What Would Christina Do? I just started a new job and I want to market myself internally. Where do I start?
So, you just started a new job and are ready to market yourself internally, but you have no idea where to begin. Marketers of all levels find themselves in this exact situation. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
Here are the three methods I use to start connecting with the right people within your organization from day one.
Set Up Meetings With Everyone
Yep, this may seem overwhelming, but you want to meet with every team within your organization. That means connecting with everyone from developers in India to sales interns down the hall. The ultimate goal is to have everyone understand what marketing is building so teams can evangelize it at all levels.
In each meeting, you want to start by putting marketing into a context they can understand. Then explain why their specific job is important and how their team’s work has helped the company.
This conversation will look different for each department. How marketing will work with sales is going to differ from working with engineers.
By doing the work to bridge the communications gap between departments, you’re inviting conversations and ideas to be shared more freely.
Having these meetings has helped me discover new content or data I never knew existed. During one of these meetings, I once had an engineer tell me he had ten years of customer data he could share with me! Ummmm what?! That made all of the planning for the meeting well worth the time.
Have Team Members Connect Individually
If I’m managing a team, I also like to motivate my team to connect with other people within the organization. Sometimes this is just getting coffee to chat, other times it’s to discuss something specific across teams.
These connections help my team to have empathy when we’re building out new programs because we understand the needs of other departments on a deeper level.
It’s important to note, I don’t go in blind with these pairings. I take time to match my team with sales or product folks who are interested or seem to understand the value of marketing. This technique has helped my teams build effective working relationships that benefit both teams and the company as a whole.
Meet Virtually
I’ve always worked with people in different time zones but with the impact of COVID, many people have found themselves working 100% remote for the first time. Virtual teams don’t have to change your internal outreach strategy much but there are a few things you can do to make meetings more efficient and effective:
- Don’t have meetings just to check a box. The key is to have an agenda, intent, and purpose.
- Email your agenda out before the meeting. Make it clear what you plan to talk about and the goal for the end of the meeting. That way everyone can come prepared and knows what to expect.
- Meetings also don’t have to be an hour or even 30 minutes. Be efficient with people’s time — sometimes 15 minutes is all you need if you prepare enough.
No matter how you connect, the key is to approach every meeting with empathy and a goal to better understand the person you are talking with. At the end of the day, everyone working together will make everyone’s job easier.
Want more advice? I’ve got plenty! Check out some of the other situations I’ve chimed in on, or tell me about a situation you need help with.
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