Entrepreneurial Marketing Teams

When you're a team of ONE, you have an entrepreneurial marketing team by default. But what about when you're no longer a team of ONE?

There's this thing that happens as businesses grow; they become more structured. And with more structure, they inherently become LESS entrepreneurial. But what happens when we lose that point of view?

This article will specifically explore the value of an entrepreneurial mindset in marketing, but please feel free to extrapolate this to other business units too ??

What does it mean to be Entrepreneurial?

In researching this article, I discovered a great definition published by the University of Oxford :

It’s a mindset, or a way of thinking. Entrepreneurs just think and do things differently. Being entrepreneurial means sharing ideas freely, and celebrating so-called failures as learning and growing experiences. Being entrepreneurial means thinking outside of the box, and expecting the unexpected. Entrepreneurial thinking enables people to be flexible, adaptable, and see opportunities.

P.S. The entire definition is longer on their website, so go check it out!

So, if this is what it means to be entrepreneurial, how can we turn that on in our Marketing Teams, and what are the results?

Marketing Mindset

I used to do an exercise with my old Facebook Group members to help them explore their Marketing Mindset; or, "what they think marketing is". Now, for all my marketers out there, have you EVER participated in an activity like that?

Well, considering I never had before I created it, I would guess most of us haven't. Which means, we don't even KNOW the marketing mindset of each of our team members.

What does sales think marketing is? How about operations? Or client success? What do you developers think marketing does? Or what about the Board?

If we're looking at this from an entrepreneurial perspective, we'd be focused on thinking and doing things differently. Now, does that sound like, "duplicating my competitors SEO search terms"?

That's a heck no.

Entrepreneurial Marketing Teams come to work to look at things differently. Which leads to companies standing out from the crowd. Which, is pretty much the main deliverable of marketing...at least in my opinion.

RISK: But looking at things differently and doing things differently comes at a cost; there isn't always PROOF that something is going to work. Although, in reality, just because something worked for one company does NOT mean it will work for another one. So "proof" maybe isn't as valid as we think??

BENEFIT: When we have the marketing mindset of doing things differently, it allows teams to put on their Thinking Caps (or Feeling Caps) to really explore what activities are meaningful, and replace the un-meaningful ones with NEW ideas that could generate even MORE connection in the market.

Sharing Ideas Freely

In an Entrepreneurial Marketing Team, ideas get to free flow. And that doesn't just happen by putting people together in an office ??

It happens with an INTENTION of creating space for ideas to flow; as well as CELEBRATING the flow of ideas EVEN WHEN they don't end up going anywhere.

Now, that might seem like a waste of time for some people. And if that's you, I'll save you some time and you can stop reading now.

But if you're going to create an environment where ideas flow freely, you have to get rid of the expectation that EVERY idea is going to be good/usable.

That's NOT how great ideas are born.

And if you want GREAT ideas from your Marketing Team, then one-off "brainstorming meetings" aren't going to cut it.

See, that's an environment of, "we have a problem and we'll brainstorm to fix it", but the initiator of the conversation is a "problem".

When ideas truly flow, it's because there's ALWAYS space for them to do so.

RISK: If you're afraid that someone else will come up with a "better idea than you", then the benefits of this will never come to fruition. And the biggest problem is, most marketing leaders don't KNOW that they see this as a risk. So long as anyone on the team feels like they need to have the "best" idea, the free flow of ideas will feel risky.

BENEFIT: When your people have the permission (and the PRACTICE) to bring their ideas to the table without fear of mocking or dismissal, more ideas get generated. And when more ideas are generated, there's a greater likelihood that you have an idea that will work for you. More ideas = better ideas ??

Learning & Growing from Failure

I think this is my favorite one to be honest with you all. Because Marketing - in particular - has ALWAYS been about "Guess & Test".

Now, when I say "guess", I do mean "creating a viable hypothesis based on past data", and not just "straight-up guessing". But we're always starting with a hypothesis we are trying to prove / disprove.

Then we test it. Then we learn. Then we make decisions.

The problem is, many marketing teams DO the testing, but very few are brave enough to LET GO things that don't work. OR, we don't TEST the right things.

