Habits of High-Performance

Marketing Teams

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Table of Contents
Part I: Defining High-Performance
Part II: The 7 Habits of High-Performance Marketing Teams
1. Superior Communication
2. Focused Customer-Centricity
3. Clear Role Definition
4. Public Accountability
5. Generous Teamwork
6. Precise Goals and Metrics
7. Fearless Experimentation
Part III: The Key Takeaways

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Part I:
Defining High-Performance
Marketing organizations are under a huge amount of pressure to perform. With advancements
in digital communication streaming past us at lightning speeds and new media channels opening up
daily, there are more sites and stats to monitor even as the need to produce more marketing content
escalates. Customers both internal and external are demanding viral videos, up-to-the-minute social
media engagement, and content that resonates and converts.

More than ever before, marketing teams need

to step up to the plate and transform themselves
from simply good teams into great teams
specifically high-performance, high-velocity,
high-agility teams.

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What is a High-Performance Marketing Team?

The essence of every high-performance marketing team is achieving
results. These teams may be made of onsite or remotely located
marketers. They may be comprised of any number of members.
The thing they always have in common is that they are focused
on business goals, achieving superior results by engaging
in productive behaviors or habits that ultimately set them
apart from other similar teams.

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What is a Habit?
Habits are automatic behaviors that we do on autopilot. A study says
that 45% of our day almost half of our waking existence is spent
engaging in habits.

45 %

Habits are a way for the high-level functionality in our brains to work
at full capacity even when making other tiny decisions such as: what
to eat, how to dress, which way to bathe, which route to take for work.
Instead of using up precious energy for these repetitive behaviors,
habits take over and allow us to conserve brain power for the real
heavy lifting creative problem solving.
So doesnt it make sense that we foster productive habits
for accomplishing daily, repetitive work? The result will let us spend
time on other unique projects.

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Why Should I Care?

Because your success depends on beating the competition
and delivering projects that go above and beyond customer
expectation. And high-performance marketing teams
outperform similar teams, producing results that leave
the competition in the dust.
In short, you should care because your future employment
and ultimate job satisfaction lies not in coasting along and going
with the flow, but in fighting mediocrity and reaching for excellence
at every stage. Building successful workplace habits helps you go
above and beyond in your daily task execution.
If you follow the strategies laid out in this ebook, you will be well
on your way to transforming the marketing team you care about
into a high-performance marketing organization you can rave about.

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Part II:
The 7 Habits of High Performance
Marketing Teams

We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit.
Aristotle

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HABIT 1:

Superior Communication.
If Needed, Use Words!
MITs Human Dynamics Laboratory conducted some fantastic research on team dynamics
by outfitting people in banks, call centers, marketing groups, and even laboratories with
sociometric badges that measured the tone of voice, body position relative to team
members, and body movements of individuals interacting with their teams.
They discovered they could easily predict which teams would outperform other similar
teams based solely on their pattern of communication.
Its not what they said, but how they said it. Factors like intelligence, creativity, ideas,
charisma, or even skill while useful could not predict whether the teams would
succeed. Just the ways in which they communicated with one another and with other
teams was an accurate predictor of their success.

Researchers highlight four main strategies for effective communication

that more often than not, lead to outstanding team performance:

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A. Listen. Speak. Participate.

High-performance marketers dont hog the limelight at meetings.
On the contrary, everyone on the team gets a chance to talk and listen
in roughly equal amounts. This means speeches are short and sweet.
If all participate, the effect is instantaneous: team members are more
aware, more engaged, and ultimately they are more eager to claim
ownership of their work.

Short and Sweet a la Lincoln

Take a cue from Abraham Lincolns The Gettysburg
Address of 1863. In roughly two minutes, he tackled
the Declaration of Independence and the principle
of human equality. If it takes you longer than Abe
to talk about MQLs, consider making an outline
of what youre going to say.

