Building Sustainable, High-Performing Marketing Teams: Talent Attraction

YUnique Marketing Insights

Whether you’re looking to grow, scale or exit your business, preparing for what’s next starts with strategic clarity. At YUnique Marketing, we’re on a mission to give ambitious SME business leaders the strategies to unlock their growth potential and build more valuable businesses.

In today’s disruptive world, skills, capabilities and experience are much needed, but in short supply. The war for talent in every industry sector and in every functional specialism rages on.

Business challenges increase daily, and the demands on the marketing team to help address them seem endless.

Building a sustainable, high-performing marketing team can feel like a job all on its own, aside from also needing to lead the marketing planning and execution too.

How we attract, develop and retain top talent into our organisations needs to evolve, in line with our changing world.

Certain core best-practice activities that have served us well over the years remain as cornerstones of the recruitment and people management process.

However, what is needed is a fresh perspective on the employee journey, and in turn a new approach to the key activities necessary to underpin the building of sustainable and high-performing marketing teams.

An approach that embeds the concepts of mission, vision, values and purpose into the stages of attracting, developing and retaining talent.

It’s this twist that will make all the difference to our organisations, our teams and ultimately to our customers and society.

It’s never been more vital that we connect and engage with our talent on this level, ensuring alignment to shared beliefs and goals, and that they are equipped, enabled, motivated and inspired to do their best work as individuals and as a team.

The five stages of building sustainable, high-performing marketing teams

I’ve developed a model, used in my client engagements, that supports the building of sustainable, high-performing marketing teams.

The model sets out five interconnected stages of the employee journey:

1. Recruitment – Attract

2. Onboarding – Inspire

3. Engagement – Activate

4. Recognition – Reward

5. Retention – Nurture

Each stage presents an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the organisation and its people, building on shared purpose and creating the conditions for sustained performance. Each stage has associated activities and actions.

Bringing the model to life

The model provides a framework for considering how to bring these stages of building sustainable and high-performing marketing teams to life.

An important part of this is ensuring alignment and involvement from your HR function, your business and marketing leaders, and your marketing team. Each has a vital role to play in building sustainable and high-performing marketing teams.

By considering the stages as a connected cycle of success, future recruitment can build on the solid foundations of an established, sustainable and high-performing team.

The objective is not simply to attract talented people into the organisation. It is to create the environment, culture and leadership that will enable them to develop, contribute and thrive.