In the wonderful world of digital marketing, there are few thresholds a small marketing team can’t cross. Even if there are only three of you sharing an office, you can dip your toe into everything from SEO blogging to PPC keyword bidding. You can run campaigns, shoot videos, and build an online community a million times bigger than your actual office or team. And it’s great! But it’s also a ton of work. The more successful your small marketing team is, the more overwhelming the amount of Do-It-Yourself work there is to actually do.
So today, in honor of all the amazing tiny team out there working your butts off for big money, and big prizes, we’re featuring the five essential strategies that every small marketing team can use to optimize your results and make life a little easier.
1) Work with Great Software
Always, always, always start with the software. When your marketing team is small, your software needs to pick up a lot of the slack and help you make the most of your super talented time.
– Dashboards and Channel Management
The dashboards you use are everything. They help you schedule, monitor, moderate, and improve every one of your marketing channels. You can curate your content, interact with your community, and keep everything running like clockwork when you have great dashboards like TweetDeck and Hubspot.
– Automated Marketing Tools
The more you can automate, the better. Use a big automation platform or a dozen little ones. It doesn’t matter as long as the grunt-work is getting done for you.
– Partner with an AI
If it’s in the budget, get your team an actual self-learning AI. At first, it’ll be like an automated marketing boost. But soon enough, that intelligent piece of software will become like an extra team member. An extra team member that can chat-bot with hundreds of people and/or analyze mountains of data and never get bored or tired.
2) Repurpose Every Story into Multiple Marketing-Channel Assets
When you create great content, don’t just use it once and let it fade. Slice and dice it into a dozen tiny bite-sized pieces and spread it around every marketing channel you’ve got in ways that work best for each individual channel. make sure your stories get out there and make the most of your precious content creation time.
– Pull Your Best Quotes into Social Media Blurbs
Write a great article or host a great interview? Pull out the best quotes and turn them into social media posts that link back!
– Capture Your Best Video Moments as Still Frame Images
If you recently made a video (or are going through the archives), don’t forget that videos are just a ton of still images all strung together. Capture your very best still frames and use them to fuel your constant need for great images.
– Rewrite Stories for Each Platform Style
For every story you write on one platform, rework it to be an equally great story for the style of every other marketing platform. Long-form for blogs, bite-sized for Twitter, and medium blurbs for Facebook. You get the drift.
– Embed Images and Videos from Social Media in Your Blogs
Most marketing teams to the majority of their content work for social media, especially images and videos. But that’s not the only place those pics and vids can go. Remember to spice up your blog articles, websites, and newsletters with that vivid photo-goodness as well.
3) Let Your Team Talents Shine
Your team is staffed with amazing individuals who wear a whole stack of hats for various parts of the marketing campaign. Don’t just spread out the work, specialize it. Get everyone doing what they’re best at or leading the projects they understand the most deeply. Make the most of your individual talents.
– Separate Tasks Based on What You’re Best At
Make sure your best writer is drafting the blogs, that your best graphic designer is crafting the infographics and your best director is shooting the videos. Only then will the truly amazing talent of your team shine through, and the work will be easier because you’ll each be doing what you love.
– Support Each Other on Big Projects
Of course, just because you have a ‘best blogger’ doesn’t mean they don’t need help on a massive content campaign, or the graphic designer can’t use a few hundred extra images to work with. Prioritize talents, but always apply teamwork to get the job done.
– Explore Ideas Based on Team Talents, Idea, and Networks
When your marketing team members have something unique to offer, use it! One of you is great at the accordion? Make some fun accordion videos! Have a little inside access to a network? Interview them on camera. Use your special ideas and connections to make your campaigns uniquely awesome, too.
4) Know When to Outsource
When your team is tiny, it is totally OK to outsource. Even big teams outsource when it’s most practical to do so. Know when temporarily (or long-term) contracting a big team of outsourced specialists is more effective or necessary than trying to take on everything yourselves.
– Huge Campaign Projects
When the projects get enormous, the smart small businesses outsource. Whether you need a flash-mob for something or just a backup marketing team to whip up a ton of content, don’t be afraid to contract!
– Video Production
If video production isn’t your thing, or you want to see how it’s done before taking it in-house, then hire yourself some professional videographers for one big shoot and/or make them teach you the ropes.
– Community Management
When your community gets so big you can’t even read all the comments, much less reply, it may be time to hire a professional team of community managers. Or just for big special events when you need to judge a contest with thousands of entries or moderate a particularly important thread.
– Content Creation
One of the smartest things a small team can do is build up a stockpile of content to spool out over the next year between your hot new stories. And a great way to get it all done at once (or pick up quick content packs along the way) is to outsource.
– Analytics, Optimization, and the PPC
If analytics and optimization don’t send you over the moon, that’s okay. There are teams that specialize in marketing by the numbers that will lend you some of their time and expertise.
5) Brand Partnerships for Double-the-Marketing, Double-the-Fun
Finally, don’t forget to partner-up! By pairing with everyone from micro-influencers to big companies that want some new-cool feel, you can seriously boost your own campaign’s impact when you share audiences and hype.
– Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are sometimes bigger brands than small businesses and they are fantastic at working their audience. Get in on that hype by partnering with some e-celebs that are really cool and fit well with your brand.
– Brand Partners
Partner with other small businesses for double-the marketing power, sharing your audiences, budget, and ideas to super-boost a campaign or event together.
– Community Events
Do community outreach and get connected to other local businesses, schools, churches, and groups that would love to be a part of your brand. Community stuff warm and fuzzy and is also totally awesome for social media stories.
– Big-Brand Sponsorships
And if a big brand wants to sponsor an event with you or invite you to attend one of their big to-dos, go for it! You could use the publicity and they could use your trendy, dynamic brand flavor.
Having a small marketing team doesn’t mean you are required to limit your marketing campaigns. With the right tools, strategies, and outsourced assistance, you can rock the biggest campaigns and customer audiences your brand can attract. And with that kind of success, pretty soon your marketing team may have a few new members. For more great marketing insights, tips, or campaign assistance; contact us today!
