Whether you’re a marketing and communications consultant, founder, or business owner; one of the most difficult challenges in owning and operating a business is identifying the signs of growth within your marketing and communications department. Here are our top three recommendations that help to determine whether or not you’re in the growth phase.
Staff burnout
If you’re leading or running a marketing and communications department, one of the number one indicators that it is time to scale-up is that your team is running on all cylinders at maximum capacity.
Signs of staff burn-out may be that they are experiencing visible stress from being unable to manage the existing workload on a project-by-project basis - particularly during weekly communication, conversation, and check-in discussions. As a leader it is vital to foresee and think ahead of these challenges by encouraging rest and self care while creating short-term solutions such as workplans, investing in project management software or training opportunities to mitigate burnout.
Additional strategies may include shifting weekly scheduling and meeting policies, proactively prioritizing daily tasks and looking ahead to mid-year forecasting budget adjustments to prepare for new team members.
Finally, intentionally allocating funds within new or existing contracts and grants to expand the capacity of the team is an important step in ensuring there exists an infrastructure to support the realities of growth within the organization.
Marketplace demand
Growing quickly can be a good thing, if you have the capital to support the marketplace demands your marketing and communication team(s) require. Some of the marketing and communications needs may be investor-focused and require hiring outside consulting firms, conducting market research or getting targeted on talent needed for project and time-specific contracts with a clear start and end objectives.
An example may be hiring an expert to create and develop a short-term integrated media marketing strategy or a skilled subject matter expert who can partner with existing staff to take an idea to the next level. Everything depends on what the market "demands" at a particular time.
When outside customers or clients desire more frequent or segmented marketing and communications from your organization or business that can not be satisfied internally, this is a clear indication that it is time to evaluate what expansion opportunities exist and if budgets align to meet such demands.
Skillset
Retaining existing marketing and communication team members is one of the best strategies businesses can take – the investment in people. Often times when organizations expand beyond the skillset of an existing team, it is important to evaluate what skills are needed in order to maintain growth within the department as the organization expands.
This may mean restructuring to support performance-based changes, investing in long-term training opportunities such as certifications or post-secondary education or deepening membership and mentorship to expand the skills of interested team members.