How Department Collaboration Can Improve Your Marketing Campaigns

Companies are always looking for ways to improve this crucial element of business for good reason. Encouraging interdepartmental collaboration and communication is one way to elevate your marketing.

When departments work together toward the common goal of launching effective, creative marketing campaigns, it guarantees current and potential customers a comprehensive marketing experience that stands out from the rest.

Let’s explore how department collaboration improves a company’s marketing in detail and tips for fostering that teamwork.

Collaboration across departments is critical for marketing

In many businesses, the marketing team hardly ever works with other departments. They may have to get a sign-off on something or get a question answered. But working together on an actual project? Not so much.

Sadly, these businesses are missing out on the power of interdepartmental collaboration in marketing. When you analyze the roles of different departments, you’ll see that each has the potential to contribute to marketing in some way.

Sales

The sales department is responsible for selling a business’s products and services. Marketing and sales go hand in hand because the marketing department generates quality leads for the sales team. This sets them up to reach their sales goals more efficiently.

In addition, the sales department learns a lot about the people they’re selling to. Armed with what they know, they can help the marketing team better identify their target audience.

For example, a salesperson might learn about a person’s lifestyle and pain points after establishing rapport with them in the sales process. They can pass this information to the marketing team, who can use this to bolster the company’s target audience psychographic profile.

Marketing can create content that speaks to this information around lifestyle and paint points to develop a deeper connection with customers.

Operations

The operations department focuses on creating and delivering products, services, and programs. Day-to-day responsibilities include:

• Audits
• Quality control
• Market research
• Product design and strategy
• Maintaining a seamless production process

The operations department can share its market research with the marketing department to uncover promotional and advertising opportunities. In addition, the marketing department can create behind-the-scenes content on the product strategy, design, and production processes to share across various marketing channels.  

IT

IT teams install and maintain a company’s software, hardware and other tech tools. Without an experienced IT department, a business will struggle to thrive in an increasingly digital world.

IT and marketing have an obvious connection considering how much technology a well-oiled marketing team uses.

Whenever the marketing department has an issue with their software or needs to implement a new tool, they call on IT for assistance. The faster IT works, the quicker the marketing team can resume its operation.

In addition, IT facilitates collaboration and communication across all departments by setting up systems and tools that all departments will use and training them on how to do so effectively.

HR

HR takes on the hefty challenge of managing the complete employee lifecycle. From recruiting and hiring to payroll to training to securing employee health and wellness, HR personnel are responsible for the majority of employee-related tasks.

HR collaborates with the marketing department regarding who to recruit and hire for the team. When HR knows what marketing is looking for and why, they can work with department leads to draft job postings that attract ideal candidates.

After conducting interviews and making selections, HR can onboard new marketing employees, ensuring they’re ready to contribute to the team from the first day.

Finance

The finance department manages all financial aspects of a business. Identifying and finding solutions for financial risks, accounting and preparing financial reports are just a few of this department’s responsibilities.

It also offers financial advice to other departments and prepares budgets. The marketing department benefits from both tremendously. Marketing leads can disclose their marketing objectives to the finance department.

Then, the finance department can prepare a budget for the marketing department and guide them through how to best use this budget to attain their goals.

Research and development

Research and development are responsible for researching the products and/or services a company offers. That research informs the creation of new products, and the development side of this department sees them to fruition.

The marketing department can collaborate with both the research and development teams to put together a go-to-market strategy for upcoming products. A go-to-market strategy is a short-term blueprint for launching one specific product, service or venture. This directly opposes a long-term road map that guides all of your marketing, which can be more time-consuming and won’t be able to properly encompass future products.

Research and development and marketing can collaborate on go-to-market strategies for the most anticipated products, improving launch results for each.

Start with the right tools for department collaboration

The impact interdepartmental collaboration can have on marketing is undeniable. If you’re ready to encourage it in your workplace, the first step is choosing tools that facilitate teamwork and seamless communication.

Note that each department needs to use the same tools and have equal access to them for interdepartmental collaboration to work well. Even if you restrict access to certain tools to specific departments, you should have a few core tech tools everyone uses together.

We suggest these.

1. Project management software

Working on marketing projects together is more straightforward when you use project management software. You can establish workflows, delegate tasks and track projects to completion.

Using one project management software across all departments ensures everyone knows how to properly use the platform. Transitioning from working on department-specific projects to those that require interdepartmental collaboration will be effortless as well.

2. Customer relationship management (CRM) system

If there’s one thing every department works with in some capacity, it’s customers. You absolutely need a centralized system where you collect, organize, and maintain customer information. That’s where a CRM system comes in.

A CRM helps you manage all customer data. With it, you can ensure each department is working with the same customer information. Not having a sole CRM can lead to departments using inaccurate data to complete tasks and projects. This only results in having to do those projects and tasks again with the right information.

