With the advent of sophisticated marketing technology and progression towards a digital-first marketing mix, marketing operations can be challenging. Hence, employing adequate marketing leadership skills in a dynamic environment is crucial.
Developing solid marketing leadership skills begins with strategic planning. Therefore, leaders must possess a solid understanding of primary marketing fundamentals. At the same time, leaders must excel in cultivating valuable insights and communicating the insights effectively and concisely.
Here are seven leadership skills marketing leaders must have
Be a Strategist
Strategic planning is paramount when developing marketing leadership skills. It requires leaders to step past the regular activities and make proactive decisions that benefit the businesses. These aspects might pose challenges, especially when companies are under resourced or understaffed.
Luckily, the challenges shift towards a new paradigm at some point. Marketing leaders must sharpen their ability to resolve complicated issues and make meaningful, informed decisions. It means they must consider aspects like-
- New technology implementation
- Sufficient communication within internal teams
- Risk mitigation across the marketing operations
Being a strategist must enable leaders to-
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Determine Businesses Fundamentals
Leaders must examine the primary business drivers and challenge the status quo as per the insights found. They should also consider cascading the current technology’s effects rather than deploying the new MarTech tool.
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Closely Examine Marketplace Trends
Leaders must keep ahead of emerging trends and anticipate the trend’s impact on the team’s work over the annual year. More importantly, communicate the expected result with the team proactively.
Also Read: B2B Marketing Automation
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Plan for Long-term
Leaders are required to transition their roles more toward planning and advising. They might plan, for example, how the business will use AI- its implications, ethical concerns, and pitfalls.
Translate and Investigate the Data
Leaders must establish an effect on behavior by choosing what to measure and the metrics employees must use. Leaders must understand marketing analytics to excel at discerning insights and pass them across the team.
While these valuable insights help drive vital decisions, leaders must balance decision-making with speed. They must achieve organizational growth by augmenting the speed at which they gain insights from the data and encouraging the teams to use these data adequately.
Be Flexible and Reliable
The marketing landscape changes rapidly; hence, leaders must be flexible when thinking strategically. While they commit to planning and process, they must adopt constant change and remain flexible to reallocate resources and changing timelines.
Reliability lets the team know whether or not they will get the necessary tools and resources to succeed. A reliable leader must set up strategies and plans while backing them up with relevant actions within the deadline.
Exercise Empathetic Change Management
Change management is vital when implementing new processes, technologies, or tools. Leaders must ensure seamless transitions and minimal hindrances within the team. Here are a few practices to employ change management-
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Personalize the Message
Like marketing a product or service, personalize the message to every group within the organization to make them understand the priorities. For instance, leaders can build visual roadmaps that display how the new project management tool enhances workflows and saves time.
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Appreciate Small Wins
Appreciating small wins that support the vision will readily boost the team’s morale sustaining motivation. For instance, leaders can celebrate the success of the transition to a new marketing automation platform that boosts team morale.
Set Up Standard Processes
Setting up standard processes helps leaders identify inconsistencies across functions. For instance, receiving the exact requests in multiple ways from different teams indicates a lack of streamlined communication and standard guidelines. Addressing these inconsistencies will foster a cross-functional partnership and cohesive operation.
Moreover, leaders must ensure that all the departments align with marketing standards by setting solid communication channels. Effective communication involves sharing insights and best practices that refine the processes and reduces noise.
Be Decisive and Encourage Feedback
Leaders must understand the importance of being decisive since their decisions influence the team and the company. Leaders must evaluate potential solutions and consider what works best for the company by making confident decisions and taking responsibility for the failure or success of that decisions.
Feedback is the basis of communication. Leaders must encourage an open dialogue where feedback is given importance. At the same time, they must enable two-way communication by asking questions and encouraging answers, ensuring they do not function in a vacuum. Specific, timely, and actionable feedback will help the team develop and support leaders to grow with the team.
Also Read: A CMO’s Guide to Waterfall Marketing
Have a Growing Mindset
Marketing has become the organization’s core due to its influence on adoption, acquisition, and awareness practices. Marketing leaders must understand that efficiency and structure are the foundation of the marketing organization, and real progress only occurs when they influence revenue.
They must ensure whether or not the team priorities align with the objectives and whether they are spending more on projects that will have little impact on sales and growth. Marketing operations are at the front line and responsible for company growth.
Therefore, leaders must facilitate a disciplined and dedicated team that ensures minimal technical debt and cleaner data. Archiving legacy programs, regular data audits, and enforcing standard naming conventions help leaders prepare the team for growth.
Conclusion
Leaders must laser-focus on attribution and results by connecting marketing efforts to business outcomes and making decisions to make enhancements in the future. Rather than being a pessimist and complaining about the situation, leaders must become optimistic by being reliable and flexible strategist who is decisive and encourages feedback.
In cases where there are multiple but equally complex and time-intensive initiatives, leaders must pursue the initiatives that will produce an excellent outcome for businesses. The initiative must increase quality leads and boost engagement and sales.
Marketing leaders must focus on revenue attribution and advocate the mission across the team. It ensures that all the members align and operate with similar goals infusing their work with more significant commitment.
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