Customer success and customer service are fundamental components in your organization’s ability to deliver great experiences and create long-lasting relationships.  More specifically, these two teams are at the very center of your organization’s efforts to drive adoption, retention, and ultimately, customer loyalty. And according to the Harvard Business Review, companies with a focus on loyalty grow revenues roughly 2.5 times as fast as their industry peers.

Businesses are increasingly differentiating themselves from the competition by providing seamless continuity across customer success and customer service, and ensuring that their employees are able to demonstrate expertise, insights, and empathy in every single customer interaction.  

Customer service and customer success are aligned in that both teams are responsible for creating and maintaining customer loyalty. But there are differences in each team’s remit. Understanding the differences and how they can complement each other is essential for minimizing churn and maximizing revenue growth.

Identifying the differences between customer success and customer service

Customer service and customer success together constitute the perfect marriage of reactive and proactive customer engagement. 

Customer service is primarily reactive. Teams respond in the moment, as quickly as possible, to customer tickets, concerns, and complaints. There might be a technical issue to solve, or a bug to identify and report to engineering. Customers might also reach out to the support team to address learning needs, or alleviate confusion about how to leverage and optimize product feature sets and functionality.  Customer service also has the opportunity, by listening with intention, to identify and create sales opportunities based on unique customer requirements and growth strategies. 

Customer success is primarily proactive, with a focus on the strategic, long-term view. CS teams typically focus first on the onboarding process to encourage engagement and adoption, and drive retention. They continue to build for the future by leading customers through quarterly business reviews to analyze performance and create long-term, strategic mutual success plans to optimize the investment that customers have made in your product or service. 

Exploring the intersection of customer success and customer service

Even though these roles are clearly differentiated, ultimately, they need each other to optimize performance and orchestrate successful customer outcomes.  They become exponentially more valuable to your organization through cross-functional engagement and alignment. The primary way to achieve that is through enhanced communication across teams, facilitated by a unified customer data platform. 

To explore this concept in more detail, we spoke with Zeke Silva, Insightly’s Senior Director of Client Services, and Luke Via, Insightly’s Senior Director of Customer Success. They share key takeaways on their partnership in delivering exceptional customer experiences at Insightly. 

Securing a complete view of the customer

“Our collaboration has centered on breaking down barriers around securing a complete view of the customer. CS maps success to alignment with customers. If my team isn’t armed with detailed customer service ticket information to round out that full view, there’s a risk that we look out of touch,” said Via.  

Via and Silva’s teams are empowered to capture actionable customer insights through Insightly’s unified platform. “With data across sales, marketing, and service on the same platform, we’re armed with a complete view of our customers,” adds Silva. “My team works primarily in the Service app to capture current customer status, and that information is available to Luke’s team, and the rest of the organization, immediately–it’s completely frictionless, which enhances our ability to be successful across functional groups.”

Maximizing performance and creating impact

This seamless flow of information across the platform has made a tremendous impact in their teams’ ability to drive great experiences. 

According to Via, “With a consolidated platform view, we’re all able to do a much better job of anticipating and over delivering on outcomes. We’ve got the right information to guide conversations more effectively and with more impact. It also helps our teams move with greater velocity. We don’t need to schedule meetings to find out more about current customer status; the data is right there in the platform and anyone can access it quickly and efficiently. It’s made a huge difference during COVID, with remote teams. Ultimately, having access to support, marketing, and sales data in a single platform, and easily accessible to everyone, has freed up time for our teams and enhanced their productivity. It’s empowered my team to be much more strategic in their account interactions, which creates value for us and our customers.”

Silva adds, “With a unified view of our customers, we can all pick up the relationship right where it’s at. My team uses the data they collect in the Service app to quickly react and troubleshoot on behalf of customers, and Luke’s team uses that same information, along with data in the CRM, to facilitate proactive, strategic conversations leading to transformational growth.”

Empower your teams with unified data

A unified data platform is at the nexus of creating loyalty, building long-term customer relationships and growing your business.  Customer success and customer service teams, along with the rest of your organization, require unified data to optimize communication, create visibility through the entire customer lifecycle, and maximize productivity.  Empower your teams with the data they need to capitalize on insights and deliver exceptional experiences. 

Key takeaways:

• Remote work makes it even more imperative for cross-functional teams to have access to the tools and systems they need to support their customers
• The tools and processes you create should make it easier, not harder, for your teams to do their jobs, and ultimately, create impact for customers.  Think about ways to deliver information quickly and easily, with fewer meetings. 
• Optimize knowledge transfer, communication, and outcomes through a unified data platform across sales, marketing, and service for a full view to the customer relationship
• Make sure everyone has access to the same information so that, as Silva says, you can all “pick up the relationship right where it’s at.”

If you’re just getting started, be sure to check out the other articles in this four-part series: 

• Part 1: 5 customer service skills to build great customer relationships
• Part 2: 4 customer service challenges (and how to solve them)
• Part 3: 4 tips for creating a customer-centric experience

Interested in learning more about how you can align your customer service and customer success teams?  Chat with us.

The post Customer service + success: designed to drive exceptional experiences appeared first on Insightly.

At my own company, a tech startup in the San Francisco Bay Area, we had to weigh the benefits and challenges of working remotely before deciding to become a remote-first company. Below are a few takeaways from our decision-making journey and tips to ensure remote work success.

Remote work benefits

1. Freedom to move

One of the positive aspects of remote work is that it provides freedom for employees to move and work from anywhere. For many employees, especially in tech and other industries that have traditionally been concentrated in specific geographic areas, remote work allows people to stay connected, collaborate and contribute without enduring a high cost of living or other limitations. At my company, this fact alone contributed to a higher employee satisfaction rate.

2. Custom workspaces

For quite some time now, open office spaces have been the norm for businesses across industries. Yet, for work that requires a high level of focus for long periods of time, an open office environment—with all its distractions and noise—is far from ideal. Remote work allows employees to design their own workspaces for maximum focus and productivity.

3. Bigger hiring pool

You can now compete for top talent anywhere in the country and the world. More than that, hiring remotely allows you to build a more diverse team in every sense, attracting people from different backgrounds and skill sets.

Remote work challenges

1. Loss of community

There are a few things that are hard to replicate in the virtual work environment, and among them are impromptu brainstorms, team outings and friendly conversations at the proverbial water cooler. For many companies, in-person interactions fueled a sense of community and were a big part of company culture.

2. Communication gaps

It can be hard to get a read on people during a video call. It’s also easy to miss social cues we often use during in-person interactions without even thinking about it. But just being aware of this fact can help you build understanding and figure out ways to close the communication gap.

3. Burnout

The past year presented new challenges for all of us in every aspect of life, including health, family and work. Working remotely while caring for loved ones and/or coping with social isolation came at a huge physical and emotional cost, causing burnout.

Tips for successful remote work

Every challenge is also an opportunity to learn and grow. Here are a few battle-tested tips to help you overcome the challenges of working remotely.

1. Think digital first

If you haven’t done so already, adopt digital tools and systems that are easy to use and meet your team’s unique needs. If all you need is Zoom and Google Workspace and you’re off to the races, that’s great. But if you’re planning to transition into fully remote work or a hybrid model where part of the workforce remains remote, then you’ll need more than just basic planning and communication tools. For example, you may need to adopt learning management systems to deliver everything from onboarding to HR training to ongoing internal product and service seminars.

We live in the digital age where new data is generated every second. All that information, including customer data, is useless if you don’t properly manage it and integrate different parts of business to implement continuous data-driven improvement. Consider a data management platform to keep your business and customer data secure, align remote teams around key performance indicators and track progress across the entire organization.

