Whether your online marketing team is one person strong or an army of 20, you can motivate them to produce better results using some simple guerrilla tactics.
1. Invest in a Killer Idea Library
Marketing people love to see visual examples of successful campaigns and can draw incredible amounts of inspiration by reading about how others have ‘made it happen’ for their companies online (like Purple Cow by Seth Godin and Trust Agents by Chris Brogan/Julien Smith).
Books, memberships to online sites like SEOBook, and even trips to top-flight conferences like SMX are an important investment if you’re serious about building a profitable online presence for your business (if you do invest in a trip to SMX, make sure attendees keep the workbooks that get handed out, they are FULL of valuable info).
2. Heat Up Their Competitive Drive
Nothing brings out the best in people like a little competition. Every sales department in every office in the country uses competition to motivate their sales forces, like trips and cash rewards for high achievers who ‘hit the highest number’. So why limit these contests to one department?
One of my friends who works as the Executive Director of a University alumni department told me he’s going to motivate alums to create a kick ass TV commercial by offering five $1,000 prizes to winning entries. The cost for just one traditional TV commercial is at least $15,000.
Use your creativity to design a great contest and light a fire under your creative team.
3. Open the Analytics to Everyone
What’s the point of tasking marketers and creatives with producing advertising content or social media campaigns if you’re not going to show them how successful their efforts are?
Make time to track the number of views and conversions your website and social media channels achieve — and make it easy for every individual involved in the creative process has on-demand access to the analytics.
Oh yes, and make sure to motivate team members to use these analytics by making it a goal to achieve month over month (or year over year) improvements.
4. Congratulate the High Achievers
People love recognition. They may say an award or pat on the back doesn’t matter, but come on, we all know it does. Ever seen the swell of pride in someones eyes, how they straighten right up, when the boss calls them out for doing a good job in front of their peers?
Your $35 award will buy ten times that in goodwill and motivation.
5. Never Eat Alone
I borrowed that phrase from ‘master networker’ Keith Ferrazzi, who promotes the practice of making connections every single day. You can make this a reality in your own office by showing each team member how to make their own connections (online and offline).
Take a member of the team out to lunch and brainstorm with them — figure out what hidden gems they’ve got in their back pocket. Next introduce them to some people who can help turn the goal into reality. Your marketers should be able to run with this idea, especially with the enormous potential for connecting with the use of sites like Twitter.
Now you have five simple ways to motivate a marketing team towards greater success in the year ahead, and all it really takes is to make the workday more fun and interesting. Stoke people’s competitive drive and get moving in the right direction this year.
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