How to Ride the Post-Conference Reality Check

July 24, 2019July 21, 2019 ~ Patrick Icasas ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the scene: you’re back in the office after spending a few days hobnobbing with fellow marketers at an industry conference.

You’re fatigued, stressed and oh-so-very behind on your work, but damn it, you came back with so much!

Revolutionary ideas!

Useful contacts!

Advice from Gary V tailored just for you (sort of–there were lots of people in the room).

You feel like a fresh grad again; so full of potential and optimism that you want to storm into the CEO’s office and go, “this is how things are going to work from here on out.”

Fast forward a month later.

You’re back at your desk. The same one you’ve been at for three years, with the same stale coffee and cutesy knick knacks, only this time there is a lanyard from the conference hanging from a peg. One of the many things you brought back from that week, but the only one that you managed to hang on to.

No more zeal. No more ideas. No more fire.

What happened?

You’ve just been slapped with the Post-Conference Reality Check (PCRC).

There are a number of ways PCRC could manifest. The speaker’s advice didn’t match your market. Your promising contacts ghosted you. Your revolutionary proposals fell on deaf ears.

You tried to move the mountain, but couldn’t overcome the inertia. You’re stuck in the status quo. Your ideas are just piled by the wayside, forgotten.

Is it a rotten feeling? Heck yes.

Is it avoidable? Absolutely.

You just need to be smart about how you approach it.

Screen Your Speakers

Most conferences have so many sessions it’s impossible to attend them all. I used to choose on the basis of which had the most interesting or relatable title. But as the saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Judge it by the author, instead.

Look at the speaker closely. Not their name recognition–it’s a big industry and it’s impossible to know everybody–but their specialization and work history.

For example, I attended a “Content that Rocked the Revenue Stream” session that had sounded like a must-watch for a B2B content marketer like myself. But it was taught by an ad agency Creative Director. He showed interesting videos and IG stories, but I couldn’t use any of it.

On the other hand, the session with the bland-as-beige title “Strategic Insights from Three-Point Data Analysis” actually changed the way I leveraged data-driven content strategies. It was run by a Content Director with a data science background, and she was able to successfully make use of this previous experience in her marketing role.

Most (if not all) speakers will have a LinkedIn profile. Take the time to look them up and visit their company websites when you plan your conference agenda. That way, there’s less risk of you coming back to the office with unusable information.

Don’t Gush to Co-workers

It’s okay for you to be on cloud nine after the conference. In fact, that’s what conferences want you to feel.

What’s not okay is forcing that enthusiasm down other people’s throats. You might think you’re just telling people about your week, but what other people are hearing is “I just had a company-paid vacation while you were stuck here.”

This is especially true for events like INBOUND and DreamForce, where they put ridiculous amounts of money behind entertainment. I mean come on: DreamForce has a frickin’ party guide.

That’s a quick way of building up resentment towards your post-conference revelations.

Save your gushing for social media. When people ask, assume they’re asking out of politeness and respond accordingly. Wait for them to show genuine interest before you start bringing out the really juicy anecdotes.

It’s okay to show excitement when you talk to your manager about the trip, but express more enthusiasm for how the company would be able to benefit from what you learned. The possibilities will infect your boss with your energy, which you’ll then be able to channel into support for whatever new initiatives you want to introduce.

Don’t Rock the Boat (Yet)

Don’t be that person who runs into the marketing room yelling “Stop the presses! Stop the presses!”

Abrupt change will almost always be met by strong resistance. They don’t even need a reason to object. People will resist change just because they can.

Besides, you don’t want to rip up your old workflow and introduce sweeping changes, only to discover your brilliant idea doesn’t work as well as you thought it would. Might be a little hard to backtrack at that point.

Set up small-scale experiments instead. Change your keywords for a single campaign. Create a new email subject line for a small segment of your users. A/B test a single page on your site. Get a trial version of some new software and ask one or two of your team members to test it.

Run these experiments for a while (gathering as much hard data as you can) and compare them to your status quo. Then you can approach management with a stronger case for change.

Set Goals and KPIs

What are you trying to accomplish at the conference?

Yes, you’re only attending and not exhibiting, but the question still applies. You can’t just attend “for the lulz” when the company is speding thousands of dollars on a single ticket, plus food and loding and transportation.

Before you even click “buy,” get your list of conference goals together. This list could include:

burning questions to answer,
specific people you want to meet,
contacts from a particular industry,
exhibitors to visit,
bars to hit (okay, maybe not that last).

The point is, having these goals in hand will help you to stay focused and not get distracted by all the glitz and glam. You’ll be able to pick sessions intelligently and isolate the people you want to meet the most.

Then, when your manager asks, you’ll be able to tell him just how fruitful your conference stay really was.

So basically…

The post-conference reality check will only be a problem if you let it. Plan your trip properly, set expectations, and act in line with your goals, and you’ll come back to establish a new reality, and not falling victim to the status quo.

Excelsior!

Up Next: Help! My Boss is a Marketing Skeptic!