2. Prioritize communication

More doesn’t mean better when it comes to communication. Zoom fatigue is real, and meetings are no more popular now than they were when we worked in physical offices. Keep your meetings to the minimum and prioritize clear, consistent and written communication. Make face-to-face meetings more intentional and purpose-driven.

3. Encourage work-life balance

While working from home has its appeal, it can cause burnout. On the flip side of flexibility, the lack of commute and comfortable clothing are the absence of structure in terms of a clear start and end to the workday. The burden is on both leaders and employees to set clear expectations for work hours, response time and meetings, taking into consideration different time zones. It may seem overwhelming at first, but honest and open conversations can help find and maintain balance.

4. Check the pulse of employees on a regular basis

As time goes by, our sentiments about remote work and its impact on our lives may change. Don’t wait until you start noticing productivity dips or a lower employee satisfaction rate. It might be unrealistic for you to check in with everyone individually on a regular basis, but you can use brief surveys to give your employees an opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions.

5. Introduce remote work policies

Remote work may look different at different companies. To make sure your employees understand how remote work is going to affect their daily work and lives in the long term, consider introducing remote-work-specific policies. The policies can include anything from allowing employees to work anywhere within the same time zone or country to offering an ergonomics stipend to planning regular in-person outings once it’s safe to do so. At my company, we did a series of employee surveys to determine our team’s priorities and policies as we adjusted to a new normal.

At this point, it’s clear we aren’t going back to the way we worked before the pandemic. Now the task is to make remote work the best it can be and to keep work productive and meaningful.

The post What to consider when switching to long-term remote work appeared first on Insightly.

When it comes to technology solutions, or how to invest in technology, businesses often choose providers based on trust in the brand. But they are also looking for a fast time to value (TTV), i.e. how fast will a product or service solve their issue and help them gain a positive return on the investment. The faster a business solves an issue, the stronger the customer relationship becomes.

What is time to value?

Time to value is a measurement of the time it takes from when your customer purchases a product/service, to when they start deriving value. The faster a solution solves a problem, the better the customer experience and the more money a brand makes. It’s as simple as that.

Over time, you want to work toward decreasing TTV for your customers. A healthy TTV metric is an indicator of business growth and efficient operational performance.

What does time to value mean for the customer experience?

When it comes to technology, customers are looking for a quick return on investment. Every company has its own goals to drive the growth and success of the enterprise.

Quick ROI is critical for successfully planning and evaluating infrastructure. Expedient TTV also helps your customers retain more of their own customers, which makes everyone happy.

A brand’s ability to help a business achieve its outcomes depends on the suitability of your product/service to meet those goals. It also depends on maximizing the speed and degree of success during the customer experience.

Therefore, TTV is both a goal and a key performance indicator. It requires an enterprise-wide contribution to delivering value quickly. It also entails consistently measuring how long it takes to deliver that value.

A faster TTV is indicative you have a team that has made a commitment to continuously improve products and services; and gather, share, and act on customer data as soon as possible.

Why is time to value important for customer success?

The value created by a product or service is proof that it works. Fast TTV fulfills the promises made in your sales pitch. When you deliver value time and again, you build trust with your customers, making them more likely to become your brand advocates.

Driving value forms the basis of a customer relationship, where consistent delivery increases satisfaction and cements retention. This continued nurturing of the customer experience leads to more long-term relationships and a lower rate of churn.

Different examples of time to value

TTV can change depending on the customer, industry, and services offered. It’s not about when a client becomes valuable to you but, rather, the other way around.

It’s important to keep track of customer priorities throughout the entire sales process. Since TTV varies so much, it’s possible you may need to track several TTV metrics at once, including:

Time to basic value

This is the shortest TTV metric to measure. It’s the time it takes for the customer to realize they made the right choice. They are starting to see the most basic value from the product/service, but have yet to fully utilize it.

In some cases, time to basic value can happen even before the customer purchases something. For example, a free trial or sample product may lead to a prospect already experiencing basic value.

Time to exceed value

Just like it sounds, this metric represents the time it takes for a product/service to exceed a customer’s expectations and convince them to keep doing business. This may come when a basic plan no longer meets their needs and they upgrade to more features.

The more a brand focuses on time to exceed value, the more it increases customer lifetime value. When you keep exceeding people’s expectations, they won’t be checking out your competition.

Long time to value

Some products and services may take time for people to realize the value. In cases for software-as-service solutions (SaaS), it can sometimes take weeks or months to fully integrate systems and data across different parts of a business.

If what you offer has a longer TTV, it’s important to continue to demonstrate value to the customer every step of the way.

Short time to value

Short time to value is easier to measure. Businesses have a need, they reach out, and that immediate need is met.

However, the downside of having a product or service with a short time to value is that customers have less patience and loyalty. If a brand can do the same job faster, people often switch.

Immediate time to value

Some services provide what is known as immediate time to value. In this case, the reward is instant for a customer’s action.

Any type of online platform where you paste a link and receive something in return is considered immediate TTV. Examples include picture resizing, SEO, filters, or link shortening.

Best practices for meeting time to value goals

The first opportunity to bring value to a customer is during the onboarding process. From product awareness to mastery, it’s all about progressing them through as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Remember, a customer will always remain in the onboarding phase until they can independently integrate your product/service in their daily workflows. Until then, they will require guided assistance for a fast TTV. The sooner they can use what you sell by themselves, the faster they achieve value.

It’s important to show the link between the problem your solution solves, and how that aligns with a customer’s business goals. Milestones should be set based on these outcomes and customer progress measured along the way.

A brand must continuously engage to ensure buyers are on the right track and are completing the onboarding process in an intended time frame. Otherwise, there might be a problem you need to address.

Want to know a few strategies to employ along the customer journey?

Effective engagements

Make sure you have set up engagements that are proactive and relevant. Use customer data to better understand their business and tech setup.

Set milestones

Base these on your customer’s goals. Understand how the consumer defines value and set internal goals to reflect these outcomes.

Early warning

Data will quickly reveal when a customer is struggling. Setup early triggers to alert your team when people need extra attention or help. Follow up immediately, whether it’s reaching out or scheduling a meeting.

Anticipate needs

Use previous customer experiences to keep improving and anticipate future needs. Be aware of potential bottlenecks during onboarding and have solutions on hand.

Additional best practices for time to value

• An agile software solution
• Detailed onboarding guides
• Customer success managers
• Product usability tests

When someone is looking to buy a product or service, they have specific goals in mind. They will consider your brand only because they believe it helps them solve these challenges. Providing value as quickly as possible is your way of saying “thank you” for the trust.

Fast TTV also helps to retain customers, improve their experience, and expand your business through word-of-mouth (and other authentic marketing strategies). It simply gives people more reason to work with you.

Taking results-oriented, goal-based action is your way of assuring people they have permanently found the rug.

The post What is ‘time-to-value’ and why is it important for customer success? appeared first on Insightly.

Marketers tend to be heads-down. Many of us are running a dozen programs, managing teams, and trying to keep up with a changing industry. When we’re underwater, it’s tough to remember to come up for air and ask: what do our customers actually want from us?

Understanding the voice of your customer can help you answer this question.

What does ‘voice of the customer’ mean?

The voice of the customer is what your customer wants and needs. It’s how your customers share their experiences with your product and services to inform your product and marketing.

It may seem like a simple concept. Of course, we listen to our customers. Yet, as companies and the number of stakeholders grow, what the customer wants and needs can sometimes get lost.

The customer’s voice can include negative and positive feedback, and it can be delivered in a variety of ways. Understanding your customers’ wants and needs can inform any number of programs across your company.

The benefits of listening to your customers

All companies have the best intentions when listening to customer feedback. In many industries, ‘the customer is always right.’ In others, customers must raise issues many times to feel heard.

