How to make marketing meetings more productive
It’s the office joke we can all relate to, “that meeting could have been an email.” We’ve all been there, sitting in the conference room or on a conference call, zoned out and wondering why Billy keeps asking questions or bringing up things that are unrelated to the meeting’s purpose and it’s starting to stretch our patience quite thin.
But, not all meetings have to be this way! Meetings can be wonderful for brainstorming or kicking off a project, keeping a project on track, assigning out tasks or reviewing recently completed ones, and sharing insights or lessons learned with a wider team or cross-functional group.
The key to good meetings is that they’re productive and stick to the subject. They must use their time wisely to maintain people’s attention and have the right people present. No longer will you have to listen to Billy’s silly questions as he might not make the cut for the next meeting when you follow these tips for planning productive marketing meetings.
When it comes to running successful meetings, we have to go a little old school. While we may have the greatest project management software and team collaboration tools available in this day and age, we tend to miss something our former teams had right: an agenda.
An agenda can be a lifesaver when it comes to keeping meetings on-topic and letting everyone know who should and shouldn’t attend this meeting.
Your marketing meeting agenda should include:
- The goal of the meeting
- What will be discussed
- Who will be leading each discussion
- How much time is allotted for each discussion item
- Action items
Let’s dive into each of those sections a bit more.
The goal of the meeting
Every meeting should have a reason for taking away people’s time to do other tasks and if you can’t think of a goal for your meeting, it truly can be an email. Common goals can be things like:
- Kickoff call for Q2 newsletter
- Regular check-in on XYZ campaign
- Review June editorial calendar
- Dry run of July webinar
- Go through final checklist for product launch
- Review monthly metrics and campaign results
What will be discussed
Try to be as specific as possible to keep people on track. If you’re talking about content for your Q2 email newsletter and Joyce brings up testing a new A/B software for your email marketing, you can offer to add that to next week’s agenda or schedule a separate meeting for it.
Another great way to make this meeting productive is to ask everyone to give a status report, share what’s coming up, what’s needed from others on their team, or share any roadblocks they’ve hit.
Just be careful with conversation creep. If Jenny says she needs three graphics from Kevin and they start having their own in-depth conversation that doesn’t involve the others in the meeting, it might be wise to suggest they schedule some more time between just the two of them.
Who will be leading each discussion
Assign different parts of the agenda to different people who are best suited for answering any questions that might come up or who are responsible for moving those related tasks along.
How much time is allotted for each discussion item
Set aside adequate time for each topic but don’t leave so much room that people will think it’s okay to hijack the leftover time for something they want to talk about that’s unrelated to the meeting at hand.
By setting the stage and showing that the time is dedicated to certain subjects, people will be more likely to pay attention longer and be ready to speak when it’s their turn.
Action items
Conclude the meeting with a follow-up email or post in a shared space that outlines what needs to be done before the next meeting and who’s responsible. Go ahead and add these follow-ups as a discussion item on the next agenda so you’re sure to address them with the wider group.
Always share your agenda with the meeting attendees prior to it so they can come prepared with their talking points or questions for the group. I’d also recommend requesting people to use the raise your hand feature in an online meeting so people aren’t talking over each other or interrupting the current speaker or derailing the conversation.
Bottom line: if it’s not on the agenda, it’s not a part of the meeting. You can always plan another meeting for questions or ideas raised that would normally veer the conversation offtrack.
Have any tips for making marketing meetings more productive? Share them in the comments below!
