The Ultimate Guide To Beating Makeshift Marketing For Good (13 Articles)

make•shift mar•ket•ing |ˈmākˌSHift ˈmärkədiNG| noun "the temporary, sub-optimal solution for getting your marketing mayhem together." It’s a real thing. Click play and see what I mean... I can't tell you how many marketers I've met whose solution for “keeping their sanity” involves spreadsheets organizing spreadsheets. Who’ve decided endless meetings to “get on the same page” is par for the course. Who’ve succumbed to “on the fly” project management because that’s just the nature of the job?! And who’ve settled for a cobbled mess of one-trick tools because...well…? At CoSchedule, this is the enemy we're helping marketers across the world defeat! And that means you! No more #MakeshiftMarketing! You need... ? A productivity tool designed specifically for marketers... ? With a bird’s eye view... ? An active, living calendar with color labels, tags, drag & drop functionality, timelines, discussion threads, templates, multiple views, and MORE... ? A place where you can manage, collaborate, AND publish... ? Where you can templatize your workflows... ? Integrate with all your favorite tools ? ? And prove the ROI of your kick a$$ marketing efforts. You need a fix... And in this ultimate guide to beating makeshift marketing for good, a fix you will get! You'll find 13 of our very best resources on how to go from zero to a hundred in short order.

Here's Something Special (Because We Like You)

First, though, we have something special just for you. You can pick a time to schedule a personalized marketing demo of CoSchedule just for you and your team. Sure, you can check out all of these amazing resources to lead change, influence others, organize the chaos, and then sustain your awesome results... ...or you can get a short cut in line to success in just 30 minutes with a marketing demo with a CoSchedule expert. Your call. Pick your time now or read on! Now, let's keep plowing ahead!

Section One: Leading Change

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic. Peter Drucker

The ability to lead change is probably one of the most valuable (and key) skills anyone can possess. This section breaks down exactly how and why you can do it — no matter your context. You have what it takes to:

• Adopt new tools,
• Pioneer new processes,
• Abandon the stuff that doesn't work,
• Become an incredible leader,
• And skyrocket your career.

And this section is all about equipping you to do this — fast.

#1. Why Challenging The Status Quo Will Make You A Better Leader (And How To Do It)

First up, let's tackle a dirty word in the business world. In leadership circles, the status quo usually gets a bad rap... ...rightfully so, because often, "business as usual" just doesn't cut it. But if you understand the concept well, there's actually a way you can leverage the idea... Status quo is a Latin phrase that means “state in which.” So we could rephrase it as: your status quo is “the state in which [your current outcomes/results happen].” This means status quo actually describes the outcome the current state of affairs creates. This means status quo is best understood as a way of outlining the outputs generated by current inputs. In this post, you’ll learn exactly:

• What’s at stake for you and your company if you don’t challenge the status quo.
• How to specifically identify your status quo and its impact in your organization.
• And a novel way to approach leading positive change in any context.
• PLUS, get a free worksheet to go from A-to-Z.

Read "Why Challenging The Status Quo Will Make You A Better Leader (And How To Do It)"

#2. The 3-Step Change Management Process That Will Boost Your Career

Once you've outlined the change, it's time to make it happen. One of the most powerful levers to pull when leading change is actually an emotion... ...urgency. Urgency makes you focus, prioritize, then act. The most powerful way to create it is loss aversion. Research has shown:

For human beings “losses loom larger than gains…and the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979)

By the time you’re done reading this post, you'll harness this superpower (and more). Learn to:

• Lead lasting change in your marketing team,
• Transform the way you (and your team) work,
• And become more productive than ever.

Read "The 3-Step Change Management Process That Will Boost Your Career"

#3. How To Lead A Cross-Functional Team Collaboration With CoSchedule

In a 2015 study, researchers found out that 75% of cross-functional teams weren’t actually all that functional... ...the irony is palpable. Lead researcher, Behnam Tabrizi discovered these kinds of teams were failing on several fronts:

1. Meeting a planned budget.
2. Staying on schedule.
3. Adhering to specifications.
4. Meeting customer expectations.
5. Maintaining alignment corporate goals.

Tabrizi further explained:

Cross-functional teams often fail because the organization lacks a systemic approach.

In this post, you'll find that systematic approach so many cross-functional teams lack... And it's tailored to using CoSchedule itself to crunch makeshift marketing and lead your team to win big. Read "How To Lead A Cross-Functional Team Collaboration With CoSchedule"

#4. How To Adopt CoSchedule With This Simple Change Management Process

Based on our experience working with 10,000+ users, customers & organizations like you, this post is a guide to fast-track your success with CoSchedule. Carve aside one hour today to implement these action items so you can save 75 minutes per week, per team member and start meeting your deadlines. Here's what you'll learn:

• How to learn CoSchedule in record time
• How to set goals to for your team (and which goals to set)
• How to enable action on your most important projects

As a bonus, you can also download this free slide deck to help you successfully onboard your team to CoSchedule. Read "How To Adopt CoSchedule With This Simple Change Management Process"

Section Two: Influencing Others

Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers. Robin S. Sharma

In section two, we'll tackle how to influence others regardless of your positional authority. You'll learn uncommon tactics to influence your boss, your peers, and your team to lead big changes.