When you’re listening to the voice of your customer, you learn what your customers value the most in your product and how they use it. You can use this feedback as market research to inform your marketing programs, product development, and customer success programs. Understanding the voice of the customer is the first step to becoming a customer-centric company.

How to create a customer voice strategy

Listening to your customers should be baked into your marketing strategy. Consider implementing consistent feedback mechanisms that can influence your programs.

Different kinds of customers can provide valuable feedback. Here are some ways each kind of customer can inform your strategy:

Loyal customers

Loyal customers are often the easiest to identify and to request feedback from. They are excited to share their feedback. Even though you have the strongest customer relationships with them, they are often the people to turn to for specific critical feedback about your product. They will also let you know how you can engage them better and keep them as a customer. Their familiarity and dedication make them a great sounding board.

Churned customers

It’s never fun to have a conversation with your ex. But your churned customers—especially those that may have been with you for a while—can often provide some of the best customer feedback. They will be more critical of your product than your loyal customers, but they also tend to be more straightforward. They may even be able to give you insight into your competitors.

“Lazy” customers

Some customers might stop by and buy your product whenever they feel like it. They may have an unpredictable buying pattern, but still appear to enjoy using your product. These customers can give you a lot of insight into customer motivation and how your product fits into the market.

Best practices for your customer voice initiative

Here are some of the methods to hear the voice of your customer:

Interviews or focus groups

There’s no replacing a face-to-face (or face-to-Zoom) conversation. By speaking with your customers one-on-one or in small groups, you not only hear their feedback, but you can understand how they feel. In these situations, you can read body language, hear intonation, and capture emotions. This can give you a human look into how your customers feel about your product.

Surveys and net promoter score

Post-service surveys are—unsurprisingly—one of the most popular ways to collect customer feedback. They’re simple to administer and inherently quantitative. You can aggregate your surveys into a net promoter score, a key metric in measuring customer satisfaction.

Customer feedback on site

A comment field or feedback email address allows for unbridled criticism, but perhaps that’s exactly what your company needs to grow. An open form for anonymous customer feedback can encourage trolling or spam. Yet, it also encourages feedback that your customers don’t know how to give otherwise.

Customer service data

Your customer service team is the frontline of the customer voice—they hear it every day. Ask your team for service tickets, recorded phone conversations, chatbots, and email conversations. You can uncover a buried treasure of what your customers are  trying to tell you.

Sales data

Your sales team is having dozens of conversations with potential customers. They are hearing their concerns and hopes for a new solution from your target market. Aggregate the recordings, notes, and data from sales calls for more insights into your customer voice.

Social media

It’s quite possible your customers are already talking about you. They might use LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook to share their thoughts on your company and recommend it, or not, to other people in their peer group. Use social media listening tools to scrape brand mentions and related conversations.

How do you determine the most effective way to collect customer feedback? Consider a mix of strategies. Some customers may be more comfortable with one method than another. By using a few methods, you can ensure that one method doesn’t show a bias over another.

How to measure and understand your customer voice

So, you’ve collected all your customer feedback. You’ve got a spreadsheet, a folder full of sales calls, notes from a focus group and a smattering of net promoter scores. How do you make this feedback actionable?

Here are the steps to organize and measure your customer data:

Aggregate the data using one common method

Your customer voice should be singular and consistent. In order for the customer feedback to be actionable, it must be standardized. Streamline your customer data using one or more of the following tools:

• An integrated CRM that can mirror your feedback directly with your customer data
• A dedicated customer experience tool, like GetFeedback, to collect feedback across channels
• A qualitative research tool, like FocusVision, to run focus groups and collect customer data

Determine if there are any gaps or issues with the data

Once you’ve aggregated your data, it’s your job to look for holes. Did you leave out feedback from a certain age bracket or demographic group? Was all your feedback collected during a busy season, or a slow season? Did you forget to ask a key question?

If a mistake was made, now is the time to correct it. The customer voice relies on complete and full data. Without it, we don’t know if we are representing our customers.

Identify trends

It may be tempting to pick out a juicy data point. Maybe you have one customer who has been with your company for 20 years. Maybe you have one customer who churned and came back a year later, Or, maybe you have a customer that said something really cruel or untrue.

When understanding your customer voice, trends are more important than outliers. Take time to understand the commonalities. Your customer voice will never represent all customers, but it should represent most of them.

Don’t fall into data analysis traps

Data analysis is not a perfect science. There are a number of biases and common analysis blunders that come into play, and can impact how you present your final data. These include:

• Errors. Does your data meet quality standards?
• Too small of a sample size. Did you survey enough people to have meaningful results?
• Confirmation bias. Did you ask open-ended questions, or did you use the data to confirm an already-held belief?
• Misinterpretation of results. Did you explore every possible reason for the results that you received?

What if your market research and analysis show no meaningful results? This does not mean your experiment was a failure. It could mean that you need to do more research, or that you need to ask questions that reveal customer similarities, rather than differences. It might also mean that your customers are not ready to give feedback in the way that you asked for it. In the case that trends do not come to light, be sure to use this as fodder for your next customer feedback round.

Report on trends and determine action items

It’s crucial to communicate the trends you uncover to product leaders and decision-makers. The voice of the customer can become a litmus test for new product decisions and marketing programs. It is your responsibility to speak on behalf of the customer using their voice.

You can present the voice of the customer in a brief presentation, a detailed report, or a series of recommendations.

Some immediate action items you can take with customer voice include:

• A webinar to educate customers on relevant product features
• Improvement of your customer relationship management (CRM) system with integrated and updated customer data
• A re-engagement campaign for churned customers, with a renewed understanding of their priorities
• Development of your ideal customer profile
• A ‘surprise and delight’ campaign for loyal customers who have expressed what they value

Conclusion

The voice of the customer is something marketers always think about, but rarely go through the exercise of quantifying. By going through this process, marketers can better understand who they are selling to. This will create stronger products and marketing programs to help their company grow.

Sources:

8 types of bias in data analysis and how to avoid them George Lawton. TechTarget. October 26, 2020

What is voice of the customer (VoC)? Qualtrics

The post Level up your strategy by listening to the voice of the customer appeared first on Insightly.

Before you draft a marketing plan, do a competitive marketing analysis—a research initiative that will give you insight into how similar products are being marketed and help you to identify the best opportunities for your launch.

You may also want to complete a competitive analysis in marketing if you’re starting a new business, presenting to an investor, or need to refresh your marketing strategy.

Here’s how to write a competitive market analysis, and how you can use these competitive analysis methods to inform and improve your marketing.

Identify your competitors

Most marketers and salespeople talk about competitors often. When figuring out who else is in your space, you might compare similar companies based on product offerings, size, revenue, or number of customers. These types of product competitors are extremely useful when developing marketing programs, because you want to know how to position your product against your closest similar offering.

However, similar products are not your only competitor. In fact, they may not even be your main competitor. Sometimes, your biggest competitor is simply ‘doing nothing.’

Further, your company may be playing in someone else’s yard when it comes to marketing. Let’s say your project management tool is great for salespeople. Now, you’re not just competing for share of voice with other project management tools—you’re competing with every other sales tool as well.

When you identify your competitors, start by making a list of similar products. Then, expand. Who is each competitor competing with? And who else is playing in that space? What is every feasible alternative to someone buying your product? That’s your true place to start with a competitive analysis framework.

Understand competitors’ marketing strengths and weaknesses

Once you know who your competitors are, it’s time to give them a little credit. They wouldn’t be your competitors if they weren’t any good, right?

