15 Fresh Ideas for Marketing Leadership

Marketing is a tough field, especially in today’s world.

Marketing Directors and Chief Marketing Officers have the wonderful opportunity to lead their teams, but that can be a challenge when the industry changes so rapidly. As soon as you have it figured out, it changes again. That can be hard to navigate when the majority of companies are stuck in their ways and you can’t impact things even if you want to.

Our team has worked both at marketing firms and internal marketing departments, and we know the struggle firsthand. As the marketing industry keeps evolving, we decided to put together 15 ideas to help spark some fresh thinking.

We hope these tips can help some CMOs, Marketing Directors, and anybody in a marketing decision-making capacity.

1. Get Closer to Your Employees. In order to know how to motivate your employees, you must get to know them on a more personal level. Stay updated on what your team’s individual goals are, and share company goals by scheduling time for coffee or lunch, one-on-one, as much as possible. Just have quick morning coffee meetings if the middle of the day gets too crazy for everybody. Over-communication is better than less communication.

2. Communicate the Way Your Team Naturally Likes. To stay organized within your team, use tools like Slack or even a group text to communicate updates often. It’s important to choose a method that works best for your team and their work style. Some people prefer apps like Skype and Slack. Others may prefer to just have a group text. The key is just to ask everybody what works best for them, then implement that. Not just assume or force a method.

3. Be Open to Emerging Platforms. The worlds of social media and marketing are constantly changing. As a leader in the field, it’s important to not “laugh” or “scoff” at new platforms or new marketing strategies just because they don’t seem obvious at the time. For example, TikTok is number one on the App Store. Text Messaging is becoming a serious marketing tactic. Posting on LinkedIn actually matters. Snapchat Ads really could perform well.

4. Try Trello. Trello is a great platform for staying organized and having digital to-do lists. You can categorize them by project, by team member, by month, or however is most efficient for your business. Have everybody join the same “Trello board” and contribute their information and notes. Then, things can be crossed off or dragged into a “Completed” category when they’re done! Either way, make sure to ask and see if people even want an online to-do list.

5. Shared Google Docs & Sheets. When your teams are working on a lot of different things at once, it can be difficult to keep emailing documents back and forth. Having a “living, breathing, changing” document sometimes is a lot easier.

6. Figure Out How to Create Speed Internally. When it comes to decision making, testing new platforms, and adjusting marketing spend, there is no time for politics and waiting around. Things happen fast in marketing, and if you don’t execute quickly, a competitor will.

7. Be Internally Organized & Use Your Agency for Their Expertise. When you are organized internally, that means less time for your agency to be fiddling around with things that are more “busy work” than “actual work” that drives results. Certain tasks should be held by the company, and some should be held by the agency. Think of your marketing firm as a partner, and less like a vendor. Divide and conquer.

8. Random Acts of Kindness Always Win. When you think of it, randomly do something nice for your partners or customers. This is a great way to “cut through the noise” and create stronger relationships. It’s one thing to do it before Christmas. It’s a whole different vibe when you send somebody a nice gift basket or buy their entire team breakfast on a random Tuesday morning.

9. Online Thought Leadership. Consider going on podcasts, starting your own show, creating blog articles, or posting on LinkedIn regularly. This will establish you not only as a leader within your company, but within your industry as a whole. Also, if you start to put content out, it indirectly helps market the company you work for.

10. Create An Internal Podcast. Start an internal podcast, and feature different people from your team, your best customers, or others in the industry. Audio continues to be important and gain momentum as a way people consume information. Be at the forefront of this trend. People love to listen to podcasts, and more importantly, people love being asked to be a guest on one.

11. Get Comfortable Branding & Not Selling. It’s tough to even get in the mindset of “not selling” or “no call-to-action”. However, putting out value-added content is always a good strategy. Think of your business as more of a content provider, educator, or entertainment source than an advertisement or sales pitch. In 2020 the only way to stand out is to truly make people want to come back for more. Nobody wants to come back for an ad.

12. Realize That “How Do We Go Viral?” Is Not A Strategy. Adding value to people is the only way to create the potential to go viral. If you only try to make your next “viral moment” then your content will become one dimensional, and your audience will feel it. Just be creative and always think of what the audience will want. If it’s what they want, it might go viral.

13. Be Sensitive to “Sound Off” on Mobile. Make sure to subtitle and caption videos online because a large percentage of people don’t use sound on their phones. Use a platform like Kapwing or pay an expert on Upwork to transcribe and subtitle your video assets at a fair rate.

14. Up the Quantity. Quantity is becoming arguably more important than quality. In our opinion, we’d rather you just post it, and let the audience decide if it’s quality or not. We’re not saying post anything & everything – but be a little more flexible because it will allow you to move faster. You never know what the audience might enjoy. Ultimately, you don’t decide what quality is. Don’t debate one tweet for an hour.

15. Force More Common Sense into the Marketing Process. We know, being a Marketing Director or CMO can be a lot. We realize sometimes the Company Board, or the CEO, and higher-level things out of your control can take over. However, in 2020, the marketing world needs more common sense. Don’t miss out on big opportunities just because you can’t get certain metrics. If something is being used by hundreds of millions of people then it’s probably a good idea to spend time there regardless of reporting / attribution / internal politics. Don’t get stuck in the past. Always bring a little common sense into your conference room meetings.

That’s it for now!

As a leader on your marketing team, it is crucial to set the tone, and be at the forefront of what is important. We hope these tips helped spark a couple of new ideas. If you enjoyed this list, feel free to share it with other marketing professionals in your network.

WE’RE ALWAYS HERE TO HELP IF YOU NEED ANYTHING ELSE!

— THE BRICK MEDIA TEAM 🙂