Discovering a missing or lacking skill set on your marketing team can be quite daunting. How do you even decide if you should fill that gap internally or hire someone from the outside? It's a tough call, but what's important is to honestly assess the situation and figure out what's best for your team and company. Let's talk about how to respond when a skill set it lacking in your marketing team. You have options like expanding existing staff into specific roles, learning new skills yourself, and when it's necessary to bring in external talent. Whether you're part of a... read more →

"When communication is effective, it leaves all parties involved satisfied and feeling accomplished" - Stevenson University In the world of marketing, communication is everything. Unfortunately, it's not always given the attention it deserves. Some of the common places where communication breaks down in marketing campaigns include between people within your team and company, or between your campaign and your target audience. It's these breakdowns that can really hurt and even destroy your marketing campaign if you don't address them. Improving communication is a big part of improving your marketing skills. Let's discuss these in further detail. Within the Marketing Team:... read more →

The success of any marketing career is dependent on being able to accurately measure performance and progress. Here at MOCK, the Agency, we believe that measurement helps us see where we are so we can continue to learn and grow. In this document, we will explore some key metrics and strategies for measuring your marketing career performance. Here's what you can expect: Understanding What Matters to Your Marketing Manager or Marketing Director Questions to Ask Your Marketing Manager to See How You’re Performing How Marketing Teams Manage Their Boss’s Expectations Common Reasons Why Marketing Team Members are Fired Things Marketing... read more →

IBM Watson did research into the personality traits of top marketing leaders. This was recently discontinued, but the insights are still relevant. Overall Marketing Traits The most successful marketing professionals have a combination of traits that enable them to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions. Creativity is essential for creating original content, designing campaigns, and coming up with new ideas for ads and promotions. Marketing professionals need to be confident in order to make decisions and take risks when necessary. They must also be adaptable in order to effectively adjust their strategies in response to... read more →

Every marketer has a different definition of what "success" means to them. Maybe it means climbing the corporate ladder, or it might mean holding down a great gig with an awesome work-life balance. Marketing career success is what each marketer/creative makes it. In this post, we'll go over some of the general categories of thought for what makes a marketing career worthwhile. We'll cover: Measuring Marketing Career Performance Improving Your Creative Marketing Skills as a Marketing Professional Marketers and Creatives: Surviving in Corporate Marketing Department Teamwork Work-Life Balance as a Marketer Marketing Campaign Management Measuring Marketing Career Performance Measuring marketing... read more →

The best tools for a marketing department can only be determined after in depth discovery of the business the marketing department promotes. Identify your marketing objectives and goals Identifying your marketing objectives and goals can help you find the right tools to move forward. Mapping out what success looks like for your marketing strategy means creating a plan that helps you efficiently get there. Without clearly identifying your objectives, it can be hard to know if you have met your goals, or if you are on the right path. Take some time and map out where you want to go... read more →

In recent years, digital marketing has become an integral part of the way businesses reach their customers. As a result, marketing departments have had to change to keep up, changing the way they manage their campaigns. Going forward, it will be critical for marketing departments to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR). To stay on top today, businesses must consistently review their strategies and invest in new initiatives as well as reliable tools for success. Here's what we'll cover in this post: Marketing Department Trends Best Tools... read more →

It doesn't matter if you've been a marketing director for 12 months or 12 years - there is bound to come a time when your team would benefit from some outside support. Bringing in a marketing specialist to support your team could be necessary because your work and creativity have hit a trough or plateau, and you need some outside inspiration to help motivate your team. Or, it could be because you're inundated with a huge project and the stress levels are way too high for your team to cope with in a healthy way, and so you look to... read more →

Every marketing department, whether in a large corporation or in a small but bright new company, has its own unique ebbs and flows. These are the marketing department cycles and patterns you'll want to be aware of in order to effectively manage and support your marketing department. Knowing what to expect will help you plan. And when you plan, you'll be prepared to better manage your marketing department and ensure that your campaigns run smoothly. The Cycles and Patterns: Employee turnover Too much work / unrealistic demands Too little work Employee Turnover - the Outflow In any industry, you'll see... read more →