Congratulations! Whether you landed a position at another organization or received a promotion at your current one, your first month in a new marketing communications job can be daunting. We walk you through six important tasks that should be part of your 30-day plan.
Once you’ve figured out where the bathrooms are and how to work the copy machine, you might not be sure what your first, official task should be. Of course, by this time you’ve been briefed by your hiring manager on some of the priorities of the organization, but there are some rather important items you should tackle right away to build a foundation for your success in the position:
- Engage Your Team
- Make a Hot List
- Review the Financials in Detail
- Conduct a Communications Audit
- Schedule Meetings with Key Stakeholders
- Schedule a One-Month Review
Note: Steps 1-5 above will most likely be completed concurrently as opposed to consecutively.
Engage Your Team
Why You Should Do This
To be successful, you’re going to need allies all around you, from your supervisor and her peers to your direct reports and contacts in other departments. Start with your subordinates – after all, you can’t be successful without their support.
Hold a team meeting on Day One and conduct individual meetings with everyone from managers to support staff in the first or second week. Use these meetings as an opportunity to build authentic relationships with your staff – not just to promote yourself to them. Give them a chance to talk about themselves and share their views on the opportunities and challenges they see for the department. You can of course review resumes and LinkedIn profiles to gage the skill sets of your employees, but the insight you’ll gain from these meetings will help you understand the interpersonal skills they possess and other strengths and weaknesses that don’t appear on paper.
After completing the individual meetings, schedule your first official department meeting during which you share your goals for the upcoming business period and your expectations. This would be a good time to introduce a structure to follow for subsequent all-hands gatherings. Follow these tips for productive marketing meetings from Nick Scalice of Earnworthy.
Resources You’ll Need
Time – and lots of it. You’ll no doubt have commitments to your supervisor and other key decision-makers, but taking the time to connect with your employees is an important investment.
In terms of tangible needs, you’ll wish to review resumes and personnel files, including the last performance review of each staff member before you meet. Revisit these documents after each meeting, as getting to know a new employee is often like putting a puzzle together. I once supervised a talented writer who wasn’t doing any writing in her current role because my predecessor valued her organizational skills over her copywriting ability and made her a traffic manager instead.
Obstacles You May Encounter
If you didn’t meet any members of your team during the hiring process, keep in mind it might take a little longer for them to warm up to you and vice versa. Also, it’s very helpful to know in advance if any direct reports applied for your position – navigating that situation can be challenging.
Make a Hot List: Find Out What’s in Production and What’s Coming Next
Why You Should Do This
The deadline for an important deliverable could be your third day on the job. The department admin might have registered you for an out-of-town conference that’s two weeks away. The monthly e-newsletter hasn’t gone out in months – something your boss wants to you resolve yesterday. There’s never a slow time in the marketing and communications world, even in the absence of your position, so you’re more than likely going to have to hit the ground running.
Resources You’ll Need
From conversations with your supervisor and team, put together a list of hot projects that are in production or have drop dates in the first three months after your start date. This might be easy if your department kept the production schedule up to date before you were hired, but…
Obstacles You May Encounter
With your position previously vacant, your team might not have followed a proper project management or production traffic process, making it difficult to create a hot list that’s 100 percent accurate on the first try. However, this effort will give you insight into which of your employees value systems, processes and workflow and were productive without a manager hovering around the office.
Review the Financials in Detail (from Invoices to Encumbrances)
Why You Should Do This
Most new hires only review the organization’s marketing communications budget, but a thorough review of invoices and expenses puts each line item into context. In other words, you’ll see exactly how that budget was spent. For instance, the “Advertising” line item might only include print and TV spots while search engine ads were charged to a “Digital Marketing” line item instead.
Reviewing expenses over the past couple of years will also help you piece together an annual production calendar. Perhaps every March there’s a $15,000 check cut to a charitable group as part of an annual sponsorship and you see invoices for quarterly flights of commercials that run on regional cable television. Invoices can shine light on the operations of your department, too. Maybe you see the organization has been increasing the amount it spends on freelance designers over the years – so much so that maybe it’s time to hire a full-time staffer instead.
I was once in a position in which there was a nine-month gap between my predecessor leaving and my start date, as well as a severe lack of institutional knowledge among my team. (Also: The files in my office were about as helpful as an umbrella during an earthquake.) I was able to develop a basic production calendar and working budget only from piecing together paid invoices and expenses. Doing so brought order to the chaos and helped my team to be more productive.
Resources You’ll Need
Make the department admin or someone in Accounts Payable your new best friend. Ask for copies of paid invoices and actual budgets for the past three fiscal years and all invoices year to date. Then, set up an Excel workbook with a tab for each year and columns/rows to reflect the month of year, the cost of the invoice, a description of the project, etc. This will give you a skeleton of what an average year in your role will look like.
Obstacles You May Encounter
You might find that not all of the organization’s marketing and communications expenses were actually charged to the marketing and communications department’s budget. Rather, other divisions might have marketing line items to which certain projects – like a brochure, app or microsite specifically created for that department – are charged to instead.
