Asana Together in London: The 3 biggest challenges facing modern marketing teams

Last week, the Asana team arrived in London as part of the Asana Together World Tour to speak with customers about managing modern marketing teams. As always, the crowd was buzzing with excitement and a deep desire to learn. And where better to gather collaboration best practices than in a room full of Asana customers?

The challenge confronting modern marketers

Today, only 14% of marketing organizations say they run effective, coordinated campaigns. Teams might attribute this to the recent explosion of new marketing technologies or increased pressure to keep up with new digital strategies, but at the core, it’s a collaboration challenge.

This couldn’t have been highlighted more clearly than when Magda Sowierszenko, Global Marketing Lead at Remote-How compared achieving alignment on her team to the planets in our solar system doing the same. (Fun fact: The planets never perfectly line up. The closest they’ll come to doing so will occur in 2492!)

Not only is it difficult for marketing teams to align internally, but it’s also challenging to align with other functions. For many organizations, the disconnect between sales and marketing is especially strong—a “Marketing is from Venus, Sales is from Mars” reality. Only 8% of companies have strong alignment between their sales and marketing departments. Meanwhile, when sales and marketing teams do achieve alignment, revenue can increase by as much as 209%.

Maintaining focus in the face of change

Veronika Baranovska, an Inbound Marketing Manager at Sendible, similarly acknowledged the alignment challenge afflicting marketing teams. For her team, Asana has become the go-to sidekick for maintaining focus as they’re pulled in multiple directions. But Asana isn’t the team’s only secret to success. To achieve their enormous 30% year-over-year revenue growth, Baranovska couples Asana with a three-tiered strategy:

• Do and measure what actually matters. Instead of focusing on granular metrics that can be easily measured (click-through rates, for example), home in on the bigger picture (improved self-service sales revenue, for instance).

• Protect your team’s workflow. It’s okay to say “no.” If the ROI is low or non-existent, refocus efforts to activities that will actually move the needle.

• Introduce more transparency. Communication is fundamental.

Thriving amidst hypergrowth

To close out the discussion, Matt Turzo, CEO at Wind Mobility emphasized that modern marketing challenges become even more acute when a company is in hypergrowth. That’s been the reality for his team, which has already grown tenfold over the course of 2019. In order to successfully scale amidst hypergrowth, Turzo relies on these three keys to success:

1. People. Hypergrowth companies should aim to hire people who can assume an “athletic” role—that is to jump into opportunities, embrace change, and work as part of a team.

2. Vision. The company vision needs to repeated time and time again. A compelling vision inspires motivation and ensures everyone stays on the same page.

3. Tools. When investing in best-of-breed tools like Asana, Turzo is adamant about prioritizing in-person communication to ensure a successful rollout. This will not only ensure everyone on the team knows how to use the tool at a basic level, but will understand best practices, use cases, and tool etiquette.

The challenges facing modern marketing teams are great. But they don’t need to be overwhelming. With work management platforms like Asana and strategies such as the ones shared by our customers, attaining marketing alignment is not only possible—it’s palpable.

If you’d like to connect with our team and your local Asana Together community members, visit our events page to register for an Asana Together event near you!