How to track your marketing team’s productivity with Stackby?
Almost every company has a marketing team, and a team always means a group of people. But with a group of people on board, it can be challenging to be constantly productive.
Are your marketing team’s efforts being at par with your goals?
Is all your hard work moving any needle for your company?
Are you spending all your time effectively?
A general survey tells us that 75% employers think that over 2 hours of efficient work is lost each day. The hard part is always not knowing what is killing your marketing team’s productivity.
So, the question that comes in is - Do you have a productivity metric to track everything you or your team does?
A productivity metric helps you to understand what is working well for you and your team. It also helps you to understand which resources you need to use more effectively. You can also choose which tasks need to be time-optimized and where do you need to use your time more effectively.
In this article, we will talk about the importance of measuring your marketing team’s productivity, how can you track it, and how can you improve it.
PS – We also have a free template for you at the end! Read on to find more.
Why is it necessary to track your marketing team’s productivity?
If you don’t know the status of your productivity, how will take you any decisions to make any kind of changes in it? So, the best way to go about it is to understand why you should track your marketing team’s productivity:
To make better decisions
Tracking the marketing team's progress is the root of making the right decisions for your team. If your team happens to lack in certain areas, then getting a full retrospect into their workings, timings and problems encountered can help you make more informed decisions.
To find better ways to deal with setbacks
Running a business comes with various risks in every field. However, with cooperation from your team and advanced decision-making, you can overcome it. To do this, you need to know where the problems commonly surface.
Also, learn the causes of these arising obstacles and eradicate them eventually. Tracking your team's productivity will help you understand where they are suffering. This will eventually help you decide solutions that can make the state of affairs better.
To increase productivity
The whole point of tracking your marketing team's productivity is so that you can maximize it. Increased productivity brings sales growth, which is the ultimate goal of every department in a firm.
Tracking productivity is one simple step you can take to use your time and resources and benefit from it efficiently. The results are equal to the effort that you put in.
How to Track your Marketing Team’s Productivity?
Now since we know how important it is to track your marketing team’s productivity, let’s talk about how to monitor the performance. There are several methods through which you can record the productivity of your employees.
But it is important to keep in mind that your employees are unique individuals with varying ways of working. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to impose the same methods of evaluation on everyone. However, here a few tactics generally apply to most workers on average and have proven results in the industry:
Setting goals and metrics to measure this
The productivity of your workforce cannot be measured with the lack of goals and objectives and the means to measure them.
- Goal setting
Goals are necessary since it helps you prioritize your work according to its urgency. It is important to set both long-term and short-term goals. They are both very much necessary since they contribute differently to your firm's working.
- Setting the Measuring Metrics
Deciding the means of evaluation of these goals and objectives comes next. The most popular method of measuring objectives is through the use of OKR and KPI techniques.
You can also check out and make use of the OKR tracking template by Stackby!
Also Read: OKR vs KPI – How they are different by why you need them both?
Overall Team Evaluation
Working in a team means sharing rewards and responsibilities equally. This also implies that the team's productivity as a whole rest upon the shoulders of every individual member. Even a small fluctuation in the work of one person influences the entire team.
This is why it becomes necessary for the team to be evaluated as a whole so that members lagging behind their work can catch up, and the ones moving forward faster can help them do this. There are multiple ways through which you can evaluate your team:
- To begin with, the team can be evaluated according to the projects they work on. Projects require the entire team to be involved for their completion. Judging by how quickly the team completes their projects and the quality of their project, the entire team's productivity can be traced.
- To add to that, the reception of the projects by the public and the feedback received can be another measure to check the team's productivity. You can also check the analytical reports of the content/product put out during the span of the project and evaluate the team's productivity according to both quantity and quality.
- Last but not least, reporting through emails, messages, notifications, etc., done by every team and its frequency after the completion of a project can always be used to estimate the productivity of your marketing team.
This helps you find the pattern of work of your team, the gaps between reporting help you record their efficiency in time management, and the quality of work output helps you judge any setbacks that they may be facing.
The individual task to time ratio
A team consists of several unique members. Thus, tracking the productivity of individual members is as important as that of the whole team. Usually, the most simple and effective way to do this is by comparing the individual task completion to the time taken by the individual.