3. Reporting tool

Effective collaboration across departments depends largely on the reporting tool your teams use. Data in every department is fundamental, especially when it’s time to collaborate. Filtering all data to a central reporting tool makes data displays and insights more accessible.

The more information your teams have, the better their decisions will be.

4. Cloud storage system

A cloud storage system is essential for interdepartmental collaboration. You can store all documentation for each department in this system. Organize documents in specific folders for each department. You can also create folders for cross-department marketing projects.

5. Communication tools

Making communication easy between departments is crucial in supporting collaboration across departments in a business. Bringing a collaborative marketing idea to life is much more straightforward with communication tools that enable brainstorming, file-sharing, real-time responses and transparency.

Video conferencing software and an instant messaging tool are must-have communication tools to ensure teams are working together effectively. 

Additional tips for fostering collaboration and communication

Having the right tech tools in place is only the first step. Adhere to these best practices as well to foster collaboration and communication across departments.

Show the value of interdepartmental collaboration

Often, teams don’t buy into interdepartmental collaboration because they don’t see the value in it. Make it a point to show each department why department collaboration is useful. Feel free to schedule an intentional meeting to do this.

First, talk about the core goal of improving marketing campaigns. Talk about each department’s potential impact on producing more effective and creative marketing content. Then, move into discussing how collaborating with the marketing department benefits each department.

For example, working with the marketing department to define what quality leads help the sales department. The finance department can create more accurate budgets for the marketing department when they know what its goals are. HR can recruit better candidates for the marketing department with the help of marketing leads.

Showing everyone how valuable interdepartmental collaboration can make it less likely they’ll resist the transition.

Establish department-specific and group goals

Setting goals is essential to collaborating well across departments. Everyone works toward a common marketing goal. But they’re also working on department-specific goals that fuel the progress you’re making on that common marketing objective.

Establish these goals before starting each project. Make sure they’re specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Be clear about the results you want to achieve and how you will ensure teams are progressing.

Once you’ve documented department-specific and group goals, make sure everyone has a copy of them. Give them access to where they can find these goals should they lose their copy.

Create a meeting schedule

Your teams have to meet often if interdepartmental collaboration is going to work. They must get comfortable with each other’s personalities. Getting comfortable with brainstorming, group discussions and developing workflows together is critical too.

Establish a meeting schedule for your departments. One company-wide meeting per month is suitable. It’s also a good idea to plan meetings between specific departments that are set to work together on a marketing project in the coming months.

Once departments embark on a project together, be sure they’re meeting regularly to discuss how the project is going. Choose specific checkpoints during the project timeline to get everyone together.

Postmortem meetings are essential too. You host these once a project is complete to discuss how the project went. You can dig into the specifics of your collaboration methods and gather ideas for improving them for the next project.

Ensure everyone is heard

A huge part of successful collaboration across departments is ensuring everyone feels like a valued member of the team. When people don’t feel like their contributions matter, they won’t offer them.

When team members don’t contribute, your projects get the short end of the stick. This is because varying contributions and perspectives elevate creativity and innovation in marketing campaigns.

Ensure everyone is heard in every group setting for every project. Be sure there’s a facilitator and timekeeper for each meeting and an agenda to ensure everyone gets a chance to speak.

Also, give each team member specific roles and responsibilities in each project. What are their primary tasks? When are they due? Where do they fit into the overall project? Why are they meaningful?

Work on company culture

If you want your teams to collaborate and communicate naturally you must create a workplace environment that facilitates this Working on company culture is fundamental in fostering interdepartmental collaboration.

Positivity should radiate throughout your workplace — so should transparency and open communication. Encourage workers in every department to get to know those in all the other ones you have in your company.

Consider an open office floor plan too. This kind of office design encourages employees to interact with one another. Each department would have its own section. But migrating to another department is only a few steps away, making engaging with employees even easier.

Engage in meaningful team-building activities

Don’t discount the importance of team building in fostering department collaboration. These activities force employees to interact with and get to know one another in a good way. Many people need this nudge to start genuine relationships with their primary team members and coworkers in other departments.

Choose team-building activities that would be meaningful to your teams. Of course, this depends on the specific interests and needs they have, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Volunteer
• Host a trivia night
• Start an intramural team
• Do an escape room challenge
• Go on a team hike
• Go on a company-wide trip
• Do an obstacle course or run together

Meaningful team-building activities can inspire genuine relationships among team members that lead to exceptional collaboration and communication at work.

Final thoughts

Department collaboration is integral, generally. But its impact on marketing is powerful. When employees collaborate across departments, the effectiveness and originality of your campaigns improve drastically. Use the tips above to facilitate interdepartmental collaboration in your workplace.