ICYNT (In Case You’re Not Tom): On 4/20, Tom sent a hot take about how more efficient marketing ops is the answer to better B2B marketing departments.
Tom’s thesis resonated with us. As a B2B SaaS company in the workflow biz, we get the pain points of messy marketing ops and a changing how-work-gets-done landscape.
So Tom, not that you asked, but here’s our take.
Embrace remote, global talent without sacrificing unity
“An astounding amount of talent at a fraction of the price of your city can be found when you open up roles to fully remote candidates.”
Remote is 💯. We know that, and so do 74% of companies who plan to shift to more remote work even after the pandemic permanently.
But what does that mean for companies who push back, like Yahoo!, Reddit, and Best Buy?
They’ll fall behind. Fast.
Fully remote work is scalable, cost-effective, and promotes diversity
Remote work is saving companies millions and employees thousands. But arguably even more critical is the impact on the diversity of your team.
It’s not easy to achieve diversity when you keep fishing from the same pond. Gender and ethnically diverse companies are more likely to succeed, even as much as 35 percent. By expanding your recruiting efforts outside of your city, or even country, you find people with fresh takes and practices.
One big caveat: your tech stack has to be async-work-friendly for those amazingly talented and diverse humans.
Automate everything (that you can). Integrate everything else.
“Most tasks now performed by lower-level marketing resources can be automated.”
Companies don’t need to keep hiring marketing assistants or buying new software. They need to automate.
So much work is happening solely about how to do the work. We coined a term for the work done to plan and prioritize work: “work-planning inception.”
Automation (done well) eliminates the round-robin of that.
When marketing can’t automate Asana or Trello tasks, project management hits a threshold. That’s why we’ve created a way to manage tasks inside the tool you’re working in.
Because creating tasks should never be a to-do item.
In-app task management needs these three things to succeed:
- On-the-spot creation (aka, not only after meetings)
- Relevant context (e.g., screenshots and links)
- Collaboration (e.g., ability to @mention)
This can help teams scale their project management without hiring more team members to manage projects.
There’s no need for a steep value ladder
“As team members progress and master their tasks, they should either be handed onto a junior team member or to a machine as per the step above.”
Like anyone scaling a business or a team, there are growing pains. And there’s an art to letting go.
You hit the nail on the head when you said: “everyone on your marketing team should be climbing the value ladder.”
Cord helps marketing leaders pass the baton to junior team members by leaving clear documentation, onboarding guides, and a lifeline (aka an ability to chat or ask for feedback) exactly where they’d need them.
Whether members of the marketing team are in an app like HubSpot, Google Analytics, Trello, or on your company’s website making some updates, they can quickly chat with their manager in context. This can eliminate the tendency to “jump on a quick call” or create a Slack‑storm.
This brings us to your next point.
Meet less without sacrificing collaboration
We know “asynchronous work always wins” as you said. When teams stop jumping into group-think mode and actually get in deep-work mode, it leads to more productivity.
Tom, we love that you have zero scheduled meetings at Fame and bCast. Cheers to that.
Cord helps eliminate meetings by adding context without the need for screen-sharing or bad walkthroughs.
Asynchronous work still requires collaboration (just not all on Zoom calls). That’s why it’s better to keep conversations where the work happens– don’t throw off the deep-work groove.
Document everything, but not just in a Drive somewhere
“If we agree that asynchronous communication beats synchronous, then we need to get better and more organised with the documentation of the information needed to run the marketing department.”
Documentation is the enemy of the infamous “move fast and break things.” But if you don’t document, you’re going to move fast, in a circle, and break the same damn things over and over again.
Toggling back and forth between where the work happens, your company’s chat app, email, and a report on the work is dead.
Instead, document what you anticipate reusing again to set up teams for success and avoid bottlenecks
Onboard team members
A sucky onboarding experience sets up a new hire for failure, and they’ll be twice as likely to peace out.
Endless training videos are dead
With Cord, you can provide the resources right within the apps where work is happening by:
- Adding annotations and comments explaining how things work
- Attaching relevant files about the tool
- @mention teammates for Qs
- Provide next steps and reminders (aka, digital post-it notes)
Documentation right where it needs to be is a lot more convenient than outdated walkthroughs lost in Confluence or Coda (or Google Docs, if you’re still into that).
Foster autonomy
Empower your team to take tasks across the finish line. Team members can send messages from inside the tools they work in to Slack to quickly get their manager’s input or approval, whether that’s from Mailchimp, social media ad platforms, or analytics dashboards. Automate people operations and enable your team to self-serve.
Celebrate the wins
And we mean beyond the flying unicorns in Asana. Track campaigns and other milestones KPIs in analytics tools. Use Cord to nod to wins, emphasize significant initiatives, and share performance and opportunities with the team.
Cord enables B2B marketing teams to create, collaborate, and update the status of tasks where deep work happens. Sounds like a way to keep growing.
So Tom, when’s a good time to show you a demo?
