ABSTRACT
In this presentation, I share:
• What I’ve learned around building a team as an in-house marketer, structuring and managing a stellar team to support SEM and potentially other online channels
• How teams can function effectively as a unit
• How to enable them to successfully coexist and collaborate with cross-functionally in the org, while also contributing to growth for the company and support corporate visions, initiatives and goals
NOTES
2. As an Online Marketing Manager at Salesforce.com I’m responsible for strategic digital marketing efforts across several channels, including SEM, display, social media, SEO, lead gen/content synd and any online advertising
How many of you work at an agency right now? How many do online marketing in-house for a company?
I currently work in-house, but in a past life, I worked on the agency side with global Fortune 1000 clients, in different industries, targeting both B2B and B2C audiences, and I’ve been a manager of talent and an individual contributor in SEM and online marketing
3. This quote will reveal that I have a serious passion for building and nurturing teams of amazing and diverse talent.
6. Before you embark on the crucial task of developing an in-house SEM team, let’s step back and look at the established corporate business goals and map out how your team will be responsible supporting them with your own milestones. Understand what the strengths & skills are of your current team, and identify where each person excels and contributes most effectively. Now you can outline needs & analyze the gaps that you will be looking for elsewhere, and this can be internally or externally.
7. Whether you’re recruiting within your org or outside, strive to fill gaps with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, technical skills and levels of experience. Almost as if you’re creating our own agency within your team based on YOUR needs. At Salesforce, we find that we need people on the team to handle specific channels (i.e. focus most time on SEM) and others who are able to oversee multiple channels at a time so we’re coordinating well, as well as people managers to ensure each team member is being challenged and growing. These roles can be determined by each person’s background and career path.
Whatever staff you decide to select for your team, there are some common traits that I’ve seen have been unanimous across great teams I’ve managed or have worked on. There’s a quote I heard recently “Just because you are the boss doesn’t mean you are the source of all knowledge.” (Jack Welch), so find the right talent to manage search campaigns efficiently out of gates. Whatever level you’re at, you shouldn’t have a sense of entitlement (and neither should your team members). Someone once told me that “as a manager, you work for your team, your team doesn’t work for you”, so consistently get feedback from your team on who/what they need and ask open ended questions; I’ve found that in team structure planning, my “subordinates” had some of the best suggestions on how to make changes - and it wasn’t ALWAYS “we want more people”.
8. After hiring your staff, you’ll want to ensure you have a logical and customized structure, and though I can tell you about how we do this for Salesforce or in my agency teams, YOUR structure will be very specific to how your business functions
Starting with higher level considerations above your team - What are the corporate goals and vision? Depending on how the company and larger departments are structured, how does this make the most sense for YOUR team structure? Are the areas of focus on individual products, market size, industry, BU? (Example: SFDC is focused on the “customer” message, and need to align all campaigns and assets, in past we’ve tried rouge campaigns where they weren’t aligned and confused the customer) Looking at team considerations, how can you organize your team members to align with company direction while it makes sense for your responsibilities? You’ll want to make sure your resources are staffed appropriately to support company initiatives (EXAMPLE: at SFDC, we find if we don’t look at how the company focus is changing, our team isn’t seen as an impactful channel or we might get pulled in last minute with limited resources) MUST be flexible to shrink & grow, change focus. Our team members must be knowledgeable across online channels (SEM, display, SEO, analytics).
EXAMPLE: if your analyst is sitting on the same team as the SEM folks, they may be biased, keep them separate and they can take requests from product teams and sem team and use pure testing methodologies to make decisions and rec’s.
9. Some of the best teams I’ve seen can struggle significantly if they don’t have the leadership guidance and tools to stay on track. Firstly, don’t underestimate the importance of tracking across your team and other departments. What are each of us measured against? (revenue, leads, convs, clicks, impressions)
When presenting SEM metrics translate into your audience’s language (i.e. impressions=brand awareness, CTR/clicks=interest in ad messaging, etc.) Ensure you arm your SEM army with the necessary infrastructure/tools to be efficient. We had a hurdle where we weren’t using offline data for online opt’s, solved by importing into bid mgt platform. Processes: new hires, new tools, changes to org, reporting dash, etc.