How to Wow With a Short-handed Marketing Team

July 17, 2019July 27, 2019 ~ Patrick Icasas ~ Leave a comment

Ever feel like there’s too much work to do and not enough hands to do them?

Join the club!

Over 80% of marketing teams number five or less, with a whopping 42% being solo operators.

That’s five people (or less) to cover SEM, SEO, content marketing, website updates, product marketing, public relations, social media, and event marketing–just to name a few.

Is it any wonder that marketers are stressed?

It may feel like you’re constantly losing ground, but there are ways to improve your work process and organization so that your team can still meet deadlines, achieve goals, and bring in leads–without doing any overtime.

Here are a few secrets to making that happen:

1. Set priorities properly

Task priorities are simple on the surface. Just do the most important things first, right?

Nope! Reality is a lot messier.

In real-life, task priorities are a dizzying combination of factors that constantly change in weight and scale. You could, in fact, say that prioritization is an art form.

When you prioritize, it helps to remember that your marketing team is part of a larger organization. If there is a task that multiple people are waiting for, have your team get that out the door first so that the ball is kept moving. Don’t be the bottleneck!

Also try to prioritize tasks for projects that drive the business goals forward. Remember, marketing’s ultimate goal is to make the business money, not cross items off a to-do list. Understand where your projects fit into the grand scheme and triage accordingly.

2. Get your team uber-organized

Organization is the best tool you have for successfully wrangling all those marketing tasks. Even the simple act of writing down what you and your team plan to do for the day sharpens your focus and helps eliminate distractions.

Of course, you’re going to have to do a lot more than just daily to-dos if you want your marketing department to make an impact.

For this you’ll need to double-down on project management strategies like having a Kanban board, using Gantt charts to display dependencies, and forecasting the use of resources. You don’t need to have a PMP to do any of this; you just need to know what you want to do, when you want it done, and who’s available to do it.

All of this information can be codified and visually represented in a project management tool. There are many, many, many project management tools available to choose from, each with its individual strengths and weaknesses.

I suggest trying out several before making your decision. You may also want to check with the rest of the organization to see if they’re already using a project management tool, and if you can take it for a test drive.

3. Work in blocks

Many people I know jump from one task to another over the course of a day hoping that, if they do a little bit of every task at a time, they’ll be able to keep everything afloat.

They can’t though. Because multitasking doesn’t work.

It really doesn’t.

Seriously.

Your brain needs time to build up momentum (YSWIDT?), and it can only do that by running on a single track.

Time blocks are a perfect way to organize yourself. Not only can you use time blocks for individual activities, like writing or editing or research, but you can also group blocks by theme, like brands or campaigns, to ensure your day remains cohesive.

So your calendar will end up looking something like this:

Use the same technique for your team, as well. Encourage them to create their own blocks of time and share them on a public calendar so others on their team can either coordinate efforts or properly manage resources.

I’m a fan of the Pomodoro method, which encourages you to break your work day down into 25-minute blocks. There are plenty of Pomodoro web timers and apps to choose from, each with their own collection of extra features and cutesy quirks.

My current favorite is Pomodone, which links your pomodoro timer with your tasks in other apps like Trello.

4. Automation is amazing

Many people watch in fear as robots take on more of our jobs. But for marketers? It’s the best thing ever!

Marketing automation allows a one-person marketing team to do the work of ten. Think of any frequent, time-consuming task that wastes your entire day, and there’s probably a dozen (more) marketing automation tools that can take over.

Just look at these examples:

And those tools are just basic solutions. There are online services like Zapier and IFTTT that let you connect different apps together to create complex, time-saving workflows. For example, you can set up a rule that lets you automatically add people who DM you on Twitter to Salesforce as opportunities.

This leaves you with more time and energy to deal with tasks where you’re providing real value, like setting marketing strategies or analyzing campaign performance.

But I’m not gonna lie to you and say all this will be easy. An automation tool is only as good as the person setting it up. You have to learn how to set up the rules and conditions that the tool will follow to run a campaign, and you still have to write the content that the tool will eventually use.

So no, automation isn’t an easy-breezy answer to your problems, but it’s still way better than sending 3000 emails across six campaigns all by yourself.

5. Outsource

If you need help and the company isn’t willing or can’t afford to hire someone on staff, you could always hire outside help.

The beauty of today’s gig economy is that you can outsource damn near anything.

Need someone to do admin work? Hire a VA.

Need a new logo? Hire a graphic designer.

Need someone to keep followers engaged? Hire a community manager.

Need a freelance writer? Ahem.

The main consideration here is whether you need to hire a freelancer, a consultant, or a full-service agency. Each option has its pros and cons.

Freelancers are great for when you have a specific tactical need already in mind. A blog, a video, or a pitch deck to glam up.

Consultants are best suited for situations where you need some additional brain power, like coming up with a digital marketing strategy or streamlining your internal workflows. If you need help executing, they’ll probably hire their own freelancers or source some for you.

Agencies are self-contained teams that have large goals. Major campaigns for instance, or long-term management of your marketing operations. They answer to you, but they drive most of the ideation and execution.

