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Topic: Career/Training
Successfully Managing A Marketing Department
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Now, I find myself in charge of a busy marketing department at a small company in the service industry. We handle all creative requests, manage 3 websites, do all of our own publishing, drive event registration, product sales, you name it. My staff is very talented and motivated. Doesn't sound like a problem, right?
Except that we are spread very thin. We have a web programmer, graphic designer, public relations manager - and as marketing director that leaves me to plan, write ad copy, pull lists, coordinate printing and mailings, and keep everyone else on track. We handle a lot of diverse requests often under seemingly impossible deadlines and my staff rises to the challenge every time. But this takes its toll on the group. Particularly because it is expected-the only “atta-boys” come from me because I know what it took to get us there. And I’m singing their praises every chance I get.
As marketing, we are a service organization to the company. There are 8 departments who must send everything through us to get it out the door. And everything has specific deadlines that are event driven. And everything we do is visible and questioned by the department heads.
How do I set and maintain realistic timelines. And how do I manage and track all of the jobs coming through?
In the 2 years I've been here, we've made improvements by forcing people to fill out job requests that give us all info necessary to complete a request - but can't get them to break the "I need this ASAP" cycle. We post all of our jobs on a tracking sheet in Excel that anyone can look at - and try to work with department heads to get them to give us what we need in time to execute it with all other jobs going on -- but I'm at a loss as how to get everyone to step in line and also realize that not every project is of equal priority. We almost always produce but I know we could raise the bar even higher if we weren't always putting out fires. I've made the career advancement from doer to in charge without the knowledge to protect my staff. Additional hiring is not an option.
Any suggestions from seasoned project managers, art directors or marketing execs? Any links to resources that would help? Thanks so much and sorry for the long post.