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B. Look Me in the Eyes

Body language and visual cues are vital to effective communication.
Successful marketing teams face one another when they talk,
peppering conversations with energetic gestures.
Sure, the rise of remote workers makes this a little more difficult,
but the technology for video calls has vastly improved. Video calls
are no longer a luxury, theyre a necessary tool for conveying both
data and nuance to remote colleagues.
I Can See It In Your Face
When the police finally found the ultra-reclusive thief
called the North Pond Hermit who had isolated
himself from humanity in the forests of Maine for 27
years, he explained why he couldnt look people
in the eyes: Im not used to seeing peoples faces,
he said. Theres too much information there. Arent
you aware of it? Too much, too fast.

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C. Talk Amongst Yourselves

Truly successful marketing teams dont just sit back and let team
leaders talk at them. Team members connect directly with one
another, carrying on expanded conversations regarding the topic
using back channels (like chatting tools).
This means information isnt just shared from the top down, its
chewed on, filtered, and analyzed by peers who want to truly digest
the data given them in order to understand their work.
Back Channel: The Virtual Watercooler
Tip: establish informal channels where people
can carry on these conversations and brainstorm
informally. We like to call them virtual watercoolers.
In our company, every team has multiple private
channels where discussions continue, or where people
simply relax, bond, and share links to cat videos.

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D. Forage for Info

Useful information is out there: in the other departments
of the company, on the streets, on the Internet tubes. Highperformance marketers are those who take the time to periodically
break away to explore, hunt for information, and bring it back
to the teams ongoing conversations.

Several ways to forage for information:

Formal meetings with subject matter experts. Find out
whats going on in their worlds. (E.g. talk to the head
of software development about whats launching next month,
or ask key salespeople what content they need to sell more
effectively.)
Informal chats around the office watercooler (even virtual ones).
Find out whats going on in the larger context of the office.
Surveys, polls, opinions via IM. Get the pulse of the organization.

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HABIT 2:

Focused Customer-centricity.
One Size Fits Most Wont Work.
The second habit is just good business sense: put
customer needs over personal preferences. The customer
is after all, the end user of your product or service.
So make an excellent product with that customers
needs and especially pain points in mind.
Profile First, Plan Second
But who is that customer exactly? What is his day job?
What are her habits? What is s/he thinking? Here, researching
the geographic, demographic, and psychographic profiles
of your ideal customer is key to finding your target market.
Only after profiling your ideal customers should you
begin designing a plan on how to market to them so that they
discover you, learn from you, and begin trusting you enough
to buy from you.

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Focus on One Segment at a Time

High-performance marketing teams dont use shotguns, they use lasers
to selectively focus on one segment at a time for better effectiveness.
If you try to market to them with a one size fits most message, youll waste time
and resources, and lose more than 50% of your audience simply because it wont
resonate with them, and therefore its spam to them.
This is the point where target marketing and market segmentation come in. Build
content for specific audience personas so you can target the unique pain points
of each segment. Pay heed to the old adage: If youre talking to everyone, youre
talking to no one.

Market segmentation is: breaking down all possible

customers into groups characterized by a specific buying
behavior that may be connected to their demographics (e.g.
technology companies in the SF Bay Area) or psychographics
(e.g. higher managerial/administrative professionals)
Target marketing is: choosing a specific subgroup
within a larger segment to focus marketing efforts on (e.g.
aggressive, materialistic, 30-year old male, C-level executives
in the SF Bay Area)

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HABIT 3:

Clear Role Definition.

Who Does What, Again?
If a new marketing team member has to keep asking whos in charge of email
marketing after the second week, theres something amiss in your onboarding
process. Your most forgetful employee should have a guide to refer to when
questions arise.
High-performance marketing teams ensure that every team member
understands the positions and responsibilities of all people in the company.
Especially the team leaders for key areas such as sales, customer service,
production, plus all the crucial areas within marketing: paid advertising, SEO/
inbound, content marketing, email marketing, social media, and so on.

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Give em an Onboarding Document

The easiest way to educate new team members is to create an onboarding document
that includes an outline and details for each persons roles and responsibilities. It
could be a printed packet of information, or a PDF. It might even be better as a living
document on Google Drive or your project management software such as Wrike
so your onboarding is easy to update and maintain.
Another part of that onboarding document should explain who to go to for help, what
resources are available to the new member, and it should be supported with some
guidance on the first few projects and tasks assigned to your new hire.