Who you eventually hire depends on your available budget and the required need. Prices for each can scale depending on the outsourced resource’s experience, expertise, and specialization.

So basically…

Don’t drown in your task list!

Take stock, get organized, and get some help! You may need to spend some of your hard-earned marketing budget on tools and external manpower, but they’re still way cheaper (and, in their way, more effective) than hiring a new employee–which your Finance department will appreciate.

It’ll take some effort to find and set yourself up with these solutions, but the payoff is a much more manageable workload.

So get cracking!

Up Next: How to Ride the Post-conference Reality Check

The Art of Setting Marketing Team Priorities

July 4, 2019July 27, 2019 ~ Patrick Icasas ~ Leave a comment

“What should the team tackle first?”

It’s a loaded question with a supposedly obvious answer.

“Prioritize what’s important.”

But “important” is such a catch-all term that it’s useless in actual practice. Everything is important to someone in an organization. And when everything is important, nothing is.

When you’re setting team priorities, you have to take multiple factors into account. Does it impact other people? What is it for? Who is it for? When it is due?

All of these considerations are balanced against each other to determine the final ranking of team priorities. Some managers have an innate sense of this and can easily pick out the critical items. The rest of us, however, need a bit of help.

Below I’ve listed the different factors involved in prioritizing a team’s task list and how much weight it should add to your scale.

Strategic Goal

It’s easy to get caught in the minutiae of a task and in the urgency of a deadline, but as managers you’re supposed to remember the larger view.

Ask the big questions. Is this task part of a project that will drive the business forward? Or is it a project with little actual impact? Does this project’s goals align with the overall business strategy? Or is it an outlier?

Generally, you will want to prioritize tasks that fulfill corporate objectives. Also, projects that have a tangible and measurable goal will demonstrate marketing’s value to the rest of the company, and are worth pursuing ahead of loosey-goosey, flavor-of-the-month projects.

Of course, a lot also depends on your team’s actual purpose within the organization. If you’re the equivalent of a marketing service desk, fulfilling requests for business cards and ecommerce site changes, then the meaty strategic stuff is probably going to be handled by a different group. Don’t stray from your team’s actual function until you get permission from upper management.

Weight: 4/5

Urgency

I hate setting priorities based on urgency. If I do, then it either means that a) something in my plan went awry, or b) someone dumped a task onto my pile.

The worst thing about it is that urgency is often manufactured or arbitrary. How many times have we moved heaven and earth to meet a deadline, only for the other person to take their sweet time responding?

The bitter truth is that urgency can be gamed.

Everyone knows this, deep down. That’s how a co-worker can convince you to pause your work on tomorrow’s pitch deck and email them the latest brochure just so you can get rid of them. It’s false pressure to get you to comply.

A skilled manager will know the difference between true urgency and manufactured urgency. True urgency is when there are tangible and real consequences to missing a deadline (e.g. missing a product launch date). In these cases, even a day’s delay can affect the project’s critical path and make life more horrible for other people down the line.

Weight: 2/5 (manufactured urgency), 4/5 (true urgency)

Which brings us to the next factor: dependencies.

Dependencies

Are people waiting on you to finish a particular task before they can do their jobs? That’s called a dependency.

Dependencies also have deadlines, but they are different from manufactured urgency in that any delay on your part will have a domino effect that impacts the entire plan.

Let’s say you have a simple task–order a demo unit from the warehouse. Your photographer is going to shoot photos, which the graphic designer will put on the packaging, which will have to ship in time for Black Friday.

Instead of ordering the demo unit, however, you decide to spend the morning researching keywords. Keywords are important and valuable, but not the most urgent thing right now. The warehouse misses the courier and the photographer doesn’t get the demo unit for another week. The graphic designer is forced to use older photos and the product ships with the wrong item on the box.

There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. And probably a reprimand mixed in somewhere.

Dependencies should absolutely be one of your top considerations when setting priorities. Use a Gantt chart to visualize your project plan and see how your team’s individual responsibilities affect other parts of the project.

Weight rating: 5/5

Personal Enthusiasm

If you read the section title and said to yourself, “I’m totally professional. I don’t prioritize based on personal preference,” then you are a liar.

A person will always set loathsome tasks at a lower priority, even if they know they’re important. Granted, you may still do that hated task first, but only if you can’t justify doing something else.

Keep this in mind any time you assign unpopular tasks to your team. There’s a chance that person will either wait until the very last moment to do it (forcing you to follow up several times) or speed through the task in an effort to “get it over with quickly” (forcing you to check their work).

Being aware of the problem will help you plan around their expected behavior. It will also help you course-correct when you fall into this tendency yourself (and you will, because we’re all human).

Weight: 1/5 (but plan around it anyway)

The Final Formula

I don’t expect you to actually produce an actual formula out of what I mentioned above (although the Excel geeks among you are welcome to try).

Each business will value things differently based on their corporate culture and current situation.

But be aware of the different elements and considerations when you set team priorities, so that you can both increase your team’s productivity and provide maximum value to your organization.

Up next: How to Wow with a Short-handed Marketing Team