No brand can take a step into the future without a digital marketing team. That’s why it’s in your best interest to ensure that your team is both efficient and productive.
Let’s first define what efficiency and productivity actually mean.
Efficiency is a team’s level of performance that describes a process that uses the lowest amount of input to create the greatest amount of output. It basically shows how your team uses the available resources to create maximum ROI.
Productivity, on the other hand, measures the efficiency of production. You can express it as the output ratio to input in your team’s production process.
As you can see, efficiency and productivity go hand in hand – and they both affect the profitability of your business.
Here are six tips to help you increase the efficiency and productivity of your digital marketing team.
1. Establish and Communicate Team Goals
Your first step to making your team more productive is ensuring that all team members know your short- and long-term goals.
Establish your objectives and organize a meeting to communicate them to the entire team. Naturally, your short- and long-term goals might change, so you need to gather the team together at least once per six months and ideally at the beginning of every quarter.
That type of transparency is necessary if you want team members to complete their tasks while keeping the bigger picture in mind.
Understanding broader team goals is also a way to help the team see how their work contributes to achieving these objectives. As a result, they feel more motivated to complete their tasks and stay top of their game.
Keeping your whole company informed of your business goals and perspective is the best way to tie SEO and sales, web design and marketing, etc.
2. Assign Different Tasks to Team Members
Communication is essential to the productivity of your team. Give out tasks to individual team members with clear instructions and describe what is expected of them in each task.
If you ensure that every member knows their primary responsibilities, you can sleep soundly knowing that the work is being performed smoothly.
When the entire team has clarity about who is responsible for what, team members will take ownership of their tasks and know that accomplishing their goals will get them recognition. Keep your team transparent and make sure that members know each other’s responsibilities.
3. Listen to Team Members
Another essential point about communication is understanding the needs and preferences of your employees.
Listening to your team members can only benefit you because they will feel ready to come to you whenever they have some exciting ideas.
They will also feel more motivated and empowered to share their input and contribute to the project at the top of their capabilities.
If you fail to make employees feel like they are being listened to, you can be sure that it will affect their motivation level negatively. As a result, their efficiency and productivity will drop too.
Be there for your team members and ask them to share their ideas. Create a space that encourages that contribution and helps them realize that they are far more than mere cogs in the machine.
Your team is the real force behind your organization, and if something fails there, you can be sure that your profitability will drop. Happy employees make for a profitable business.
4. Implement a Healthy Work Culture
Many managers think it’s good to set high goals for the team and observe as they struggle to meet them, often sacrificing their personal lives and staying overtime at the office.
But employees who don’t have enough time to take care of their diet, exercise, personal relationships, and the overall work-life balance aren’t happy.
As a result, their energy level and productivity will drop with that type of organization every week.
That’s why it’s wise to implement a culture that reasonably promotes self-improvement and hard work.
Ensure your employees have access to healthy snacks and lunch options to keep them energetic and healthy.
Make sure that your team members cultivate a healthy work-life balance and be open to making their schedules more flexible to accommodate various life events and circumstances.
Encourage employees to take breaks once in a while and educate them about effective techniques for boosting their concentration. Consider using an overtime calculator to make sure they don’t spend too much time at the office.
Trust me, they will be grateful for it, and their appreciation will translate directly to their performance.
5. Offer Opportunities for Bonding
If you’d like your team to collaborate smoothly and efficiently, you need to ensure that the members get along.
Their relationship will be the backbone of your team’s productivity, and you need to make sure that they are friendly toward one another.
That’s how you avoid problems that are likely to occur when individuals are forced to work together on a project.
There are plenty of team-building activities you can choose from that will help you build the kind of team you want to create.
Make sure that these activities are in your schedule regularly so everyone is on the same page and has an opportunity to develop meaningful engagement with team members.
Include your team in all aspects of your marketing, from SEO to redesign. This will keep their morale high!
If a part of your team is working remotely, be sure to arrange an in-person meeting where all team members get to know one another in an informal context at least once in a few months.
Setting up a business email and assigning a separate email address to use as a company email would be a great start.
6. Equip Your Team with the Right Tools
Productive teams need an excellent team management tool. According to research from McKinsey, 20% of the workweek goes to waste because team members are busy looking for information from colleagues. Another 28% is lost on managing emails.
Maintaining team transparency and efficiency is easier if you implement a team management app that helps to remove all the manual work and delays, making communication and collaboration smoother. Consider using Trello, Asana, or Flow as your go-to management tools.
But even more than that. It’s not just about collaboration and teamwork. It’s also about independent work.
Allowing your team members to create something independently will boost their motivation and productivity.
It can be as easy as turning images into videos or as creative as finding a blog name or as consistent as using a creative toolkit for all team members to follow.
Text Optimizer is another excellent tool to boost creativity and encourage your team members to create and brainstorm.
By allowing your team members to share and assign tasks, inform others about their progress, and keep track of everything in a single place, you will be making them more productive than ever.
Moreover, your team members can download a mobile app for these tools to make them even more satisfied and productive whenever a creative idea strikes.
Your digital marketing team is the backbone of your business. If it’s not performing well, you can ensure that your profitability will suffer. Implement these seven tips, and you will be on your way to creating an incredibly efficient and productive team that takes your marketing strategies to the next level.
Author bio
Ann Smarty is the brand and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and the founder of Viral Content Bee.
Ann’s search engine optimization career began in 2010. She is the former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal and a contributor to prominent search and social blogs, including Small Business Trends and Mashable.
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