Analyzing your competitors’ strongest marketing programs

We tend to think of our competition as, well, competition. Instead, start to think of them as learning opportunities. What are they doing that’s working? You can find this out by:

• Analyzing their social media presence
• Noting how they talk and write about their product
• Analyze their paid media on Google Adwords
• Use SEO tools to see how they are ranking on different keywords
• Talk with their current or former customers about their experiences

Once you complete, see if you can carry out some of these programs at your company. If your competitors had a celebrity cameo at their multi-million dollar conference, you may not be able to capture that same marketing juice. However, if they’re competing on low-cost keywords and doubling down on a content or social strategy, your team can integrate these learnings into your own strategy.

Determine the competition’s weaknesses and your opportunities

You can learn just as much from what your competitors are not doing. Are there channels that they’ve ignored, or abandoned completely? This could mean that your target audience isn’t in these channels; or it could mean they are an untapped resource.

Often, B2B companies are the last to pursue trendy channels and tend to stick to what they’re used to. Because of this, the first-actors in these networks get to reap many benefits. They are able to quickly build more dedicated following and figure out if there’s potential to turn social media channels into lead sources. They also get to learn the ins and outs more quickly. Not every channel is a winner, but those who pursue them are able to determine this more quickly.

Your competition’s weaknesses are your chances either to capitalize on, or learn from. When you’re completing your competitor analysis framework, you can analyze the possibilities for your team to pursue these opportunities.

Examine your competitors’ approach to digital marketing

With digital marketing, we’re all playing in the same sandbox. There’s only one Google, one Twitter and one LinkedIn, so we have quite a bit of visibility into each others’ strategies.

By poking around, you can start to map your competitors’ digital marketing approach.

Here are some questions to get started, and some tips and tools for finding this information:

What networks are they using?

You can run their name through Namechk to get a list of which social media accounts they’ve created under their brand name.

Do they have an SEO strategy?

Use the ‘Site Explorer’ tool in Ahrefs to check their domain authority, which of their pages are ranking, and if they’ve had changes over time.

Do they use Google Adwords?

Tools like iSpionage allow you to take a look at what ads your competitors are running and how much they’re spending. This is a huge indicator of whether you’ll be able to financially compete with their marketing spend.

Digital is the easiest place to replicate, test, and measure. Using your competitors’ strategies, you can experiment to see if these items also improve your marketing metrics as well.

Analyze pricing and packaging

Marketing is a catch-all term for so many different programs. Yet, pricing and packaging is one of the most crucial marketing elements that does not typically fall under our umbrella. The price of your product, and what comes with it, are usually the most critical decision factor for attracting customers to your product.

When working on your competitor market analysis, you can assess which products cost the most and the least. When assessing price, it’s also important to consider what features are included in that price point. Special discounts? Lifetime customer support? Unlimited user seats?

These items are all part of your value proposition, which you can use to communicate your product to your target market.

Packaging and pricing is not a perfect science. When analyzing the value of each offer, work closely with your product and sales teams to determine what is actually being offered, and for how much. You’ll be able to get additional insight from these teams about how your product fits into this mix and if you’re competitive. Adjusting your pricing and packaging offerings can inform your market strategy.

Evaluate your competitors’ lead flow and customer acquisition

Marketing doesn’t stop after visitors land on your site. The alignment between marketing and sales is crucial to making sure your leads become customers. Examining your competitors’ lead flow can give you some insight into how the marketing and sales teams work together.

When creating your competitive market analysis, see if your competitors are:

• Collecting leads through web forms
• Employing a sales team (you can learn this from LinkedIn)
• Offering demos, free trials, or limited access to the product

By investigating these items, you’ll start to understand how your competitors are not only getting leads, but also acquiring customers. You can use this information to approximate their customer journey, which you can integrate into your greater strategy.

How to do a competitor analysis [TEMPLATE]

Conclusion

One of the many reasons to do a new competitive marketing analysis is to inform your own marketing strategy. Often, these analyses are significant to investors and senior leaders, and can remind them that you’re on the right path. The research phase of these analyses can take time. But, they pay off many times over when you can learn from your competitors’ successes and failures.

The post How to do a competitive market analysis appeared first on Insightly.

Many Americans who have switched to remote work recognize the benefits. There’s zero commute and a comfortable work environment. That being said, remote work comes with its fair share of challenges, especially when it comes to maintaining high levels of communication and productivity.

Both large and small companies are announcing permanent or partial shifts to remote workforces, making the need for best-in-class technology ever so important. Here’s why adopting a unified CRM can be a smart choice for your remote teams.

Remote work challenges

Let’s start by discussing the challenges that many remote teams are struggling to overcome.

Information silos

The transition to cloud-based systems was already underway well before the pandemic. Managing business information in department-specific web applications comes with numerous benefits, but doing so can lead to data silos. One system for deals, another system for marketing campaigns, and still another for delivery makes it difficult to gain a full view of the customer journey and connect data points to accurately measure business performance and ROI.

Poor communication

Virtual meeting fatigue isn’t the only communication-related challenge facing remote teams. When business information is spread across numerous systems, it makes collaboration more difficult for staff. Instead of talking about how to best serve the customer, team members are faced with conversations about how to get data from point A to point B.

Remote selling

Selling while sheltering adds an entirely new level of complexity for your sales reps. Customers want to do business with people that they genuinely like and trust. But how can your company build trust when remote teams are operating in misalignment with sales? If your sales rep is saying one thing but your marketing emails and collateral say another, or the delivery doesn’t match promises made at the time of the sale—your customers will get confused, stop engaging, and lose trust in your company.

Distributed ad budgets

Trade shows, a traditional mainstay of corporate marketing, are still on hold in many industries and geographic locations. For digital marketers, it means more money to allocate toward email campaigns, content marketing, SEO, paid search engine ads, and other online promotions and initiatives. However, managing a dozen different marketing programs requires continuous tracking and performance measurement. Compare this to a live trade show that has one timeline, one lead list, and a relatively known budget.

How a unified CRM solves many remote work challenges

Companies often try to alleviate remote work challenges by building CRM integrations with the tools that they use. While this approach can work, not all integrations are created equal. Each team member must juggle multiple user names, passwords, login URLs, and user interfaces. Data syncs take time to configure and routinely break, which means someone has to fix them. And, there’s the security and privacy risks associated with maintaining customer data in too many places.

By contrast, a unified CRM for sales, marketing, and delivery solves many of the challenges facing your remote teams. Staff spend less time jumping between systems and more time on what counts: delivering business value. Here are four specific reasons why a unified CRM can be a smart choice for your remote teams:

1. One system for sales, marketing, delivery, and support

A unified CRM creates alignment between your lead management activities and other parts of the customer journey, such as your email marketing campaigns, customer onboarding, delivery, and ongoing support. Staff from across multiple remote teams are able to use your CRM to perform their day-to-day tasks, which means they’ll spend less time jumping between systems, juggling passwords and trying to sync key data. They can view reports and build real time dashboards in one place and spend more time using the data, instead of trying to build reports from scratch and manually share with others.

2. One view of the customer journey

Aligning sales, marketing, and operations under one roof provides a more complete view of each customer. Customer email interactions, website engagement, conversations with your sales teams, and purchase history can be consolidated into one record in your CRM. This means your remote teams don’t have to hunt for data in siloed databases. Providing a single view makes it easier for demand-generation teams to understand the customer and design new promotional campaigns and outreach initiatives that maximize customer lifetime value.

3. Improved accountability

A CRM with built-in productivity capabilities—such as projects, milestones, and tasks—adds a new level of transparency and accountability that is not possible when each team is working in a vacuum. Automated follow-up tasks keep sales reps on track with important deals. Kanban-style project boards help marketers prioritize digital advertising campaigns and stay on budget. Converting booked deals to projects in your CRM helps operations teams streamline customer onboarding and reduces unnecessary confusion and delays.

