Marketing is a fascinating sector that evolves at lightning speed: everything is better, faster and stronger all the time. Unfortunately, the number of marketers suffering from stress seems to be growing at the same rate.
In a previous article Why marketers are more likely to face stress and burnout, I already described how this constant pressure leads to stress and sometimes even burn-out. Recently, I found the infographic below on the Internet, which describes in a handy diagram some relevant work points to banish stress in the marketing team.
Try not to have dozens of projects going on at the same time in your team, because heads will explode. So set priorities: which projects get priority, which are in the second row and which can wait? This is a difficult balancing act because the word 'priority' is interpreted differently by everyone. Next, make sure that everyone in the team is on the same page when it comes to priorities and that the project planning is clear and unambiguous. Communicate the project planning within the company to other departments (e.g. Sales) or to the management. Precisely those two departments do not take marketing priorities very seriously and like to push their priority calendar through. It is up to the marketing team to counteract this.
Once the project calendar has been drawn up, it is a good idea to immediately link measurable objectives to it. After all, these are an excellent stimulator for the team. So, answer the question: "When is a marketing project successful?
Are your marketing projects supported by strategic notes, project briefings or project strategies? Then you can avoid a lot of stress due to unclear guidelines. Projects may be clear in the mind of a marketing manager, but they are even more solid on paper. So write down clearly what each project stands for, where you want to go in the coming weeks or months and what results you want to achieve. A project strategy does not have to be long. A short OneNote or a Powerpoint of a few slides can make the difference between stress and peace.
Marketing projects have a start and end date, contain numerous milestones or communication moments and are linked to dozens of tasks for different marketers. Does it sound logical when I say that this is exactly where a breeding ground for stress lies? Reality and practice show that many marketers give their own interpretation to this planning, without taking into account the planning of fellow marketers. I would therefore argue that we should strive for a uniform way of marketing planning. One marketer in Excel, another in Trello, yet another part of the team in Teams, ... this will not get you right in terms of planning and is guaranteed to cause miscommunication and stress. Therefore, put your heads together and determine a unified way of working when planning projects, communication and tasks.
Time management specialists or stress and burnout coaches have been saying it for a while now: permanent attention to social media communication (unless you are a social media manager of course) is a killer in terms of work efficiency. Being permanently pulled out of the attention zone by tweets or updates, notifications or other types of notifications is the best way to give stress the space it needs in your life. It is not easy to set up the necessary agreements or protocols for this within your team. Each individual marketer must decide how far they will go to allow a constant flow of social media messages during work. But the motto is clear: the less, the better!
There are many options for setting up or streamlining communication within the team. A popular one is Microsoft's Teams, but e-mail also remains a frequently used means of communication within marketing teams. But that's not all: there may be many other digital communication tools floating around within the team such as Slack or other chat features within marketing planning software. Discuss with colleagues which communication tool will become the standard within the team in order to avoid that internal communication is permanently scattered over a multitude of digital tools.
As you read above, marketers are surrounded by a never-ending stream of digital messages, notifications and other types of communication. A lot of stress can be traced back to an overload of digital notifications. The rise of teleworking has made this even more important. After all, there are hardly any informal consultations nowadays. A quiet chat in the coffee corner, a short check in the corridor or a walking meeting can do wonders for resolving issues in marketing projects. What do you prefer: 50 chats around a certain theme or a half-hour meeting with the marketeers involved? Marketing meetings are essential to banish stress from your marketing team. This can be a weekly status meeting in which you discuss the marketing projects with the team, a specific meeting around a project or agile marketing meetings in function of sprints. Also read my article 'What does agile mean for marketing'.
I already advised you above to strive for a uniform way of working within the team when it comes to marketing planning. Today, there are enough digital tools with which you can efficiently manage the entire project management within your team. The most obvious one is Microsoft365 where you have a multitude of digital tools for project management such as Teams or Planner. If you want to go further, you should consult project management systems such as Trello, Jira or Asana. Marketing teams who want to go 'all the way' should look at marketing project management tools like Husky, because they are 100% tailored to marketing teams. At Husky, we know exactly what marketers struggle with when it comes to organisation, how they can gain time and efficiency, how they want to have insight and overview and how internal communication works. Do you want to banish stress from your marketing team? Then be sure to try out our organisation software.
I sincerely hope I could inspire you with this infographic!
Do you want to avoid stress by working more efficiently within your marketing team? Then don't hesitate to test Husky for free. You will get more insight, more overview and better communication with colleagues in return.
Start a free trial here, or book an online demo with one of our marketeers.
