Unleash your new team’s potential: Streamlining marketing and brand operations

When the typical tenure for a CMO is three years or less, the first 90 days on the job are crucial. It’s during that first quarter that your new team starts to get a sense of what you’re capable of, and you get a sense of what they’re capable of. It’s also the time for you to start actioning plans for the coming year—that will set the stage for your future as CMO.

As any member of the C-suite knows, you’ve got to walk before you can run. For a new CMO, that means looking around to see how things have been done so you can find ways to build on and improve them for initial quick wins.

Step one is to undertake a wholesale audit of everything in your department. You’ll want to consider:

Could legacy processes be holding my team back?

Take stock of internal processes that might need an overhaul to improve efficiency. Walk through all active processes, putting a microscope on a few immediate areas of concern. These might include:

• Budgets: Is planning and forecasting streamlined to keep initiatives moving quickly or are teams bogged down before they can begin?
• KPIs: Are key performance indicators managed and communicated to your C-Suite peers? Quantitative benchmarking can help measure everything from how long it takes to create a piece of collateral, to how long it’s taking to bring new campaigns to market.
• Branded assets: How is your team creating, documenting, and approving branded assets? How are outdated or redundant assets retired? Are there opportunities to reduce your vendor mix to improve cost efficiency and brand consistency?

Is my team using the latest marketing technology?

In the ever-evolving world of marketing technology, staying ahead of the curve means embracing innovation and ensuring that your tech stack is optimized. Understanding the effectiveness of the tools you’re using can go a long way in improving your team’s productivity.

An audit of the technology at your disposal is crucial. Look at:

• Infrastructure: Is outdated or buggy infrastructure causing your team to fall behind? If your systems are up to date, are they optimized to their fullest potential?
• Expenses: Today’s subscription-based technologies (SaaS) can lead to a lot of spend you might not need. By identifying and eliminating costs related to outdated products, functions, and contracts, you can optimize for maximum efficiency.
• Strategy: Analyzing your technology strategy can identify inefficiencies and assist in making recommendations that can save costs. The money you save on technology can then be allocated toward profit-generating initiatives.

Understand the role of AI in your operations

As far back as 2018, studies already indicated that Marketing departments showed the most promise organizationally, in terms of AI implementations. The right AI model can help your department with core activities that were previously considered cumbersome or time-consuming. As an example, crunching data around customer needs that can then be matched to goods and services.

Is the team structure conducive to success?

A well-oiled machine can improve productivity without increasing budgets. A qualitative study of your marketing department can help you identify pain points and find areas for improvement.

It’s also important to keep in mind that any changes you implement (especially because they’re coming from a new CMO) may come with mixed emotions for some. Team members accustomed to doing things a certain way may be resistant, necessitating an empathetic approach to retain existing talent. You may want to look at:

• Roles and responsibilities: Are the right people doing the right work at the right time?
• Cohesion: Are your teams cohesive? Are hard work and innovative ideas being rewarded? A deep dive now can open roadblocks down the road.
• Expectations: When teams are set clear, achievable goals, they’re better able to hit deadlines and stay on budget. When expectations aren’t level set, morale can drop quickly with ROI to follow.

Work with your brand operations partner to maximize ROI

Once you’ve taken an initial look at the state of your marketing function, it’s time to make changes and get things moving. Streamlining your operations is going to play a large role here. At this stage, engaging a brand partner like BrandActive can go a long way to helping put all the pieces together.

A brand operations partner can help you:

Optimize your resources and processes

While you’ve got your hands full running the day-to-day aspects of your new marketing department, your partner can execute a full-scale opportunity analysis. This will give you a more fulsome look at the state of your marketing operations. They’ll look at everything from IT to your vendors and agency partners to provide a clear picture of who is responsible for what and where you can save money without reducing the quality of your output.

Streamline the use of all your branded assets

A comprehensive brand optimization strategy begins with addressing low-hanging fruit, such as streamlining branded assets and consolidating your vendor mix – which can quickly yield significant improvements in efficiency and consistency. You can also be sure that all assets that hit the market are proven and primed to generate returns.

Putting the right technology in place

Your brand operations partner can also help assess whether you’ve got the right technology in place for the job. Streamlining your tech operations can help your teams get projects to market faster and boost morale while doing it.

Make no mistake, the first 90 days of any CMO’s tenure are crucial. But by digging into the past, you can help produce a future of profitable returns to keep your organization humming.