91% of brands have moved toward an in-house model, but over a third of brand marketers report in-house marketing challenges. Priorities are constantly competing, resources are increasingly limited, and teams everywhere feel they need to do more with less. We polled over 600 professionals, and 86% agree. Now, more than ever, marketing and creative teams must focus on the work that matters most to their organizations.
Yet, more often than not, teams prioritize the wrong projects. Why? It isn’t easy to manage the demand, especially when your team’s workload exceeds their bandwidth. From communication issues and skill gaps to everchanging strategies and unrealistic expectations, there are countless reasons for mismanagement.
The first step to overcoming these problems is recognizing them. Here are the 6 most common in-house marketing challenges and how to solve them:
1. Understand that too much change can be a bad thing.
One of the in-house team’s greatest challenges is keeping up with the unpredictable shifts inherent in large corporations. These behemoths are in a constant state of evolution, frequently adapting to changing strategies, internal structures, and external competition. As a result, marketing teams are faced with a never-ending influx of work. While the variety can be invigorating, unchecked variability can create a misalignment between the team’s efforts and their results. Excessive priority shifts can transform once-thriving marketing teams into overworked and disheartened individuals. To succeed in their efforts, these teams must delicately balance the demand for change with the need for consistency.
2. Make sure business priorities are marketing priorities.
Another hurdle arises from the lack of clarity and cohesion between marketing teams and business stakeholders. Aligning marketing efforts to stakeholder goals and objectives is critical for driving meaningful results. For example, if the goal is to increase customer loyalty, the marketing team should focus on targeting existing customers. Regular stakeholder meetings and transparent reporting are the secrets to in-house excellence. With a clear understanding of desired outcomes, it becomes easier to prioritize projects and allocate resources appropriately.
3. Reverse the misconception of unlimited access.
Stakeholders wrongly assume that unlike external agencies, in-house teams offer unlimited availability and control. This misconception of “free access” leads stakeholders to haphazardly allocate resources. However, the truth is that nothing is truly free, especially the time and effort invested in creative and marketing work. Trapped in cycles of never-ending work, marketing teams constantly battle low-priority tasks to preserve their limited capacity and sanity. To combat these issues, some in-house teams operate like external agencies, billing internal stakeholders in terms of projects, hours or marketing dollars.
4. Escape the cycle of endless revisions.
Managing scope creep and changing requirements presents yet another challenge. As projects progress, additional requirements may be introduced without proper evaluation or impact assessment, causing strain on resources and disrupting project timelines. Clearly defining briefs at the onset of every project, setting expectations around deliverables, and strategically prioritizing change requests empowers teams to maintain control over project scope.
5. Know when to say ‘no.’
In-house marketing teams operate with finite resources, including budget, staff, and time constraints. However, the demand for creative services can exceed the team’s availability or fall outside their capabilities. When the resources available are insufficient for the job, the results are backlogs, rushed work, reduced attention-to-detail, and increased pressure to meet unrealistic expectations. In such instances, marketing teams compromise quality, decrease efficiency, and risk burnout. To prevent these problems from ever occurring, marketing leaders must create a culture of self-awareness and open communication in which team members are empowered to speak up when they need more talent or less work.
6. Embrace tomorrow’s innovations, today.
Marketing trends and technologies are constantly evolving, and keeping pace with these changes can be challenging, especially as most marketing teams are already occupied with several concurrent projects. Adapting to new tools, software, or tactics may require more time and resources than teams have to spare. However, failing to incorporate new trends and technologies may hinder the team’s ability to meet evolving demands. The answer to this paradox is to account for it. The most effective marketing teams set aside time and budget to explore new trends and technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) on a regular basis.
To overcome their most common in-house marketing challenges, companies need to carefully manage workloads, clearly define priorities and strategically engage the right contract talent at the right time. This requires a symbiotic relationship between marketing, creative and sales. Close collaboration with stakeholders, transparent communication about the value of efforts, and clear expectation-setting pave the path to success.
Marketing teams must skillfully navigate the unpredictable tides of change while dispelling the notion that their time is expendable. By doing so, they empower themselves to manage the demands of ever-evolving brands, ensuring that their teams remain focused, motivated, and ready to conquer any challenge that comes their way.
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