprise. With wrong benchmarks, you can end up feeling like your team is average or under-performing. This can send you in a firing and hiring frenzy, accosting your employee trust as well as money!
Further, you must have two types of benchmarks:
- Internal: They evaluate your productivity overtime against your best performances.
- External: They compare your performance against your competitors’ performance.
Factors to keep in mind while setting benchmarks:
- Accuracy
- Industry relevance
- Long-term sustainability of the benchmarks
Boost your team’s productivity with these top sales KPIs.
Track Employee Activity
Tracking employee activities allows you to measure an employee’s individual performance and his contribution to the team’s productivity.
In order to measure employee productivity, you must set clear expectations, such as deadlines, the number of tasks to be completed, etc. Moreover, discourage marketing professionals from spending too much time on social media, phone calls, etc. while they are at work. This is one of the most bankable strategies to improve team productivity.
Other ways to measure employee productivity are:
- Regular feedback from managers
- Time tracking software
- Setting team-wide and organization-wide KPIs and check them
Regular Employee Check-Ins
Regular check-ins or one-on-one progress meetings enhance the quality of communication between managers and employees. The managers feel more approachable, and they are able to guide the employees better.
With clear expectations and an in-depth understanding of business goals and skill development, all the team members better understand their organizational and project duties.
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
While it is important for the team members to deliver the set number of tasks for a set time period, quality is foremost!
Quality and quantity are the central performance measures, but only thorough and accurate feedback can balance them well.
Hence, you need to consider the following to ensure quality and quantity are in equilibrium:
- Accuracy
- Productivity
- Detail-mindedness
- Multi-tasking
Related: What CEOs Can Learn From “Dumb Ways to Die”
Evaluate Team Engagement and Happiness
Evaluating team engagement and happiness scores allow you to measure employee satisfaction levels. Such insights allow you to find out if there is room for improvement and to incentivize the individual performance.
Happy employees are 13% more productive, which is your ultimate goal.
Related: 5 Reasons Why Your Sales Team is Underperforming
How to Improve Productivity in Your Marketing Team?
Data Democratization: Data Must Be Accessible to All
Data democratization gets rid of data silos that are present in an organization because of data access rights. Making campaign data accessible to the entire marketing team allows them to learn about the previous campaigns in a factual manner.
This also paves the way for self-service so that marketing professionals can resolve their queries and generate reports themselves. This is a self-learning method to boost your marketing team’s productivity.
Results:
- Marketers co-relate results with efforts based on facts and data
- Granular comparison of marketing efforts
- Marketing becomes a shared responsibility
Invest in a Smart and Robust Team Management Tool
Team management tools that come with advanced data analytics and actionable insights, such as ProProfs Project, are a boon for productivity!
You can see which employee is working on what task, at what time and how is his speed faring against the deadline. You can set due dates, prioritize projects, and track project progress with excellent in-built tracking functionalities. You can also receive real-time updates, such as alerts and notifications for tasks, deadlines, etc.
With core insights and real-time data, you can find ways to increase productivity at the granular level.
Never Overlook Individual Performance
In a team, every person has a different level of commitment and capabilities. While some marketing members perform way better than the set KPIs, some struggle to deliver as per the deadlines.
When you start measuring individual employee performance, it allows you to enhance the team performance as well. However, always ensure proper work distribution and fair evaluation for the best results.
This is one of the most bankable strategies to improve productivity in business and kick-starts a cycle of productivity in your enterprise.
Related: The 4 Main Lead Generation Goals: What Has Changed & How to Reach Them
Enhance Team Communication
Before you start wondering how to increase team productivity, you have to know whether “a team actually exists” or they are just individuals working together!
When your marketing team enjoys an excellent team bond, every member is able and willing to contribute. Create an open atmosphere and encourage every team member to share their ideas. Maintain a non-judgemental stance towards suggestions and appreciate healthy debates.
When teammates can communicate with each other in real-time, you generate a pool of commendable ideas.
Gradually, everybody works towards a common goal and your productivity levels improve.
Learn the effective quarterly marketing plan.
Offer Timely Feedback
Marketing team feedback must be regular, thorough, and timely! This is because the marketers are working from “campaign to campaign” and have the “overall brand positioning and promotion” agendas.
When they “know the results” of any latest measure they took, they understand better whether:
- The tactic was worth it or not
- Their efforts are aligned with the current market
- The team performance is downgrading or improving
Timely feedback allows them to stay on the right track at all times!
Related: Sales Enablement: 8 Ways to Help Your Sales Team Sell More
Never Lose Track of Your Marketing Team’s Productivity
Marketing team productivity is of immense importance as it determines how well your products or services perform in the market. In fact, your brand image and reputation depend on your marketing efforts to a great extent. Hence, you must always ensure that your marketing efforts never falter in the wake of new market expectations.
Establishing the best strategies to improve team productivity requires time, effort, and experience as a team manager. However, when coupled with smart team management tools, you can make this job easier and more streamlined.
So, start following the tips shared here and steer your marketing team towards sustainable growth.
Related: 7 Actionable Tips to Better Manage Outsourced Marketing Campaigns
