Some teams struggle to avoid eye contact while working on a project or product launch. The disconnect between the marketing and development teams is one that comes up over and over again. This friction is often associated with dramatically different work styles and priorities and can lead to project delays and costly mistakes.
Fortunately, there are many ways developers and marketers can work together. Here are some key overlaps to consider when breaking down barriers between these groups:
Understanding the technical challenges
Marketers are “idea” people and tend to focus on quality communication that generates emotional responses with leads and customers. However, as the world continues to shift to digital marketing dominance, emotions and psychology are no longer the main factors influencing communication. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes.
Development teams can work with marketers to understand the technical challenges they face when engaging with audiences. A prime example is the shift from a digital ecosystem to privacy. Marketers will no longer be able to add people to their list without subscribing, and non-compliance may result in emails being redirected to spam or blocked entirely. Innovative developers work with verification software and Email Verification Guide Ensure continuous audience engagement while reducing costs and errors.
Many marketers and developers still work in silos, but the world of digital marketing creates overlap that cannot be ignored.
Create custom solutions
Finding the perfect solution for your marketing and sales needs is rare. For example, many gyms are successful in using scheduling software with PoS components, but they lack data and reporting capabilities. Conversely, your business may find a simple ecommerce platform for WordPress integration that doesn’t display the appropriate traffic and customer journey metrics.
These gaps and challenges provide opportunities for marketers and development teams to come together to create solutions. What seems impossible to the marketing team may be a simple integration to the development team.
Improve data-driven decision making
Big data has become a buzzword in recent years. This is an opportunity that businesses cannot ignore. However, collecting big data and turning it into valuable information is an important task.
Development and marketing teams come together to capture and analyze big data to highlight new market expansion opportunities, overlooked demographics, and their underlying impact on customer behavior, ultimately improving the customer experience.
Tips to improve communication between teams
Bridging the gap between marketing and dev operations requires a trickle-down effect. Leadership must take the initiative to create better communication and remove barriers to the work environment.
collaborative approach
Consider a collaborative approach rather than seeing the different departments as separate entities. Make sure everyone has a deadline for connecting and building relationships in a non-project setting. It’s also a good idea to create task shadowing opportunities so each group can see what the other group is doing during the day.
The goal is to understand why things go the way they do. Friction points caused by misunderstandings often lead to conflict and disrespect between teams with different priorities.
listen to understand
As humans, we are meant to listen with the intention of responding. However, to successfully collaborate with other individuals and teams, you must learn to listen with the intent to understand.
Take an emotionally intelligent approach. paying all your attention And ask questions for clarification. Learn in the context of the bigger picture and remove priorities and ego from your analysis. Whether you’re having an in-depth conversation on a major project or a quick update on an outstanding task, keep these strategies in mind.
Expectations and Scheduling
Another aspect of clear communication between teams across departments is managing expectations and setting clear schedules. If your team promises a schedule, be realistic. If not, explain what obstacles are preventing you from achieving your goals. It is also important to have clear communication about it. important project schedule So everyone understands the bigger picture of personal delays and difficulties.
Although marketers and developers can speak two different languages, there are many opportunities to collaborate and communicate successfully.