For example, almost even company in business today has an email list of some kind. We think we MUST have an email list because "everyone" has an email list. So, we test things like Subject Lines, times of day for distribution, length of emails, color of buttons, and we give ourselves a pat on the back for "learning".

But that learning is MOSTLY irrelevant if the TACTIC doesn't work.

In the above scenario, we aren't actually testing whether or not email works for us. We're just testing which features of the email deliver better.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's worked at a company that had great open and click rates, but no resulting business. And that's because we're NOT actually learning and GROWING from our failures. We're actually not even testing the things that would LOOK like a failure.

RISK: straight-up, the risk is that you FAIL. And no one WANTS to fail, right? Well, learning and growing only happen when you fail. So, if the fear of failure is high in your organization (due to a culture of punishment), people won't accept the risk, and they WON'T learn and grow. But what happens to a company that doesn't learn and grow? Maybe Blockbuster would care to share.

BENEFIT: When we are ACTUALLY learning and growing, we get to continually do things better. Perform better. Convert better. And, at the end of the day, make money better. So, if we can get rid of internal practices that preach punishment over growth, there's actually NO way we CAN'T perform better that our competitors.

Expecting the Unexpected (with flexible and adaptable thinking)

Remember that time when the entire world was closed due to the COVID-19 virus? How many of us were dealing with the Unexpected? 99.9% of us I would say (and that's being conservative).

What companies learned during that time was the power of flexible and adaptable thinking.

You see, extrapolating things linearly isn't innovation. It's iteration. And for YEARS, marketing teams have been slowly (and for most, not even meaningfully) iterating.

• Let's try this new banner at the next tradeshow
• Let's post our Tik Tok content on LinkedIn too
• Let's send this email to a different list of people

Which, if we're all living linearly, could work.

Except, we're not.

None of the human experience is in fact linear. It's more like a mosaic. And to think "mosaic-ly", we need to think differently.

RISK: The thing about unexpected is that it is inherently unpredictable. We can't actually predict WHAT is going to happen. And this isn't about making accurate predictions. It's about creating the permission to pivot (aren't we all sick of THAT word ??) and adapt to whatever IS happening, instead of following a plan. Which might also mean, you DON'T accomplish your original plan. But that plan is really now null and void.

BENEFIT: Unexpected things WILL happen. Even if it's not as drastic as a worldwide pandemic, there are always unpredictable things that arise. And when your marketing efforts reflect that, your brand seems more HUMAN. And people build relationships with businesses when they connect with them on a human level ??

Seeing Opportunities

Who on your marketing team is responsible for seeing opportunities? In many organizations, it's the Marketing Leader. Or maybe even the CEO.

Here's the thing...ALL people see opportunity differently. Because we all have a different perspective.

Now, identifying an opportunity does NOT mean you have to chase it. But the more opportunities you identify, similar to our above chat about ideas, the better opportunities we can find.

There are many people in an organization that can see opportunity, and the key is to empowering them to share what they see, even if it's outside of their "job description" or department.

And there's a celebration piece that comes with this too...if we can celebrate the act of SEEING the opportunity, instead of only celebrating the opportunities we ACT on, it encourages our people to share what they see.

RISK: This de-centralizes the responsibility of "seeing opportunity". So it's important to look at the culture of your business in terms of how you structure finding opportunities. You may realize that you have a culture that states that only certain levels of the hierarchy are "allowed" to see opportunity, and changing THAT in a Marketing Team can be more significant that you think.

BENEFIT: More opportunities = More opportunities. Yeah, it's that simple. The more you see, the more likely you are to find the path that's right for you. While igniting your team to feel like part of the progress; want to talk about retaining the best resources in your industry?

Making It Work

Everything I've described here today may seem simple in concept. But making it work takes a daily intention.

• Intentionally hiring marketing team members who contribute this way
• Letting marketing team members GO if they don't want to
• Creating KPI's that track how well these are being executed
• Changing reward structures to celebrate entrepreneurship
• Addressing mindsets that keep these things from happening

It's by no means an over-night transformation.

But the benefits are pretty clear.

So, if you're ready to take your organization to the next level with an Entrepreneurial Marketing Team, let's chat :)