Marketing leaders face a clear mandate – deliver rapid results with limited resources while fostering innovation, creativity, and strategic foresight in an environment of constant technological advancements. But what if the solution to these challenges is right within your grasp?
When you assess your team and organisation, it’s likely that you have a group of experts excelling in their respective fields. This team, possibly supported by expert agency partners and resources, can enhance the creativity, speed, and effectiveness of your programs. However, are these brilliant individuals working in isolation? With targets and KPIs often compartmentalised by function, how can you unite your team members toward a singular objective that drives your business forward?
For clarity, let’s address this challenge at the campaign level. While it’s indeed much broader, involving your organisational structure, leadership, and a culture of trust, focusing on campaigns reveals how this approach can expand to your overall strategy.
Ensuring effective cross-functional collaboration
Here are six steps you can take as a leader to dismantle silos and build a cross-functional team for your next campaign:
#1 Establish a clear campaign lead
Define leadership, ownership, and accountability by appointing a dedicated campaign lead, distinct from project management support. Choose someone with a holistic perspective, strong relational skills, and the influence to galvanize your team and drive the campaign’s vision forward. This person may come from a specific functional area, but their qualities make them a strong fit to lead the campaign.
#2 Bring all the experts to the table
Engage stakeholders across critical functions from the onset of your campaign to align on goals, vision, and timelines. An example mix of expertise could include leads from brand, external communications, corporate marketing, social media, product marketing, growth marketing, and analytics. Form a core team supplemented by consultants for additional expertise, ensuring strong representation without overwhelming meetings.
NOTE: In the tech industry, include deep expertise from engineering or tech evangelists to ensure your core team understands the product or offering. This will ensure message clarity and impact.
#3 Define KPIs up front. Measure and optimise throughout
Set clear targets and KPIs early on. Defining success metrics allows you to measure, learn, and optimize throughout the campaign. Engage your experts and integrated agency partners to set these KPIs. Our performance and analytics experts are also available to assist.
#4 Develop a comprehensive timeline
Work with project leads and relevant teams to create realistic timelines, incorporating input from in-house, agency, and vendor partners. Ensure clarity and accountability, and honor those timelines with timely reviews and adapted resources as needed. Clear and realistic expectations enhance performance.
#5 Simplify for impact
Prioritise campaign aspects that will drive the best results, especially when facing short timelines or limited resources. Execute these priorities with precision and excellence, avoiding unnecessary complexity.
#6 Embrace and acknowledge change
Change is constant in our industry. Embrace and acknowledge changes during campaign planning and execution. Share the rationale behind changes and their potential impact on outcomes to foster transparency, collaboration, and buy-in across your integrated team.
As you prepare for your next integrated campaign, know that breaking the silos may be challenging, but it is possible. Embrace the discomfort that comes with behavioural change, knowing that the benefits far outweigh those initial hurdles. Our integrated consultants at TEAM LEWIS are ready to support you on your journey to a more cross-functional, collaborative approach, leveraging our expertise across the full marketing and communications ecosystem. Let’s do this. The results will be worth it.
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