4. Flexibility to preserve mission-critical integrations

Not every challenge can be solved natively by a unified CRM. To compete and grow business, you may need other mission-critical apps. Your bookkeeper will still need a third-party accounting system to track income and generate financial statements. If you’re an eCommerce shop, your shopping cart software is not going away. Be sure to check how your unified CRM handles app integrations. For example, Insightly recently introduced AppConnect, a no-code CRM integration tool that delivers 500+ prebuilt connectors to frequently used apps. You don’t have to be a coder to use it and it takes just moments to build each integration.

Remote teams thrive when unified

Remote team management is no small task. It takes a proactive strategy, commitment from leadership, and the right tools and technology. As you work toward greater alignment between your remote staff, be sure to at least consider how a unified CRM could alleviate your specific challenges.

Learn more about Insightly’s unified CRM here.

The post 4 ways a unified CRM simplifies life for your remote teams appeared first on Insightly.

Even though the marketing career path isn’t a straight one, there are a few steps you can take to advance your career.

1. Decide if you are ready for your next position

It’s not always easy to know when you are ‘finished’ with a current role. Marketing jobs are dynamic, and you may never feel like you’ve completed everything on your long ‘to-do’ list. It’s rare to feel like you’ve done all that you can do in your current position, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not time to move on.

An easy way to tell if you’re ready for a new position is to pay attention to how you feel about your current work. Do you feel challenged or do you feel bored? Are you excited about or dreading upcoming projects? If your work is not energizing you like it used to, you’ve likely outgrown it.

Another way to know if you’re ready to advance in your career path is by reading your original job description. Are you still working on the same primary tasks and projects? Or, have you moved on to more advanced work? If your role has already moved beyond what it was, you are likely due for a new position.

2. Set intentional career goals

It’s tempting to obsess over advancing to a new title—a little signifier of success that you can show off on LinkedIn. Stop to consider what exactly this advancement would mean. Have you mastered everything in your current role? Would a new title provide new opportunities? How would you use those opportunities to grow?

Make a list of your career goals outside of a certain job title or salary bracket. These goals shouldn’t be beholden to marketing career path titles, salaries and structures. Often, these are arbitrary and differ from company to company.

Here are questions to ask when thinking about your next marketing career goals.

Do I want to:

• Pursue a marketing specialty? (more on this below)
• Work in a certain industry?
• Be part of a large or a small team?
• Be on a founding team?
• Manage a large or small budget?
• Work with people I can learn from? If so, in what areas?
• Work remotely?

Not every position will meet all your goals. But it’s still helpful to have this list when you’re considering opportunities and planning career moves.

3. Determine an internal or external move

Oftentimes, this decision is made for you. Is there an open position at your company, or does your company have a dedicated career advancement path? In that case, pursuing your next move at your current company is often your best option. You get the benefit of learning and growing without the learning curve of a new industry, new co-workers, and a new office (or Zoom meeting code).

But, you may decide that you’re ready to move to another company. Or, as is often the case, your company may not have a clear next step for you. This is typical at startup companies or companies with small marketing teams. So you may have only one choice: spend more time in your current position or leave to pursue something new.

How do you know if you’re ready to move to a new company?

Learn a new skill

In my first marketing job out of college, I was a writer and content manager. I loved this work, but I felt like I had only seen one corner of the digital marketing career. It was important to me to gain more visibility and experience into other facets of marketing in my next job.

Try a new industry

One reason that I love being a marketer is because I not only learn a lot about the marketing world, but I also learn so much about every industry that I market to. If you’ve spent a few years marketing to healthcare, for example, you might want to try your hand at marketing to software developers. If you’ve spent your career in B2B, you may also want to try B2C, or vice versa.

Meet new people

We learn so much from every co-worker and manager. Advancing your career can sometimes mean shaking up your work environment. When you move to a new company, you can guarantee that you’ll grow by learning how to work with new and different people.

4. Understand your next step

Especially in the startup world, hiring for marketing can be fragmented. Some companies have a CMO or a VP of Marketing as one of their first five hires. Some companies wait until they have an entire sales division before they hire a marketer.

The typical marketing job titles hierarchy at a tech or software startup might look something like this:

Though it may seem like the hierarchy is well-established, it can vary. Each company is on its own marketing journey. They will make different hires at different times. Responsibilities and seniority can fluctuate from one company to another.

Because of this, your next title may be lateral, or sometimes a step back. In this case, it’s important to return to your career path intentions. If the position allows you to grow, it is a step forward regardless of the title.

Salary grade is often tied to job title. This also varies depending on exact job responsibilities, industry and geographic location.

Based on US national averages data from April 2021, Salary.com reports that average marketing salaries can range from around $38,000 to $297,000. Salary ranges vary based on industry, location, experience level, education, and other factors.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average raise for performance-based promotion is 3 percent. So, if you’re a junior-level marketer making $56,999 and get promoted to a marketing manager role, it’s unlikely you’ll make that big jump to six figures. This is a crucial decision when deciding whether to take a promotion at your current company, or fill a role at a new company.

5. Consider generalized and specific marketing paths

Marketers love to say that they wear many hats. One day they might be a designer, one day a journalist, and one day an analyst. When companies are beginning to invest in marketing, they are often looking for the type of marketer that can do it all, or a generalist.

Yet, at some point, too many generalists feels like too many cooks. When they start to grow, companies see the value of having a dedicated graphic designer, a content manager, a marketing analyst, a campaign manager, and/or social media manager, to name a few.

A full-stack marketing team might consist of 10+ specialists with concentrated experience. Marketing specialties include digital marketing, content, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click management, graphic design, public relations, brand management, product marketing, analytics, campaign management, marketing operations, events, customer engagement programs, and sales enablement. In some industries, there may be even more.

Most marketers spend some time as a generalist, and some time as a specialist. Often, generalist skills apply if you’re managing a team or heading up a department. Otherwise, special skills can take marketers far.

If you’ve spent some time as a generalist, consider a role that will allow you to focus on a specialty. If you’ve been in a specialty for a long time, consider expanding your skill set by spending some time as a generalist. This will provide you with an opportunity to grow and become a more well-rounded marketer.

6. Decide on whether you want to work at an agency or in-house

Marketers typically work in one of two environments. Agency marketers are contracted consultants who work with different clients to achieve specific goals. In-house marketers are hired by a company to run marketing programs full-time.

Agency marketers and in-house marketers often call upon the same marketing management knowledge. Yet, each environment requires different soft skills to succeed.

If you work in an agency, you’ll find yourself interfacing with clients. You’ll become a pro at communicating your process and results. Oftentimes, these jobs are less flexible because you’re working on your client’s schedule. Ensuring client happiness is just as important as marketing your product.

If you’re a marketer working in-house, you have more flexibility. You have the ability to work on your own schedule to make sure your goals are met. You have the luxury of long-term thinking and making investments for the company’s future. Yet, in-house marketing also requires interfacing with your company’s senior leadership. It’s important to effectively communicate how your programs impact the bottom line.

Most marketers have a personality for either agency or in-house. It’s worth it to try both and see which is a better fit for you.

7. Identify your gaps in knowledge or experience

How do you know if you’re a good fit for a new job? Review listed job descriptions on Indeed.com and LinkedIn. If you notice a certain skill or experience that you lack, note it.

Some missing skills are deal-breakers. If you’ve never run a marketing campaign, you may not get a job as a marketing campaign manager.

But, many listed skills are nice-to-have. Depending on the company, they may be willing to teach and train you on some of the less-crucial items. This is especially true for junior-level positions.