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Essential Info to Include in the Onboarding Document

Whos who in the company, the executive committee, the marketing
department including all contact info
What paperwork the employee should bring on the first day/first week
Where the employee should park
What kind of attire the company favors
Whom the employee should ask for in the lobby
Where the restrooms are located/floor plan
Where the copy machine is and how it works
Where the cafeteria/kitchen/break room is
Where nearby eateries are
Whom the employee should talk to if there are additional questions
What tools are used within the company and how to use them
Where the fun, virtual watercooler channels are located and on which tool
Anything and everything a Week 1 employee needs to know

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HABIT 4:

Public Accountability.
Transparency Equals More Responsible Workers.

If you want the team to work responsibly without needing

a micromanager hovering to see if things are getting done, then there
must be accountability. No team works well without accountability.

If you design the work environment for it, then it will organically spread among the team.
Consider how good habits or even the latest fads spread quickly among teammates
its leadership by example. One person does it, the rest see the benefits, and they
inevitably take up the flag. But in order for accountability to develop, you need to build
the framework for it by taking these these first few steps:

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Building a Framework for Accountability

A. Get Individuals to Own Their Work

When there is no confusion as to who does what (see Habit 3: Clear Role
Definition), people are much more likely to take ownership of their individual
tasks. This is my responsibility. I will take care of this.

B. Get People to Own Team Results

Owning your tasks is step one, owning the larger goals of the teams
projects is next. Its easy enough to grow into owning a teams key
area (e.g. MQLs or inbound SEO results or webinar registrants) when
individuals already take pride in their own tasks.

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C. Set Up a Tool to Make Accountability Easy

The easiest way to hold team members accountable is to use
a project management system to list and track everyones to-do
items. This is where tools like Wrike come in handy because all tasks
and all work-related info is brought under one roof, visible to everyone
involved. If the technology is in place, and theres a process
attached to it, it will motivate your team to be more responsible
and accountable.
Just a reminder: accountability is not about hovering over your teams
shoulders and micromanaging them until they get their tasks done.
Rather, its about setting up an environment where theyre sufficiently
motivated to progress and complete work.

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Accountability in Wrike

1.

Weekly Meetings: A great way to build accountability is to open

up Wrike during weekly meetings to see the status of projects
in a public forum. You show what people are working on,
and hold everyone accountable for the tasks they own. Read our
blog post about running weekly meetings in Wrike.

2.

Time Tracker: Additionally theres the time tracker which alerts

the team when someone is working on a task. Have your team
start the timer when they work on a task its just another way
that individuals can show their accountability to the group.
It also tracks how much time is spent on a specific project,
allowing for better planning in the future. Read our blog post
about using the timer to create project benchmarks.

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HABIT 5:

Generous Teamwork.
Sharing is Caring!
High-performance marketing teams prioritize the success of the team over
the glory of the individual. Thats not to say that individual success shouldnt be
celebrated. On the contrary, every show of excellence should be praised. But what
this does mean is team members support one another: in getting tasks done,
and in working toward the completion of projects.
This comes about when the marketing team is proactively sharing everything
from project information and new ideas, to expertise, editorial standards,
and files.
Nurturing a culture of sharing within the team enhances collaboration and takes
away selfish fiefdoms of knowledge. Instead of people hogging info
and becoming roadblocks for productivity, project data is stored in a central
database for all to access. Ask team members to impart their specific expertise
in shared wikis or internal blogs to jumpstart this habit.

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7 HABITS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE MARKETING TEAMS

There are many reasons why people

dont share knowledge: either they dont
realize how much their expertise can
impact the team, or they simply dont
have an efficient system for doing so.
You will have to lead by example so
they realize just how beneficial sharing
can be. You may even want to gamify
the process and reward people who
share consistently. Maybe incorporate
it into your weekly standup meeting by
asking: Did you learn anything youd like
to share, or something you think could
be helpful for the rest of the team?
Alongside sharing, make it clear
that the team needs to be aggressive
in asking for help and offering help
to others. Apart from being a great value
to live out on a personal level, generosity
is also the oil that makes teamwork both
frictionless and fruitful.