Conduct a Communications Audit
Why You Should Do This
A good communications audit not only examines marketing collateral but also addresses the internal processes used for communicating externally. The audit will help you set benchmarks for where the organization was when you started so you can develop measurable objectives for your first year on the job.
The audit is also the best way to wrap your head around the expectations others in the organization may have for your department. It’ll help you understand the strengths and weakness in your organization’s strategy. Common findings include a lack of consistent messaging or sending the right message but via the wrong tactics.
The results of your audit should be compiled in 1) a thorough document that highlights your findings and offers recommendations for keeping, ending or altering existing publications/materials and processes or starting new ones and 2) a high-level overview in the form of a brief slide deck for your supervisor and other decision-makers.
Resources You’ll Need
Time – we’re adding a lot to your first month on the job, we know. You’ll need to access and evaluate key efforts (from annual reports and brochures to websites to press releases to special events to social media content to media coverage to signage to business cards and everything – yes, everything — in between). Start the coffee now.
You can also engage a marketing communications firm to conduct a formal communications audit during this time. It’s often helpful to have outside eyes review an organization’s materials and processes.
Obstacles You May Encounter
The main obstacles here – besides being able to block off time to conduct the audit and formulate your recommendations – will exist only if your department doesn’t have a good archive of collateral and well-kept records (the shame!). Hopefully, you won’t have to go on a wild goose chase to gather all of your marketing materials.
You may encounter one particular challenge after conducting the audit and presenting your recommendations — especially if you propose getting rid of a certain tactic or openly criticize one. Sometimes, a colleague – from C-level executives down to support staff – will have an unexplainable affinity for a certain item, such as a brochure that’s been produced for that last thousand years or a monthly ad in a national magazine (that they subscribe to). Be sure to back up all of your recommendations with sound research and some evidence to point to (low ROI, dwindling circulation of an advertising outlet, industry trends, etc.).
Meet with Key Stakeholders
Why You Should Do This
This is a great opportunity to promote yourself as a resource to leaders of the organization, and, in many cases, reintroduce these VIPs to the marketing and communications function.
Resources You’ll Need
This is a good time to make friends with the gatekeepers of the organization – administrative personnel who can get you the face time with executives you’ll need throughout your time at the organization. However, finding out who has access to whom can be quite a task.
You’ll also need to free up your schedule and work around the limited availability of the C-suite or board members. You could find yourself at work before sunrise (when I worked for a healthcare system I had to be on site and on point at 6:30 a.m. to meet with medical directors before they started seeing patients) or putting your social life on hold (when I directed communications at a nonprofit I met with major donors every other evening for months).
Obstacles You May Encounter
You’re new to the organization – and you’re in marketing and communications, so prepare to hear some version of the following:
- “Let me tell you a thing or two about marketing…” (Said by someone with no marketing experience.)
- “This is what your team should be doing…” (Followed by a laundry list of budget-breaking, unrealistic tactics that don’t align with the organization, your strategy or even the laws of time and space.)
- “Your predecessor was excellent. You have big shoes to fill.” (Ugh.)
- “I couldn’t stand your predecessor. I hope you are better than s/he was.” (Ugh.)
- “My department doesn’t get enough support from marketing and communications. It seems like you only promote Department X.” (Says the head of Department Y, who, according to Department X, is the one who gets all the attention.)
- “My department/project is what is keeping this place afloat…” (Said by either a true rock star who does offer value or, uh, the exact opposite of that – you’ll have to figure out which it is.)
Schedule a One-Month Review with Your Supervisor
Why You Should Do This
Don’t wait until the awkward, HR-mandated 90-day review to show your supervisor you’re the asset the organization needs to thrive!
You should start building a strong relationship with your supervisor from the beginning, of course, but it’s a good idea to set a special meeting after your first 30 days or make use of a previously scheduled meeting one month from your start date.
This is when you present the high-level findings of your communications audit and your forecast of hot tasks over the next quarter. It’s here you start conversations about your team and any needs you may have. And, most important, you clarify any quirks or oddities pertaining to the budget or expectations.
Also, although I’m sure that each of the key stakeholders you met with in step five were lovely human beings, I can guarantee that each one had her or his own unique take on the organization, its priorities and your role within it. Your supervisor can help you navigate these internal politics.
Resources You’ll Need
If you have a weekly meeting with your supervisor on the books already, be sure to paint a picture of what you hope to achieve at this 30-days-in meeting – that it’s not just a generic update. One suggestion is to use the date of this meeting as your deadline for completing steps one through five of this checklist.
This informal review meeting is also a great time to present your first official monthly report. The Fairmount Group’s Dawn Hanson offers a great template for marketing and communications reports.
Obstacles You May Encounter
Nothing is as easy as it seems, and deliverables, deadlines, PR opportunities, external threats – any number of things can throw you off your schedule and task list for your first month on the job. If anything, use your 30-day review meeting as a check-in with your most important ally and as a time to flesh out the next month in your new role.
We’ll Help You Start Out on the Right Foot
Contact The Fairmount Group today. We can perform your communications audit, advise on staff needs and team restructuring and provide general marketing communications counsel to help you lead your organization to success.
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