To learn more about which skills are deal-breakers and which skills are nice-to-have, consider interviewing some people who are in similar roles. You can learn a lot from speaking to other people about their journey and the skills that they have found most crucial to do their jobs well.

Remember that skill gaps are typical. No marketer can do it all.

8. Consider options for filling a skills gap

If you’ve noticed that one of your skill gaps is something that you want to fill, you have a few options.

Do a project

Let’s say your company has never had a social media marketing presence, but you’re looking at jobs that require at least two years of social media marketing management. How can you simulate the lessons that other marketers would have learned over two years?

Consider an independent project that allows you to test this skill. Design a social media marketing campaign that you can execute from beginning to end. Take on all responsibilities that a social media manager would. This includes copywriting, design, scheduling, engagement, and measurement.

Doing an independent project has a slew of benefits. You’ll learn the ins and outs of the skill you’re trying to master. You’ll show a level of initiative and an ability to learn on your feet, which are great skills for marketers to have. Additionally, you may be able to show your passion for something you’re interested in outside of work. This can give the company a little insight into your personality and passions.

Take a class

For some skills, you may need more of a broad understanding rather than a specific experience. Let’s say you’re applying for a product marketing job that works with a product management team. The job may require some experience working with a product management team. This would be challenging to simulate with a project.

Consider taking a course in product management. Sites like Coursera, edX, LinkedIn Learning, and a number of universities offer free courses at varying levels. These courses will give you exposure to the basics of product management. They may give you the opportunity to test some basic product management skills. Though this does not represent a replacement of the work experience, it will give you a foundational knowledge. It also shows an initiative for learning another part of the business.

9. Use your network and build a new one

The marketing career path isn’t always a straight line, and neither is the marketing job application process. It’s rare to get a job going through the typical pipeline of sending a resume, getting an interview, and then getting a yes-or-no to the job. Because marketers are usually so embedded in their industry, there is an element of ‘who you know.’

Focus on connecting with other marketers. With the advent of remote work, we are lucky that many marketing networking groups have moved online to Slack, LinkedIn, or Facebook. This makes the process of networking a little less time-consuming and a lot less awkward.

Here are a few networking groups to meet others in the industry:

BigSEO – for search engine optimization

MKTG WMN – for women in marketing

Online Geniuses – for tech marketing

Product Marketing Alliance – for product marketing

Vidico – for video marketing

Content Marketing Institute – for content writers and managers

Join your college/university alumni networks and regional groups. Find mentors you can learn from, who can also help you make career decisions and introduce you to people in their networks.

10. Set up informational interviews

You can be the greatest marketer in the world, but if you don’t know anything about the product that you are marketing, you’re in big trouble. It’s even worse if you don’t know the industry or how your product fits into the market. Marketers need to invest time into learning about industries, products, and customers.

Before pursuing a job at a certain company, reach out to some people that already work there. They can be part of marketing management, but you can learn a lot by talking to sales, engineering, or product teams as well. These conversations are easier than ever with the wide adoption of Zoom. Your interviewee can give you insight into how the company operates. They can also give insider information before you enter a formal interview process.

11. Consider leaving your current position

Whenever I was unhappy with a position, my parents used to tell me “it’s easier to find a job when you have a job.”

This isn’t always true.

In my experience, finding a new full-time marketing job can be a full-time job of its own. Having networking conversations, doing research, scheduling interviews and doing sample projects are challenging and exhausting. Doing all this while you’re supposed to be committed to another job is doing everyone a disservice.

The benefits of leaving your current job to focus on finding a new job include:

• Avoiding burnout
• Getting recommendations and referrals from your most recent position
• Spending some time focusing on your mental health and career goals

An extra benefit is that your schedule may open you up to contract, freelance, or volunteer work that can enhance your resume for your next position.

It’s a financially privileged position to be able to leave a job to focus full-time on your job search and career planning, but I recommend it to those who can make it work. For me, there have been times when it was feasible and times when it was not. Review your financial situation carefully before making a decision to quit. You don’t want to feel the financial stress while looking for a new job.

12. Try something outside of the traditional career path

I am envious of the marketers who went from a coordinator to manager to director, and ultimately to a VP or CMO role. The linear career path always seemed like the best way to advance through an organization and career. You learn a little more each year, keep getting promoted, and grow confidence in your work.

Yet, that wasn’t the path for me. My career took twists and turns. This led me to learn more about myself, my interests, and what I wanted my journey to look like. As I met more and more marketers, I learned that the straight-and-narrow progression wasn’t for everyone.

Some of the strongest marketers I’ve met had spent time outside of marketing. They’ve taken hiatuses to work in sales, product, customer success, or even outside of corporate business altogether. By incorporating these experiences into their work, they were able to develop more nuanced perspectives on marketing. As sales and marketing continue to align, we are certain to see more overlap between the sales and marketing career paths.

If you’re feeling like your career has stagnated, it may be worth taking a leap into a different kind of role. It doesn’t mean the end of your career as a marketer. Instead, it might make you a better marketer and provide you with more diverse experiences and opportunities to meet people and discover new interests.

13. Make the move when it feels right

There’s no need to keep to a certain schedule of promotions, advancements, and raises. For one person, a single position could be dynamic and challenging enough to keep them interested for many years. For others, a few months in a position may be enough to know it is not the right fit.

I’ve felt a lot of competition from my peers in marketing for the ‘best’ title or the most money. In the face of this pressure, it is crucial to remember each of us is on our own journey. All companies are different and all jobs are different. The best way to be sure that I’m growing is by returning and reflecting on my own career goals.

Conclusion

Pursuing a marketing career is a rewarding and challenging journey. As you chart your marketing adventure, consider both following the established trails and finding a way to forge your own path.

Sources

What to Expect from an Average Promotion Raise. Indeed.com. February 22, 2021.

Salaries for Marketing Jobs. Salary.com

The 25 Best Marketing Job Titles [Ranked by Search Volume]. Rob Kelly. Ongig.com. January 24, 2020.

The post 13 Ways to Improve your Marketing Career appeared first on Insightly.

Considering drastic changes in mobility and the way people work, the use of business technology is becoming a key differentiator between companies that succeed and those that fail in the digital economy. How does your company stack up?

One way to find out how well business technology supports your team and goals is to perform regular tech audits. Keep reading to learn how to perform a tech audit.

The tech stack

A tech stack is simply a group of technology-based tools that help a business operate more efficiently, market more accurately, and enable sales and services teams to provide a stellar customer experience.

As a business adapts and grows, the tech stack will change. This is also the case for post-pandemic operational needs, as people seek to lower costs and maximize efficiency. Some organizations used this time to clean shops and go lean. Others introduced new technology to improve digital operations and meet new customer trends.

You may find that certain systems have poor integration, run too slowly, or lack the security for an at-home setup. It may be time to evaluate your tech stack.

Why is it important to audit your business technology?

When it comes to modern business needs, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Each brand has unique needs, goals, and challenges. Considering also that new apps and platforms are developed each day, it’s helpful to audit your tech stack to stay on the right track.

A consistent review will help you to:

• Gain better ROI on all software and tools
• Reduce labor costs and employee time
• Consolidate systems and improve integrations
• Maintain a universal source of truth for all data
• Provide better customer experience

The more systems you have, the more critical it is to perform an IT audit. Every app used should be tied back to business strategy—everything from accounting to website management, to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, to social media accounts.

What types of tools are part of a tech stack?

