Businesses use various marketing tools and strategies to reach a wider audience. And if you own or manage a business yourself, you understand how important your different departments are to the life of your brand, and it’s not easy to achieve the optimal balance between your sales and creative teams.
They have to work hard to create a marketing plan that highlights your services or products in a way that will be visually and emotionally appealing to potential customers. When these teams collaborate seamlessly, your product or service will become more visible, ultimately growing your business.
Communication Between Teams
It goes without saying that teams need to practice effective communication in order to be successful. That’s why it’s important for them to build a strong, trusting relationship so that when they share their ideas respectfully. Keep the following tips in mind:
- A high morale will allow teams to come together and work through any issues that might come up.
- Your teams should not work as teams but rather ateam, even though they have defined and set roles.
- The members should be excited about working with other departments. It is possible to have fun and still have a productive workday.
- How this team communicates and collaborates will be reflected in the final product.
Collaborative Reflection and Representation
Sales and creative marketing teams are responsible for making sure your company’s product or service is well represented to as many customers as possible. Of course, your team members will have their own individual tasks, but they should overlap to encourage effective communication and collaboration to ensure the campaign comes together to increase sales and grow your customer base.
The team you assemble must be able to create advertisements that reflect your brand and represent the mission of your company. The final advertisement should carry this as well. In other words, when you see your product advertised, you should be able to recognize the collaborative efforts of both teams.
Delegating Responsibilities
It is important for your sales and creative teams to understand exactly what is required of them in general and for each specific project. While the bulk of their direction will come from you, it might be a good idea to allow them to delegate responsibilities amongst themselves. This will give them the opportunity to change up their responsibilities so they don’t become bored with repetitive tasks.
Sharing a list of goals and what tasks need to be completed in order to meet them will help each member fully understand what is required of them before starting the project. If you take on the challenge of delegating tasks, make sure that you are doing so fairly and with team members’ qualifications in mind. You don’t want to delegate an artistic task to someone who is a marketing analyst with no interest in color pallettes.
Eliminating Unnecessary Divisions
Sometimes, it’s necessary for team members to work independently before coming together as a group to brainstorm and collaborate. However, you should encourage them to consider themselves a team.
- All work completed independently should still meet all marketing goals and criteria.
- When a team member has a dissenting opinion or unique idea, don’t alienate them. All team members should be able to talk through their thoughts without isolating themselves from the group.
- Each and every team member must know the products or services enough that no divisiveness exists. They should be on one accord about every product and every service offered by your company.
- Don’t encourage competition. The team is working for your business, not for their own personal gain or to rub their egos.
As a business owner or executive, you obviously want to see your company and employees succeed. Your creative and sales teams especially need to be flawless in order to create and implement your marketing strategies. Without their collaborative efforts, your business cannot grow and your messaging will get lost.
When you delegate tasks for each team to complete and allow them time to combine their ideas, you end up with an effective marketing plan and campaign. There is no need to separate the teams because when they understand what each person is responsible for, the end result is an advertisement that reflects their work without reflecting that it came from two different teams.