As much as meetings are sometimes deemed ineffective, they’re a necessary part of any business culture. In particular, team meetings for your marketing department can positively influence your team’s creativity, collaboration, and overall performance when done right. At the same time, team leaders take on a serious challenge trying to keep a marketing meeting productive. Its impact and influence on your marketing team’s productivity can be lost in ineffective scheduling, the same people dominating the conversation, and no actual meeting follow-up. Sadly, many company leaders have yet to crack the code on how to take their marketing meetings from soul-suckingly boring to whole-heartedly productive. But your meetings don’t have to be something you and your team dread. Here are 12 tips for keeping marketing meetings effective and engaging.
1. A Productive Marketing Manager is Key
First, your marketing team meetings need someone who can lead them with confidence. This person should also be knowledgeable in all things marketing and your strategy specifically. Insert a productive marketing manager here. A marketing manager is incredibly hands-on with your marketing strategy. Their knowledge of your marketing strategy and constant involvement with your marketing team can keep your team meetings productive. They will know who needs to be present at a meeting and extend the invites. They can also draft focused meeting agendas that address your marketing campaigns, strategies, and results thoroughly. Ultimately, a marketing manager will keep you and your marketing team organized and informed in your meetings.
2. Only Schedule Meetings When Necessary
It’s easy to get caught up in scheduling meetings just for the sake of scheduling. This is part of the reason why so many workers deem meetings unnecessary and inefficient. Unfortunately, their team leaders are scheduling way too many meetings for all the wrong reasons. Instead of falling into this trap, do the opposite. Only schedule meetings when it’s absolutely necessary. Some appropriate reasons to schedule a marketing meeting are: • To ask for help on projects taking longer to finish • To discuss adjusting KPIs and other relevant changes to your marketing strategy • To address any persisting conflicts among team members • To notify team members of company news and achievements • To discuss the results of a marketing campaign • To introduce and organize a new marketing project Once you’ve scheduled a marketing meeting, do some thorough prep work beforehand.
3. Do Some Thorough Prep Work
One of the best ways to ensure your marketing meetings are productive is to prepare before the meeting. Prep work ensures that you have a direction for your discussion. In addition, you want to know that your marketing team will find value in the meeting as this usually results in better engagement. Your meeting prep work can include: • Sending out an email or survey asking what topics would be beneficial for your team in the next meeting • Choosing the purpose for your meeting based on the responses you get • Identifying who needs to be at the meeting • Reviewing previous meeting notes • Gathering any supporting documentation • Doing any necessary research • Communicating with any additional teams and people outside of your team that will be involved in the meeting Take your prep work a step further by creating a meeting outline.
4. Create a Meeting Outline
You should create and send out a concise agenda beforehand. An outline will keep your team focused on the purpose of the meeting and ensure you discuss all that needs to be talked about for maximum productivity. Your meeting outline should: • Clearly state the purpose of the meeting and what you want the outcome of the meeting to be • List the date, start time, and how long the meeting will last • Detail what will be talked about and who will talk about it • Define how long you’ll spend on each topic • Designate time for questions and discussion at the end
5. Create Compelling Visuals and Interactive Content
Compelling visuals and interactive content can significantly boost participation in your marketing meeting. Visual and interactive content is entertaining. It also helps your team visualize exactly what you’re talking about, making it easier for them to absorb the information presented. You can explore creating: • Infographics • Videos • Powerpoint presentations • Surveys and polls • Slideshows • Images • Posters • Graphs • Charts • Audio • Animated notes • Digital whiteboard Your marketing meetings can be even more effective when you ask everyone invited to participate in the presentation.
6. Ask Everyone to Present Something
Everyone on your marketing team should have a part in each meeting. This helps your team take the session a bit more seriously because they’re a part of it. Ask everyone invited to present something in the meeting. For example, they could be responsible for sharing the results of a campaign, information on a new technique, some ideas for improvement, and so forth. You can also delegate specific tasks to your team members, like keeping track of time or taking notes throughout the meeting. Someone should be prepared to send out a recap of the meeting via email, reminding everyone of what was discussed, what the next steps are, and the tentative date and time for the next meeting. Someone on your team should also send out a detailed email about what’s to be done by each team member after the meeting.