10. Now that you’ve put in a lot of work to find great talent and structure your team properly, you need to ensure they stay happy, fulfilled, challenged and empowered in their roles. First step in doing that is setting very clear performance goals for each indiv person – at SFDC, we establish a Vision, Methods & Obstacles (EXAMPLE: one of my goals is communicate across int’l teams, while level above me is focused on overall global synergy). Ensure total alignment with manager, team, department, corporate, products, etc. (looking at the image, corp has goals that feed into marketing dept, online, SEM, etc; and each level above is responsible for ensuring the supporting goals are achieved and achievable). EXAMPLE: if the goal for the company is to increase rev by X%, then that would trickle down so your team/indiv goals should align, translate into SEM metrics. It’ll also be important to empower your team to understand the business, and be intimately involved in processes (mrkt leads to sales), politics (to some degree), and products/services of your company, so they can easily know how to best market your company. “Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.” (Jack Welch) Last but definitely not least, is never stop learning
It’s a bit more difficult in-house, but learn from industry resources, vendors, each other, networking events, internal/external trainings (share knowledge internally is great for gaining visibility), conferences (who raised their hand earlier saying they work in-house? Pat yourself on the back). With all this in mind, coordinate with each person to develop unique career dev plans to achieve professional goals they have for themselves and you have for them.
11. Here’s an example of a dev plan that I built with content removed. Key here is to have clear milestones, with timelines for measurable actions achieve them. EXAMPLE: agency side, had person in a very tactical position and he had little time to think big picture strat, we were limiting him and our opp to use his skills, created a new customized role from him that was different from others and work across functions, benefited everyone, so be creative!
12. Shifting gears a bit to the latter part of my presentation around how you and now your rockstar team can co-exist in the greater organization to drive growth and support the business
13. First and foremost, let’s address building trust within your organization for your SEM or other online advertising campaigns. You need to build that consensus internally. Why? Outside of quicker direct-response budgets, brand-building and media dollars typically need high-level executive consensus on effectiveness for approval.
14. Where to start? Gather some self-serving stats…maybe utilize your most prestigious vendors! It’s like going to your doctor…he/she gives you facts and stats to support their recommended course of action.
15. One of the most critical steps to working well with cross functional teams is proving the importance of SEM or online by: Building your reputation everyday and encouraging your team to do so. Constant education about what you do and why it matters. EXAMPLE: presenting a quarter-end wrap-up report and I also took that oppp to show cool things our team has done and tie back to their goals, find any opp to share industry knowledge as it relates to relevant convos (i.e. innovative way to target a new audience). Encourage your team to take risks (in a controlled way) to showcase innovation. EXAMPLE: learned by mistake w/ impacts on website performance, redesigning a portion of website without testing, decrease in traffic (good to take risks, but learn). Get visible with as many people outside your team as possible and find those internal stakeholders (if coming from agency, it’s like working with internal clients). Goal of internal branding for team = larger, more fluid control on budgets and addtl headcount.
16. How many of you have had goals that conflict with other departments or teams? This is inevitable in any organization, but I’ve found there are some ways to help balance those priorities. Must be transparent. Communicate regularly. When in doubt, align with corporate goals (earlier in preso). EXAMPLE: at SFDC, allot budgets based on how products drive our goals, but also align with the corporate if they’re focused on pushing a new product. Sometimes have to take hits to our short team goals for long term wins internally (EXAMPLE: test new product messaging and prove understanding of SEM-friendly messages).
17. How do we really do that? Align All Goals. Corporate Goals (vision for quarter). Product Goals (software, solution, service). Campaign Goals (competitive campaign). Target Audience (larger org, industry).Transparency. Avoid silos -- SEM & Online Team cannot be isolated, as co. got bigger we became more involved. EXAMPLE: a Twitter initiative was launched and we wouldn’t have promoted it, if weren’t part of convo. Media Plans. Campaign Briefs. Communicate Regularly. Organized meet-ups. Speak each other’s language. Everyone should have a good understanding of each product, campaigns, audience target; Our team must be multi product and function (SEM, display, etc.). Leave you with an example of how our rockstar team comm effectively with cross functional teams – rely on product marketing for messaging, message testing in SEM, brought talent from several of our team members and folks from other groups to work together, saw incr in CTR and KPIs, we were able to leverage multiple skills and expertise in order to succeed in the end and roll out in other marketing channels.
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