Collaboration Strategies for Developing Innovative Marketing Campaigns

This is a guest post from Jori Hamilton – check out her bio at the end of the article…

Marketing professionals for small businesses deserve an award for the hefty challenge they take on in their roles. Many of them are the sole members of their marketing departments or have to work in a distributed team because they don’t have the luxury of a team in-house.

When you’re doing it all on your own or have to navigate working with others remotely, it can be challenging to put together cohesive campaigns, let alone delve into innovation and experimentation. Not to mention that marketing is an inherently creative process that is at its best when various perspectives and ideas are at play. 

Still, developing innovative marketing campaigns is a requirement, not a luxury, for small businesses. So, you must find a way to make the process much easier whether you’re working with an in-house or remote team.

Luckily, when you focus on effective collaboration, creating successful marketing campaigns becomes second nature. Here are seven collaboration strategies for developing innovative marketing campaigns.

Choose Your Team Wisely

One of the best ways to ensure your team works well together is to take your time choosing the right members.

Many small business owners choose employees mainly because of their skillset and what their experience brings to the table. However, it’s just as crucial to select employees based on whether they’ll get along, communicate, and collaborate with those already working for you.

Proceed with caution when selecting members for your marketing team.

First, determine what skillsets and experience are needed to develop innovative marketing campaigns consistently. Next, explore the different personalities already in your company and how they currently mesh. Then, gauge each candidate’s personality and fit for your company culture, along with their skillsets, when recruiting and hiring top talent to drive your marketing forward. 

Also, marketing is a long-term business goal. Because of this, it’s a good idea to bring someone on board, like a program manager, who can help you coordinate and complete smaller marketing initiatives to progress on the more critical marketing goals. They’ll also oversee how well the team is collaborating and make adjustments to roles and responsibilities when needed.

You’ll also want to define collaboration guidelines for your team.

Define Collaboration Guidelines

What does effective collaboration mean to you? More importantly, what does it look like for your unique team? Of course, every small business marketing team will be different. Still, it’s wise to have clear guidelines in place for how everyone is to work together. 

Establishing the following can help you define collaboration guidelines for your team:

  • Who signs off on major changes
  • What to do when it’s time to make adjustments in a campaign
  • What to do when there is a conflict among the team
  • Where to find details about each person’s role
  • How to collaborate with someone outside of your company
  • How to access tools and resources
  • Communication expectations
  • Team hierarchy

Next, establish clear marketing goals.

Establish Clear Marketing Goals

Clear marketing goals are key in developing innovative marketing campaigns. They can also boost your team’s collaboration because everyone knows what they’re working toward and why.

Establishing clear marketing goals for each campaign can also help you determine a plan for achieving those goals, and the resources, people, and skill sets necessary to execute that plan successfully.

You should establish overall marketing goals and goals for each campaign you run. Be sure that they’re realistic, measurable, relevant to your business goals, and attached to a timeline.

In addition to establishing clear marketing goals, define each person’s role in your campaigns.

Determine Roles in Each Campaign

Collaborating with multiple people with various perspectives on achieving a marketing campaign goal is a beautiful thing when you think about all of the brainpower available to come up with innovative and creative ideas and solutions.

But that collaboration bliss can quickly dissipate when there aren’t clearly defined roles for each person on the team. Of course, you want everyone to feel comfortable sharing their ideas, but you also want them to know that whatever you decide to move forward with, they have a specific role in making it happen. This also makes stepping on each other’s toes less likely, keeping the team’s flow intact.

With every marketing campaign and on your team generally, be sure that everyone knows their role and their specific responsibilities in executing a project plan.

Set communication expectations is another collaboration strategy for developing innovative marketing campaigns.

Set Communication Expectations

Collaboration can’t happen if there’s weak or no communication among your team. Without solid communication, your marketing campaigns aren’t likely to be as successful as you envision, nor will you be able to keep your team together and happy.

Setting communication expectations can help. Everyone should know:

  • Who to contact for specific things
  • How to best get in touch with one another
  • Appropriate hours for reaching out
  • What to do in the case of conflict
  • How to receive an immediate response
  • The communication channels, apps, and tools you’re using 

How well your team collaborates when creating marketing campaigns is also reliant on your approach to meetings.

Implement an As-Needed Approach to Meetings

Meetings are essential for effective collaboration. At the same time, is meeting every day or every week necessary? Many would say no.

Meetings can be disruptive to the workflow. The last thing you want to do is pull your team away from their work to host a meeting that could’ve been an email. Instead, implement meetings on an as-needed basis and only invite team members that are absolutely necessary for the meeting.   

Also, take advantage of virtual meetings when your team can’t all be in the same room. Meeting remotely makes it, so everyone has a chance to be at your most important meetings, no matter where they are in the world. Just be sure everyone knows virtual meeting etiquette, like using a professional background with pleasant color palettes, good lighting, minimalist decor, and no distractions. 

Another collaboration strategy that will ensure your team is at its best when developing campaigns is to document everything.

Document Everything

Whether digitally or on paper, you must document everything when developing innovative marketing campaigns. Doing so will help your team’s collaboration because each person will know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, their role, and the progress you are making in each campaign and your marketing efforts overall.

Documenting everything will also help your team make necessary adjustments in your marketing campaigns that allow you to be even more innovative and creative in tactics. So, ensure everyone has access to the documentation and understands it to do their jobs more effectively. 

Conclusion

These collaboration strategies for developing innovative marketing campaigns will only be successful if the people using them are committed to seeing them through. So, be sure that you’ve put together a team that values communication, collaboration, creativity, and innovation if you want to develop innovative marketing campaigns and execute a successful overall marketing strategy.

Jori Hamilton is an experienced writer residing in the Northwestern U.S. She covers a wide range of subjects but takes a particular interest in covering topics related to business productivity, marketing strategies, and HR solutions. To learn more about Jori, you can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach