Creating the Right Marketing Team

I'm often asked "What's the secret to  your team's success?".  Well, I'll be honest - there is no grand secret here.  But I can share a few tips and tricks that have helped me create a happy, productive marketing team.

Get to Know Your Team
It is mission-critical to get to know your employees - their likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses all play a huge role in the day-to-day operations of your marketing department. 

Talk to your employees and discover all of this - you  never know, you may find out that one of your employees has a secret passion for photography and can save you thousands of dollars on photoshoots (we've had this happen!). 

Get the Right People in the Right Positions
As I learned in Good to Great, to succeed, you need the right people on the bus and in the right seats.  Everyone on our team has a job description but we really mean it when we say "Other duties as assigned."  I love finding out that our newest hire has fabulous copy-writing skills or is a social media whiz.  While that may not have been part of the original plan, it creates new opportunities for that individual and the team.  Letting people use their skill set in new or different ways benefits everyone and creates happy employees.

Communicate
We've all heard over and over (and over again!) that communication is key.  Well, it's true.  Without constant interaction, your marketing team is going to fail - if you're not consistently asking for feedback, you're doing something wrong.  I try to keep an open environment so everyone on the team feels comfortable speaking up.  I love when one of my employees comes to me and tells me how I can be a better manager for him/her.  At the end of the day, that's going to help us both.

Have FUN!
I truly believe one of the reasons my team is so great is that they all enjoy coming to work.  We've done everything from pumpkin carving to Aloha Friday together.  Spending an hour or two a month "goofing off" together increases our willingness to work together.  Our team atmosphere is very apparent, even when we're having a team-building.  When we carved pumpkins for Halloween, the graphic designers helped create stencils for those of us with a little less skill; others simply helped clean out pumpkins for those who were a little too repulsed by the seeds.  Someone even took the seeds home, baked them and brought in a treat for the entire department!

So, what are your tips for creating a championship team?