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Tips for Building a Culture of Sharing

1.

Lead by example: Whether youre a project manager

or a team member, your efforts will go flat unless
you practice what you preach.

2.

Build a core group: Find and empower a proactive

core group of sharers. Make them heroes. Get
them to lead so the rest of the team follows.

3.

Train the team: Have a quick start session to align

everyone. Keep a library of references/process
documents that people can refer to.

4.

Gamify the process: Use game mechanics to make

the sharing more fun. Give people awards/prizes
for consistently sharing.

5.

Involve the executives: Want lightning-fast buy-in?

Get your executives onboard.

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HABIT 6:

Precise Goals and Metrics.

Know What to Measure.

When high-performance marketing teams create goals, theyre always

SMART this means, the goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable,
Relevant, and Time-bound. You need to know what to measure,
and ensure youre measuring the right things in order to acquire
data that will help you make future decisions. Not everything
is business critical. Not everything NEEDS to be tracked. Focus
your efforts on what brings your marketing team closer to achieving
business objectives.

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Decide what metrics will define the success of your

team. And always use metrics that matter to your C-level
executives. Its not the number of retweets or webinar
attendees (though those are good things to know for tracking
progress), but metrics that actually roll up to the business
objectives of the entire company.
Then use every measuring tool that makes sense analytics
tools, social media monitoring software, behavioral info (AKA
digital body language), customer interviews and surveys,
third party analyst research to inform your strategy
and decisions.

Dive Deeper into Marketing Metrics & Analytics

After you finish reading this ebook, if you want a more in-depth discussion on marketing
ROI, program measurement, marketing forecasting, and implementation, take a look at
the Marketing Metrics & Analytics ebook by Marketo. Its chock-full of good information.

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HABIT 7:

Fearless Experimentation.
Even Failures are Learning Experiences.
The secret to the output and stellar results of high-performance
marketing teams is their attitude towards experimentation. Theyre
never afraid to try new tools and tactics that might just bring them
closer to a successful outcome.
With this kind of attitude, even failure can motivate the team to glean
new insights and take their projects or campaigns in new directions,
moving quickly so momentum isnt completely lost.
The idea is to keep testing while documenting your strategy
and process. Keep what works, discard what doesnt. Your team will
learn from every experience.

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Tips for Successful Testing

1.

Dont overtest. Technically, you could test everything,

but really you shouldnt waste time and resources.
Instead, decide which tests are most important.

2.

Prioritize tests using a scoring system. Criteria to score

for: potential business impact, effort required,
opportunity for learning.

3.

Document it all. Have a record of the test queue,

the campaign setup requirements, the customer
pain points, the formal QA script.

4.

Analyze successes and failures for lessons.

Even failures contain nuggets of wisdom if we can
get past the emotion.

5.

Communicate results to everyone.

Let the organization know relevant results especially
if it leads to a better understanding of the customer.

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Part III:
The Takeaways
If you take the 7 habits laid out in this ebook and work consciously
toward cultivating them in your marketing team, you will transform
them into a high-performance marketing organization that can easily
outperform the competition. Just be aware: change isnt instantaneous.
These 7 tips will take time to incubate and form into long-lasting habits.

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7 HABITS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE MARKETING TEAMS

1.

Superior Communication: No team can function well without

clear communication, which includes body language.

2.

Focused Customer-Centricity: Know who your customer is,

and target them like a laser.

3.

Clear Role Definition: Define who does what in the team. Make
responsibilities crystal clear.

4.

Public Accountability: Teach all teammates to own their goals,

and also higher team goals.

5.

Generous Teamwork: Give them ways to share and help one

another. Generosity is crucial!

6.

Precise Goals and Metrics: Have SMART goals that roll up

to business objectives. Know what to measure and use proper
tools.

7.

Fearless Experimentation: Never be afraid to experiment

and test. And constantly learn from every test. Not even failure
can keep you down.

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THIS EBOOK WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY

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