The employee's focus during work hours, their implication of directions by the employee, and even the individual's mental state come to play. If the worker cannot meet their goal within an assigned period, this hindrance needs to be resolved for the individual to meet their full potential.
Comparing revenue per employee
The work productivity of an employee can also be measured according to the revenue earned by the employee. Usually, the rule of thumb states that the more the income earned by the employee, the better their productivity.
However, in practicality, this does not always apply.
Factors like flexible work timings, variable workloads, quality of work, and even the ability of the employee to meet goals affect the employee's revenue. Despite this, it is preferable to have a high-income ratio per employee.
This can be calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total number of employees. A higher number of revenues implies higher productivity, naturally. This form of metric allows you to accumulate accurate information as all calculations must be made in rational figures.
Comparing the work target to work done by every individual
After the company sets its goals, the workers are obliged to meet a minimum number of objectives. The leader needs to estimate exactly how much work is being done? It is quite natural for teams to be unable to meet certain milestones, but completing most of them always indicates higher productivity.
The results show the amount of work done adequately and also helps the leader identify and target specific reasons the team couldn't meet the other objectives. If your team cannot meet its goals, it is wise for the team leaders to revise their planning process and the strategies applied in their projects.
How to improve the productivity of your marketing team?
We have discussed how the marketing team's productivity can be managed and a few problems that may arise in this process. However, discussions arising from evaluations can only be concluded with solutions to the stated problems.
In that context, here are five prominent ways to boost the productivity of your marketing team:
Scheduling and division of work
Scheduling is the process of planning, dividing, and assigning work to your employees.
It plays a critical role in determining if your employees will reach their maximum level of productivity. While scheduling, remember to set achievable short-term goals for your employees not to be discouraged during work.
On the other hand, it is important to push their ability by assigning major tasks to them to foster responsibility towards their company while also developing a sense of improvement. This will also help your employees to manage time efficiently. Thus, improving the quality of their work overtime.
As an employer, it is also wise to consider the individuality of every employee so that you can deploy the most suitable tasks according to their skills and capabilities. You can use Stackby's employee directory template to simplify task assignments and save a lot of time.
Reporting, communicating, and check-ins
As mentioned earlier, reporting is one way to judge the productivity of a team. However, this can also be done separately to check the worker's productivity. If you encourage your team members to report frequently, present data on their work, and attend regular meetings, it will improve their work.
This is mainly because they will need to finish a set of work to present while reporting to their higher-ups. This also improves communication between the employer and the employee, which assists in avoiding misunderstandings and a lack of direction from the superior.
Promoting time management
Time is one thing that marketing firms are tight on. This makes the workers prone to neglecting minor tasks and details, which play a large part in the final presentation. By promoting time management, employers will be increasing productivity.
You can encourage your workers to focus for certain periods while taking short breaks in between. This is a trick proven to increase concentration while deflecting procrastination and the pressure of completing certain tasks. Stackby helps you manage time with their work scheduling template which can help you save time.
Identifying and eradicating obstacles
The role of the marketing team leader is crucial, especially in this aspect. The work reports submitted by your employees and the feedback from the consumers help you identify any setbacks that the business is facing. The lack of productivity can be identified by comparing individual and team reports.
The role of the leader here is to find the cause of these problems and help your employees overcome them to improve their efficiency. Eradicating obstacles requires you to re-visit and structure your plan to avoid repeatedly facing the same problems, thus saving time and effort.
Rest and reward
Your employees need to be productive to meet the objectives of the firm. However, it is also important to note that they are, after all, humans and have their limitations. It is proper to provide your employees with sufficient play hours to interact and create a harmonious working environment for better productivity.
Offering bonuses, getaways, shares, and other benefits boosts employee morale, encouraging them to perform better. Remember, 'all work and no play make Jack a dull boy’; the same applies to you and your team as well.
Also Read: Best strategies to Improve your Marketing Agency’s Productivity!
Conclusion
Your employees are the asset of the firm. Thus, their performance determines the firm's position. Improving productivity is one of the main tasks that a team leader is assigned. Moreover, being one of the predominant departments of every firm, marketing requires a comparatively larger amount of effort to meet the demands of their tasks.
Stackby has reliably been assisting businesses to meet their goals and improve productivity in every possible manner. If you have been made clear on how to track your marketing team's productivity, go ahead and sign-up to start working efficiently with Stackby!