It is not easy to coordinate teams. There are always different people with different priorities, timetables and personalities that have to be managed. The marketing manager has to deliver projects on time and need to maintain high standards. This never happens by accident.
In order to be a highly effective marketing manager that increases the efficiency of the entire team, you need to use tools. There is simply no way around that. Various tasks have to be managed. Communication needs to be open and free. These are goals all marketing managers need to have.
Choosing The Best Productivity Tools
The very best tools you want to use should be:
- Cloud-based – We cannot deny the importance of using cloud technology and the advantages associated with it. The cloud allows collaboration to happen from any corner of the world.
- Easy to use – If the tool that you use is complicated, it becomes counter-productive to actually use it.
- Collaborative – The tool needs to be appropriate for the team, not chosen based on personal preference.
Marketing managers need to make tough choices. One of the toughest is what tool to use to communicate, together with all the other tools that might be needed, based on the actual work done. It does not matter if you use Slideshare in B2B marketing or you promote the services of someone else. The following tools can increase team efficiency and should be seen as top productivity tools marketing managers can use.
Trello
Trello is used by more companies than what you might think right now. It is really simple and highly effective. You no longer need to rely on paper since the drag and drop system allows you to carefully schedule every task that has to be taken care of.
With Trello you create boards. These can be private or public. You choose who has access to the created boards. For instance, if a member of your team is responsible for analyzing B2B marketing statistics, you can create a board with data in it and assign it just to that person. Nobody else will see it.
This app is cloud-based and keeps the team members accountable. People that are members of the project you manage all see when tasks need to be done. This allows them to micro manage.
Trello can be used for various purposes, like:
- Training
- Website redesigns
- Product launches
- Content creation
- Much more
Slack
Slack is incredibly popular. Every single day there are over 1 million users. This includes huge companies like Marks and Spencer and Survey Monkey.
The concept behind Slack is simple. It allows you to send messages and files to individuals or groups within a team. Slack aims to replace the internal emails since they are way too formal and clunky. The workplace ends up having a more comfortable, open communication. Many wonderful features are included, with the following being highly useful for marketing managers:
- Channels – These are group chats you can create for any desired purpose.
- Communities – On office using Slack is basically a community but it can extend by joining other communities. They are meant for social media marketers, product managers and growth marketers. You use them to be aware of what is happening in the industry.
- Integrations – Numerous extra apps can be integrated in Slack, allowing you to create a workplace that is exactly as you see fit.
Slack uses a rather effective freemium model. You will not pay for it when you start out but in time, there is a pretty good possibility you will want to because of all that it offers.
Quip
Quip practically combines Slack with Google Docs. You get great built-in chat right as you edit documents. Team members start to work on a document, slide or spreadsheet and then share it with others in order to get feedback. Content creation becomes collaborative and you surely know how important content marketing is for any business.
After a project is finished, you can share it with whoever you want for some extra feedback and discussion. This makes it quite perfect for a modern marketing team. Oftentimes, projects require exact input from different sources, like customer support, management designers and more. This becomes simple with Quip.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule helps with numerous tasks like image finding, editing, writing and even social media promotion. It is practically a content calendar featuring drag and drop features. You can use it to assign different tasks to various team members while also monitoring progress. This is useful since every single inbound marketing team is responsible for so much content creation.
Besides being a really good content calendar, it also integrates really well with WordPress, Tumblr and Google Docs, together with numerous other social media platforms. You can thus easily plan, publish and promote with a single tool.
Mention
When you lead any marketing team you need to also think about external sources. Mention makes it easier to gather B2B marketing statistics and so much more. This is mainly because it shows everything that is said about the brand and about competitors on the internet. Tracking blog and social media comments is mandatory for you to respond as soon as possible. This is what increases impact.
Alerts are set up and you can share these with the team. You can have one person monitor mentions. That person can then delegate roles to team members, based on what is needed.
Social media is nowadays vital for the success of any branding campaign. Dealing with both negative and positive feedback is a necessity. Mention also allows you to:
- Discover Influencers – helpful to grow reach.
- Monitor Competitors – see what works great for them so you can use similar strategies.
- Automate Reporting – automation is great.
- Write Better Content
Final Thoughts
Marketing managers need tools in order to deal with every single task that appears on a day to day basis. Never assume that you can do everything alone. This is especially the case during business growth stages.
Obviously, there are many other marketing manager tools out there. The one that you absolutely love might be a different one. Let others know about them below. We are sure some will want to know.