Overwhelmed by campaigns, understaffed in-house?

Do you have the ideas, but never seem to nail execution? If you’re part of, or leading, a small in-house team, chances are you’re juggling strategy, copywriting, reporting, and stakeholder management - all at the same time. In this piece, we explore what happens when campaigns keep coming but the team isn’t growing…

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‍One person, many hats: in small, lean teams, one person is often responsible for a myriad of campaign and marketing elements, working on deliverables they are not specialised in. Whilst this ensures that campaigns are executed, it often lowers the standard as none of the work is done with expert insight, and the employee in question often becomes overwhelmed. 

‍Project and stakeholder management: A common obstacle faced by small teams is the time required to manage the execution and the stakeholders involved in the campaign. Whether it’s strategy, managing contractors, internal reporting or external partners and investors, managing the management of a campaign itself is a time-consuming task. 

‍Settling and missing opportunities: Due to a lack of resources, time and experience, a lot of campaigns are kept at the bare minimum, activating only one main channel. Whilst it may feel better to do something, rather than nothing, this often means opportunities to explore, experiment and develop campaigns as missed, and the brand becomes stagnant over time. 

‍Reporting: Running campaigns with an understaffed team means that reporting and data collection are often limited, leaving little to no time and information to analyse to develop and optimise future campaigns. Without truly considering learnings and results from previous campaigns, development and optimising results becomes impossible. 

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So what can you do?

If there are clear signs of your team being overwhelmed and understaffed, the simple solution is to recruit additional help.

Now this might look different, depending on your organisational structure, existing processes, and the needs and challenges of your team. 

If your team is mainly doing fine, but could use an additional set of hands to optimise and create space for experimentation, proper reporting and more efficient processes, a part-time contractor may be able to support enough. Their level, be it an assistant, a consultant or a fractional CMO, will depend on the structure of your team and where the gaps in experience lie.  

On the other hand, if your team is already busy enough with business-as-usual activities, you will likely want to bring in an agency to manage any specific campaigns or bigger brand and communications-related projects. By hiring an agency, you get the expertise you need, without disrupting the processes already in place with your current team. 

Ultimately, the key is to hire extra help before your team is overwhelmed to a point where their performance is impacted, so keeping a closer eye on workload, goals, and strategy is always important.

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‍If you want to find out how working with a communications agency can help your business, you can find us at hello@dantemedia.eu.