Consider all the tools you need on a daily basis. The best tech stack can include, but is certainly not limited to:

Marketing

• Marketing automation
• Content management system (CMS)
• Lead management, including lead scoring and tracking
• Email automation
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Data analytics
• Ad management tools
• Social media management
• Creative asset
• Chatbot automation

Sales

• Customer relationship management tools (CRM)
• Meeting scheduler
• VoIP/call tracking
• Data management
• Video recording/editing
• Sales enablement

Service

• Ticket management
• Live chat
• Knowledge base
• Help desk automation
• Time tracker
• Survey automation

Signs it’s time to audit your business technology

The major reason to audit your tech stack right now is the shift in the global economy and rise of the remote workplace. From productivity to collaboration to customer management, needs are changing and you may need new and different tools to meet them.

Other factors that will indicate it’s time for a technology audit include:

Data silos

A good sign it’s time to audit is when you start seeing data silos that hinder productivity. When the tech tools you are using don’t communicate with each other, it takes longer to get the job done, causing inefficiencies in both individual and team schedules.

Data silos also hinder collaboration between teams. If departments aren’t pulling the data from the same spot, it’s going to impact the success of operations. It will be hard to distinguish what is working from what is not.

If a system doesn’t easily integrate or is taking up too much time, consider getting rid of it or replacing it with a flexible alternative.

Bad data

If you are brewing mistrust for your data, it’s time for a tech audit. Inconsistencies, errors, duplicates, and problems with shared information can all lead to disaster.

If not right away, the loss of labor over time (to fix these issues) can certainly add up. Don’t let problems go unresolved. If a system isn’t working, fix it, upgrade it, or get rid of it.

Wasted time

As more people start working from home, businesses are brutally aware of wasted labor. If people are used to operating with mediocre software, all their time is spent working out the kinks, rather than shopping for a better solution.

Spending too much time on tools because you don’t know how they function is also a sign it’s time for a system audit.

Consider adopting easy-to-use, intuitive systems and training new staff around the tech stack as part of the onboarding process. This ensures high adoption rates and consistent usage of key systems.

Duplicate functions

Sometimes your tech software features overlap. If two separate systems do the same thing, you probably don’t need them both. You may decide to choose to keep only one or purchase a new system that can completely replace both systems.

Budget changes

If you need to get a new budget approved, it’s time for a tech audit.

Here are a few questions to consider:

• Are you seeing a return on investment (ROI) from the technology you use now?
• Are the number of paid users the same as the number of people using it? Or, what is the system adoption and usage rate?
• Do the tools fit in with your long-term goals?

How to conduct a business technology audit

When it comes to performing the actual audit, every business has its own method to the madness. Start with the following considerations:

• How, where, and when a tool is used in business processes
• The cost to move to a different system
• The number of needs a single tool or system meets for the business
• Systems with overlapping functions
• Can you scale your business with the existing tech stack?

Instead of directing all your attention to the apps themselves, a better approach is to think about the business processes they support.

You should also consider how each tech tool affects employee performance and productivity. This will have a direct influence on the customer experience.

The audit process: step-by-step

The best way to determine if you have the right business technology in place is to make a list of what you already have. Ask the following questions:

• What tools am I paying for?
• How many licenses/users does each program have?
• What does each tool do?
• How are all of the systems connected to each other?
• What critical business needs does each system serve?
• How much does each solution cost?

Once you have a broader view of exactly what’s running operations, follow through with these IT audit steps:

1. Conduct a security sweep of the network and every device attached to it
2. Audit the software in use
3. Consolidate the hardware
4. Inspect all security and backup systems
5. Audit the document management system
6. Ensure the company has a strategic technology plan

Deciding on what you need

When it comes to accommodating the gig economy, there are a few solutions that are critical for success. Here are a few things you’ll need for remote workers:

Secure and easy access tools

If you provide remote workers with tools that are too complicated or have a sharp learning curve, chances are they’ll go back to using their own. If your VPN is too slow for company apps, workers may end up using unsanctioned online tools.

Remote collaboration apps make it easier for people to work from home—and that’s the whole point.

Leveraging the cloud

Most modern brands have a heavy hand in the cloud and SaaS space. This means fewer issues with bandwidth and remote access. The more data that can be stored off-site, the easier it is to reach.

In the new normal, it’s a great idea to increase your cloud footprint. Ways to save money using the cloud include:

• Auto-terminating development during off-hours
• Reducing the need for “on-demand” resources
• Using storage-efficient apps

User feedback

A business technology audit requires input from everyone on the team. Ask for feedback on the daily tools your teams use. Make sure these discussions focus on gathering the facts and the underlying business processes. Ask people their thoughts on the effectiveness of the tool and any suggestions on what else might work.

Customer relationships

Customer churn and retention is a major concern for businesses across every industry and vertical. People have shorter attention spans and competition is fierce. This issue only becomes magnified during a post-pandemic situation.

Any business technology audit you perform must have serious considerations for customer relationships. In fact, your main focus when shopping for new solutions should be “how can this make the customer happier?” It’s the means to every end.

Robust CRM tools can help insulate companies from economic downturns and push revenue growth even in the toughest of times.

Instead of using separate point solutions for marketing, sales, and services, you could consider a unified platform with built-in integrations with other systems, including finance and accounting, HR, and/or e-commerce.

Setting up for success

Ignoring tech tools in your arsenal can cost you money and hold your business back from growth. Consider performing a business technology audit on a regular basis, just like you do with finances. Once a year is a good practice, but it can be more or less depending on your industry and changes in the economy or consumer behavior.

To stay on track, create an audit schedule. A set schedule will help you and your team to prepare and construct a methodology for changes, including additions. It also helps to keep teams communicating and integrations running smoothly.

When was the last time you reviewed your tech stack?

Sources

Before the coronavirus, telework was an optional benefit, mostly for the affluent few. Drew Desilver. Pew Research Center. March 2020.

National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in the United States. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. March 2020

The post How to audit your business technology appeared first on Insightly.

As marketers, we are the go-to people. If a sales team needs a new deck to present to an important client? Ask marketing. If an engineer needs to test new product copy? Ask marketing. If recruiting wants to improve the employer brand? You get the idea.

These tasks are on top of the marketing team’s actual responsibilities. Which are, of course, driving brand awareness, generating leads, graphic design, running campaigns, go-to-market initiatives, creating content, enabling sales, maintaining social media, internal communications, media relations, market research, working with vendors, and analyzing company performance.

Despite these many competing priorities, marketing teams rarely have dedicated project management and have to manage their own priorities.

As a marketer, how can you better manage your own projects? And, as a member of a marketing team, how can you help your colleagues be successful with project management and deliver great work and results every time?

Implement agile methodology for marketing project management

Modern development teams have been using the agile methodology for years. This project management system adheres to twelve principles that streamline software development. Some of these principles also apply to marketing.

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer

Marketers are often trying to satisfy everyone, including internal stakeholders. It’s crucial to keep in mind that the ultimate goal is customer happiness.

Welcome changing requirements

‘We’ve always done it this way,’ is a death knell. The best marketers are flexible.

Deliver frequently, and maintain a constant pace indefinitely

Marketing projects can be on long or short timetables. Yet, showing consistent markers of success helps teams stay engaged and move projects along.

Manage capacity for solo-tasking

When I was starting out in marketing, I always made sure to mention in interviews that I was a ‘good multitasker.’ It was a sign that I was accommodating, would say yes to anything, and was happy to work with anyone.

It took me a few years to learn that these are not the traits of a good marketer. It took me even longer to learn that if your marketing team is multitasking, you have a prioritization problem.

Each member of your marketing team can only work on one thing at a time. If their effort is split among projects, the chances of success don’t double.

Marketing teams must realize and understand their true capacity. Consider the number of team members, their expertise, and their hours available. This will determine exactly how many projects your team can take on. The goal is not to do less work, it’s to stay focused on tasks and initiatives that matter the most and do them well.