7. Get Creative About How and Where You Do Meetings
Your marketing team thrives on creativity, and that creative spirit should extend to your meeting, specifically how and where you do your meetings. Don’t hold every meeting in your mundane conference room. Instead, engage your marketing team with a: • Walking meeting • Lunch meeting • Dinner meeting • Team-building activity meeting • Stay-at-home virtual meeting • Meeting at a coworking space Next, your marketing meeting’s productivity is highly dependent on your ability to use your time wisely.
8. Use Your Time Wisely
One of the main things workers hate about meetings is how long they are. If you’re hosting meetings that last for hours, it can be harmful to your productivity, especially if your team consists of a mix of baby boomers and millennials. Both millennial and baby boomer workers appreciate proper time management and do their best when efficiency is prioritized. So, you must use your time wisely in every meeting and ensure they have everything they need to do their jobs efficiently once those meetings are over if you want to keep them as team members. You can use your time wisely in your meeting by first polishing your time management skills. Then, ensure you’re sticking to the meeting agenda you created and the designated times you’ve chosen for each topic and presenter. Ultimately, if you say a meeting will be 30 minutes, stick to it so your team can get back to working on their respective tasks and projects.
9. Ensure Everyone Has an Opportunity to Contribute
Nothing kills the vibe in a meeting faster than having the same people dominate the conversation. Do all you can to ensure this doesn’t happen in your meetings. You want everyone on your marketing team to feel valued and empowered to contribute in each meeting. You want them to know that their voice and perspective matter. So, create a comfortable meeting environment that encourages each team member to share and put their best foot forward in your meetings. When you notice one or multiple people are starting to dominate the conversation, thank them for their contributions, but kindly ask that they allow others to speak.
10. Celebrate Wins and Remain Positive When Discussing Where You’re Falling Short
Another reason employees dislike meetings is that the majority of them seem to be about everything the team is doing wrong. Instead of depressing your team with criticism and finger-pointing, ensure you’re celebrating your team’s wins and remaining positive when discussing things that aren’t going so well. Anything that’s going wrong or not producing the expected results should be treated as a learning opportunity. It should also be treated as an opportunity to bring your team closer together. Get everyone’s input on how to overcome the challenges you’re facing and put some of those ideas to work.
11. Implement a Meeting Follow-up Strategy
What do you do once a meeting is over? There are various approaches to following up after a meeting. But what you don’t want to do is nothing. Doing nothing after a meeting is dangerous. Not only does it slow your team’s production, but it also fuels the narrative that meetings are pointless. It’s wise to implement a meeting follow-up strategy. It should include: • A follow-up email sent out after the meeting ends • Actionable steps for each team member to take • A plan for how you’re going to follow up on those steps Lastly, sharpen your leadership skills so you can provide your marketing team with the support and guidance they need to engage in a productive meeting.
12. Sharpen Your Leadership Skills
The way you lead your team is essential to how productive your team meetings are and how much growth your business has over the years. Without solid leadership, you can forget about your marketing team being committed and engaged. Sharpening leadership skills like the ones below will help your marketing meetings to be that much more collaborative and energetic: • Communication • Trustworthiness • Adaptability • Delegation • A growth mindset • Problem-solving • Research and analytics
Closing Thoughts about Keeping Marketing Team Meetings Productive and Effective
Keeping your marketing team meetings productive requires a mix of creativity, intention, organization, and leadership. Implement the tips above to ensure your marketing team comes out of each meeting with a renewed sense of commitment, passion, and purpose. Another idea would be to actually reduce the number of meetings you have. Indeed, you should stop having another meeting that could have been an email. I see too many companies running meetings after meetings whereas sometimes an email can do the trick. Growing businesses is what we do at Growth Hackers. How do we do it? We help entrepreneurs, marketers, decision makers, business owners and leaders grow their businesses and their personal brands while helping them sharpening their leadership skills. Do you want your business to strive and to scale? Contact our growth experts today if you want to get more leads, hire great talents, make these talents stay in business with you, close sales, automate your processes and see your revenue skyrocket.
Dan Matthews
I am a writer with a degree in English from Boise State University. I have extensive experience writing online at the intersection of business, finance, marketing, and culture.
1 Comment
Your blog post was a fantastic resource on the topic. I liked how you provided in-depth analysis and supported your points with evidence.