For in-house marketing teams
Running the team, not buying the help
Most of this site is written for someone who owns a business and is buying marketing. These pieces are for the other job: running an in-house marketing team, with people, a budget and somebody upstairs asking what it all did. Same voice, different reader.
They are meant to be read in the order below rather than by date, because the early ones settle things the later ones assume. If you only read one, read the one that matches the problem in front of you this week.
The pieces
All articles
In-house teams7 min readSquads, scrums and agile: what they actually are, and whether a marketing team needs any of it
The vocabulary comes from software, and the most copied model of all was a snapshot that its own authors warned you about.
In-house teams7 min readHow to set up agile in a marketing team, and what to do when it isn't working
Start with one cycle, one board and one review, and treat the setup as a project with an end date rather than a permanent transformation.
In-house teams6 min readRunning a marketing team of one
You can't do everything, so the job is deciding what you won't do, and being able to explain why to the people who ask.
In-house teams6 min readBriefing an agency so you get what you asked for
Most rework comes from three lines nobody wrote down. Here's what a brief has to contain before anyone starts.
In-house teams6 min readThe monthly marketing report your board will actually read
All a board needs is one page, four numbers and your view of them. Everything else belongs in an appendix nobody will open.
In-house teams6 min readManaging an agency without doing their job for them
If you're rewriting their work, you're paying for it twice. Here's the rhythm that keeps an agency honest without you running it.
In-house teams6 min readWhat to do when a marketing campaign fails
A good decision can still go badly. The review's job is to find out whether you made a bad call or a good one that didn't land.
In-house teams6 min readYour first marketing hire: generalist or specialist?
Hire a generalist, unless one channel already carries the business. The test is whether you know where your next customer will come from.
In-house teams5 min readWriting a marketing job description that attracts the right person
Three accountabilities, a salary and one honest sentence about the state of your marketing will out-recruit any list of duties.
In-house teams6 min readA marketer's first thirty days
Three things have to be in place on day one. Without them, a new marketer's first month goes on piecing together what nobody wrote down.
In-house teams6 min readMarketing team structures at five, fifteen and fifty
A marketing team breaks in a predictable place at each size. Knowing which break you have stops you reorganising for the wrong reason.
In-house teams5 min readA marketing skills audit: what your team can and cannot do
The gap that hurts is the one nobody has admitted to, and two hours is enough to find it before a campaign does.
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