5 Tips on Team and Resource Management

Realizing any marketing strategy implies not only quality theoretical background and research but also management. Team resources and their sound allocation are a must-have. Without them, you will never implement even the most powerful and competitive action plan.?

It is the reason you need a streamlined process where every unit clearly understands what to do, when, how, and what the priority is.?

In this article, I want to share several recommendations on how to manage a team and resources.?

Why do we need team and resource management

Joint project work has become an indispensable part of the business processes of numerous companies. In 2022, Niagara Institute stated that skill #1 for employees is the ability to work in conjunction with others.?

However, no matter how many staff members you hire, it is easily transformed into a mess if the team is poorly made up and the processes are chaotic. Moreover, every team member must clearly know his duties and place in a general workflow.?

Recommendations that will help put marketing management on track?

Tip №1. Keep the team well-coordinated

An organized team is the first step to the successful realization of a strategy. You should dedicate time to the distribution of roles and analysis of employees’ skills. It will help to predict the real result you will get and correctly assign tasks.??

Does your result meet your marketing and business goals? Is it enough to fully realize the strategy??

If you doubt whether you have enough in-house resources available to resolve the tasks set or see the discrepancy in desired skills and expertise and those you possess, it makes sense to consider another type of cooperation: engaging agencies, freelancers, part-time employees, etc. Third-party participants will help you optimize processes and make up for the skills your team lacks.?

Tip № 2. Consider time and possibilities?

When the roles are defined, it’s time to set tasks and assign them to specific employees. At this stage, a realistic assessment is crucial. You can entrust one designer to create weekly content in one day, but it is unlikely to be a success.??

If you overload a team member, the work is likely to be done with poor quality and a person experiences burnout.?

When you know the number of tasks an employee can cope with in a day or a week and the workload of your team, you can plan marketing projects and decide on the need to expand the team resources with new employees.?

Tip №3. Allocate funds

A marketing budget is a plan of financial expenses and projected revenue from marketing processes. In addition to real expenses, you need to assess the financial resources of the project itself for successful budgeting. Here are the methods that simplify the calculation process:

• Analogous estimating. Here, the cost of a task is compared to a similar one of another project. This method is good for those businesses that often implement typical projects.?

• Three-point estimation. This method implies the projected maximum and minimum cost of task implementation. A weighted average solution is thus calculated.?

It is only a small part of those things required for the efficient use of financial resources. When budgeting, you need to itemize expenses. Items of expenditure are defined by the actions a marketer outlines to resolve project tasks.?

The transparency of these tasks affects the quality of financial planning and the predictability of costs.?

Tip №4. Transform repeated actions into a process?

Any process is divided into intermediate stages or steps used to hit the goal set. By decomposing the process, you make it a workflow, something like a template that can be used again.?

For example, copywriting can be conditionally divided into several stages:?

• Creating an outline and idea?
• Creating a detailed structure and selecting sources?
• Writing a text
• Editing and approving
• Creating accompanying content
• Proofreading and finalizing?
• Publication
• Distribution?

You do not need to invent the process for each article. Repeating the early-developed one is enough. This is how a workflow — a repeated sequence of actions assigned to people with specific team roles — is created.?

Moreover, the process can be either small or major. For instance, an algorithm for a webinar launch or seasonal activity can be the same repeated sequence of actions.?

Workflows provide for the allocation of responsibilities between team members, making the assignment of tasks an accountable and consequent process.?

Make control lists of tasks for each type of activity you plan for the next quarter. Set up a system that allows assigning tasks, sending notifications, and working together on a project. Various instruments can be used for that, e.g., Trello, Asana, Microsoft Teams, and others.?

Tip №5. Use tools available?

Technologies automate numerous processes connected with marketing management.?

Consider such functions:?

• store marketing documents;
• set and control tasks;
• use dashboards to monitor results and analytics;?
• organize team communication [comments, chats, calls];

and others.?

Every process has the potential for automatization with the help of services. Outline routine and repetitive tasks and find mechanisms to save time for your team.

Conclusion??

If you want to hit the desired results, consider thoroughly structuring your work at every stage. This approach optimizes marketing processes, contributes to the quality of each employee’s work, and keeps processes within time and financial frames.?

I can go on talking about management, but the key thing I want to focus on is the conscious approach to the formation of processes. If you decompose a marketing plan into tasks, tasks into stages, and then compare it with your team resources, you will find lots of opportunities for optimization, improvement, and acceleration of numerous processes.