Integrate and communicate

With competing priorities and interests, marketing teams can become siloed. A marketing analyst might never interact with a field events marketer, for example. Yet, their goals and objectives may align closely. The opportunities to align your team will ease the collaborative project management process.

Work with your colleagues to identify gaps in your marketing project process. With ongoing remote work, there may be some gaps that you aren’t able to see at first glance. Once these are identified, the team can find opportunities to align. This could mean weekly standups, or it could mean a centralized repository for marketing assets. If your team is struggling being apart, it might mean a weekly Zoom that has nothing to do with work at all.

Practice ruthless prioritization

Without multitasking, we force marketers to prioritize. We all know this means that something must come first, but it also means something must come last.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when deciding what not to work on:

If I don’t do this task, will it create a bottleneck?

Is someone relying on you to complete this task so they can begin their work? If so, prioritize it. If not, postpone it.

Will this task take a long time?

Can you accomplish two or more other tasks in the time it would take you to do this task? If so, prioritize the shorter tasks, and postpone the time-consuming task.

If I postpone this task now, will it snowball into something bigger?

Will postponing this task create more work for you in the future? If so, prioritize the task. If not, postpone the task.

Ruthless prioritization is often just that: ruthless. Marketing project managers may upset stakeholders when they deprioritize a project. Though it may be unpleasant, it’s a crucial part in being able to achieve marketing goals.

Learn to love the backlog

Many marketers are ‘type-A.’ We love a checklist. We love feeling a sense of accomplishment. We love the feeling of stepping back and saying ‘job well done.’

This is rarely the reality on a marketing team. Even if you’re celebrating a big launch or a historic sale, there’s never a true sense of completion. Marketing is continuous.

As the backlog grows, it can start to overwhelm. It feels like you’re staring into your refrigerator and every food item is going bad at once.

Accept that the backlog isn’t a refrigerator—it’s a deep freezer. It’s where ideas, tasks, and initiatives can live for months or years. You can store something in there while you’re working on something else. Or, you can let something fall to the bottom and dig it out to defrost when you absolutely need it.

Conclusion

Marketers must adopt a project management mindset. Once they understand how to operate with an agile mindset, within their capacity, and address priorities, the never-ending task list becomes more manageable.

The post How to become a better marketing project manager appeared first on Insightly.

Over the past year, marketing teams have become increasingly remote, asynchronous, and autonomous. But, it wasn’t just COVID-19 that set us on this path. As marketing functions have increased their scope of responsibility, teams have become fragmented.

Now, even a small startup marketing team might consist of:

• A marketing director
• A content marketer
• A social media marketer
• A paid advertising marketer
• A marketing analyst
• A special programs marketer
• An event marketer
• A marketing operations manager
• A graphic designer
• A public relations manager

Bridging the gaps between these marketing silos is crucial to success. Additionally, marketing teams collaborate cross-functionally with sales, engineering, and customer support.

Dynamic marketing teams can use project management software to better collaborate and communicate, and, ultimately, ensure business success.

How do you know if you need project management software?

Deciding to implement project management software can be a tough decision. Often, teams have momentum with how they have managed projects in the past. Moving to a tool for the first time requires getting your whole team to change their pattern of behavior.

Some signs that your team might be ready to implement a project management tool:

Your team is asynchronous

With the rise of remote work, teams now span time zones and even international borders. Many marketers have adjusted their schedules to take care of children or loved ones. If your team doesn’t work the same hours, a project management tool helps keep everyone on the same pulse.

Communication is splintered

How do you communicate project status with stakeholders? If it’s a combination of email, Slack, phone, Zoom and text, you may be ready to move to a centralized communication log.

Deadlines are missed

COVID-19 has made us all feel like we are living in a time loop. Yet, it’s no excuse for poor project or time management. Your team may need an automated reminder system to keep them on track.

Questions when choosing a project management tool

When deciding on your tool, here are a few questions to help you review your marketing project management process:

• What works well about our current project management process?
• What is missing from our current project management process?
• How many projects do we have, and how long are they expected to take?
• How will my team adopt a new software solution?
• Who are the project owners and decision-makers, and how can we get them on board?
• Who, outside of our team, will need access to this system?
• How important are deadlines to our team?
• How important is capacity management?
• How important is user interface for our team?

Types of project management tools

Don’t dig right into software reviews. It helps to have some clarity on the style of tool that might work well for your team.

Here are just a few examples of project management styles that you may want to consider:

Calendars

Why mess with a classic? Calendars have been around since at least 45 BC. For a good reason. If your team works on strict deadlines, your project management tool should incorporate a robust calendar.

Calendars help to provide structure to our workday, sync teams, plan, and keep us on track with deadlines and deliverables.

Kanban

Kanban is the digital equivalent of a bulletin board. In fact, Kanban is the Japanese word for bulletin board. This system is extremely popular with software developers. It mimics moving cards through a process. For example, a blog post might move from ‘idea development’ to ‘writing’ to ‘editing’ to ‘design’ to ‘publishing’.

If your team works on capacity rather than strict deadlines, or includes multiple stages to projects, Kanban is a good choice. Kanban is a popular choice for teams that use the agile method.

Gantt

Gantt incorporates many teams, stakeholders, and dependencies into a singular view. This Gantt chart is a series of bar charts that breaks down into a day-by-day view. It can visualize big projects and their path to completion. Gantt works well if your projects tend to ‘waterfall,’ or have many dependencies.

If your team has several dependencies with other teams on a long-term project, consider the Gantt method. Often, this method requires a dedicated project manager.

Marketing project management software tools

There are dozens of options for project management tools. Here are some examples of the most popular for startup marketing teams.

Insightly

Insightly’s built-in project management tool can help marketing, sales, and delivery teams stay on track by managing milestones and project pipelines. Insightly collects all of your project-related documentation, project plans, worksheets, and tasks into a centralized dashboard with real-time data and custom views. You can also Integrate Insightly with other tools and external systems to ensure on-time delivery and happy customers. Learn more about Insightly’s product and pricing structure.

Asana

Asana is a beloved project management software for marketing teams. Not only is it easy to use, it also has built-in features that allow each team member to use Asana in a way that best suits them. Asana has a calendar, Kanban, and Gantt-like views. Teams can customize it for any type of project. The basic version is free.

Trello

Trello is a favorite of software engineering teams. Based on the Kanban style, it has ‘add-ons’ that allow for better workload management. Its simple design is a great fit for teams concerned about onboarding. The basic version is free.

Basecamp

Basecamp is great for teams that have asynchronous collaboration. Each user has a dashboard that helps them focus on what needs the most attention. Basecamp is great if your team thrives on status updates and communicating often. Basecamp starts at $99/month for teams.

Monday

If your team has historically used Gantt or waterfall project management, consider Monday. Monday helps visualize projects with many dependencies and inter-team collaboration. Monday is easy to onboard and share across cross-functions. Monday starts at $8/person/month.

Google Sheets

If you want to design your own system from the bottom up, Google Sheets is a powerful tool for collaboration. Google Sheets requires very little user onboarding and is simple to share across teams. However, it contains no dedicated project management functionality and would require detailed upkeep.

Conclusion

Project management should make marketing success simpler. If your team has been struggling with remote work and meeting milestones, implementing a project management software will help. Consider your team’s specific needs, preferences and barriers when adopting a project management tool.

Don’t be afraid to get granular. But, also keep in mind your ultimate business goals to make sure the tool you choose improves your team’s productivity and amplifies its impact on business.

Sources:

What Is a Gantt Chart? TeamGantt

What is Kanban? Dan Radigan, Atlassian

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