Any time someone takes a peek into a Marketing Department within a tech company, it can appear to be chaotic. There are many parallel moving parts being managed to keep the engines running smoothly, expectations on all fronts managed and forward movement constant.
Considering that nearly all parts of a tech company, at one point or another, need some form of content developed, marketing folks have their hands involved in nearly everything. From engineers developing best practices documents to sales needing collateral to boost their efforts and more, marketing is the ultimate go to source for creating, editing and providing feedback on the written word as well as aesthetics and the overall company representation to the public.
To help keep the marketing engines churning, it’s important to stay on point with the following:
Time Management: Effective time management within a tech company Marketing Department is not a “nice to have” – it’s crucial to the crucial component to the well-being of multiple areas. As such, it’s important to establish a system that helps facilitate project management in terms of expected time allotments versus the end results of how long each task actually takes to complete.
Always allow yourself extra time because something will inevitably come up that throws off the flow – be prepared and cover your bases.
Team Management: Falling right behind time management is the ability to both efficiently and effectively manage the team around your marketing team. Everyone from sales to engineering and yes, even the C-Suite, are in a sense directly connected to the Marketing Department in some capacity.
Regular weekly (for some, daily) check-ins with every team member help keep everyone on their toes.
Company Expectations: Every person in the company has certain thoughts and concerns on how their company should present itself as well as how their role plays a function in it. Managing the overall expectations of the company can be one of the more tricker aspects of marketing.
To ensure everything runs smoothly, it’s important to set up a system to keep everything in order from the beginning whether it’s through weekly meeting updates, a running list of every line item, regular check ins with colleagues or a combination of these.
End-User Expectations: Depending upon the type of technology-based business, the end user could be either another business (B2B) or a consumer (B2C) buying your product or service. Managing expectations for a tech business that operates simultaneously for both of these audiences requires well-detailed marketing plans. Both sides require high-quality content, graphics, and company interactions geared towards their specific needs at all times to be considered a success.
In order to fire on both B2B and B2C cylinders in harmony, having a cohesive team and process in place following the laid out marketing plan is crucial. Those outside of your organization notice when something is not right and will likely either not hesitate to point it out or silently go to a competitor.
While nothing is quite perfect, and there will likely aways be something that goes wrong, constant vigilance is key to successfully managing marketing in the competitive tech industry.