#5. 4 Ways To Convince Your Boss to Say Yes Every Time (Backed By Science)

As marketers, every month seems like the equivalent of a year in other industries. Marketing has changed more in last few years than in the last 50 before them. Not only do we have to be awesome at being…

• leaders,
• conversion experts,
• project managers,
• advertisers,
• copywriters,
• email wizards,
• and 48 other skills…

…we have to build the skill of leading change. …we’ve gotta kill the status quo before it kills us. …and of course, we have to convince our bosses to go along with it all. This boils down to our ability to influence others. But, if you’ve ever read about the psychology of influencing others, it can be deflating. Doubly so when it comes to how to convince your boss (or peers) to try new stuff. In this post, you'll learn four ethical approaches to convince your boss to say yes to anything:

• How to position what you’re asking for in concrete terms,
• How to align your change with team objectives,
• Why to conduct a trial run with a mini post-mortem conversation,
• And how to win by starting big, then going small.

...you'll also find these tactics applied to getting your boss to say yes to CoSchedule!

#6. 3 Uncommon Ways To Get Team Buy In Every Time

Neurologically, we’re hard wired to maintain things as they are via our ingrained habits. We’re comfortable in the rut of status quo. And any threat to it is perceived as discomfort — which humans avoid tooth and nail. Explained psychologist Ralph Ryback:

“Inertia, or ‘a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged,’ is at the headwinds of any change that we make in our lives.”

Wildly enough, Isaac Newton’s principle of inertia applies to our psychology as well as the world around us. Read this post to get buy in every time by:

• Taking the marketing cholesterol test (this is a fun one).
• Positioning your change as the solution to a problem that makes *everyone's* lives better.
• Scripting the critical actions to remove roadblocks ahead of time.

#7. The Best Way To Get Multiple Teams To Use CoSchedule

First, if you've made the decision to use CoSchedule, you have chosen wisely ? Now it's time to rock this amazing platform as a team and get the best results of your career. To do this, you're going to need to do a few key things. In this post, you'll learn:

• How to get your team to consistently use the tool ?
• How to develop a built-in mechanism for sustained results.
• Exactly why (and how) to keep your team hungry to win.

Read "The Best Way To Get Multiple Teams To Use CoSchedule"

#8. Shorten The Learning Curve For Onboarding Your Team To CoSchedule (Real-World Examples)

When your team is switching to CoSchedule, ensure there is no path back to the old way of doing things. In this post, you learn three ways to shorten the learning curve for onboarding your team to Coschedule. Because, let’s face it, the faster your team gets rolling with CoSchedule, the faster your results go up, your time spent on trivial details goes down, and you look like a marketing genius while it happens. So, you’re going to learn to:

1. Be ultra-specific with what this new world of CoSchedule will look like.
2. Create a desire in your team for accomplishing more (fueled by CoSchedule).
3. Remove friction between your team and CoSchedule adoption.

Read "Shorten The Learning Curve For Onboarding Your Team To CoSchedule (Real-World Examples)"

Section Three: Organizing Chaos

Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. Albert Einstein

Organization has incredible power —  but it doesn't happen on its own. Marketing has a nasty habit of getting overly complex, messy, and disorganized. These are all things that choke results and communication and are a prime source of stress. This section helps you understand how to get organized and why you can't afford not to.

#9. How To Overcome Makeshift Marketing With New Marketing Superpowers

This post is crammed with the psychology of productivity. After all, it's hard to be productive when you don’t realize the forces working against you. It’s even tougher when habits you viewed as assets are actually liabilities. In modern marketing, this is the game we’re all playing. And there’s a lot riding on us to get results. When we fail, our companies don’t grow... When we’re ineffective, our brand suffers... Not to mention we’re unhappy with ourselves when we underperform... The good news is these unseen forces actually have a face, a name, and are easy to spot once unveiled. Better still, they have a single source we can outpace if we focus in the right place. In this post, you learn:

• The most common cause of poor productivity in modern marketing,
• Exactly how it harms our personal and team results by 40% or more,
• And how to acquire the superpower you need to beat it.

Read "How To Overcome Makeshift Marketing With New Marketing Superpowers"

#10. How To Prove The ROI Of Getting Organized [Backed By Science]

Here are three facts I know to be 100% certain:

1. Marketers who document their plan are 538% more successful than those who don’t.
2. Marketers who document their processes are 466% more successful than those who don’t.
3. Marketers who set goals are 429% more successful than those who don’t.

^^^ I don’t know what that sounds like to you. But to me… …it sounds like literal data proves that:

Marketers who proactively organize the ways in which they will be successful are actually more successful than marketers who don’t organize their plans, processes, and goals.

Here's why this post is so valuable to you:

1. You need to prove to your boss that it’s worth your time and investment to implement new tools and processes to get organized.
2. Your team needs some reassurance that while change is difficult, that after implementing new organizational procedures that their lives will actually be way easier—proven by science.
3. You need a kick in the pants to get organized now… because every day you spend frustrated by disorganization is another wasted opportunity.

Read "How To Prove The ROI Of Getting Organized [Backed By Science]"

Section Four: Sustaining Results

Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up. James Belasco and Ralph Stayer

Congratulations... You are on your way to beating makeshift marketing for good ? But only half of the battle is over. Because positive change only makes maximum impact when it's sustained. In this final section, you'll learn how to sustain results and harness momentum as a leader.

#11. How To Sustain Positive Changes In Your Marketing Team

We marketers face a tall order. Not only do we have to make hyper growth happen, we have to do it every day. Every time we reach the summit of one goal, a taller one is just around the bend. In short, our job is to start from zero and soar past last week. So, here, you learn how to sustain those positive changes (and results) in your marketing team. You’ll learn:

• The key to putting your team’s success on cruise control.
• How to develop a built-in mechanism for sustained results.
• Exactly why (and how) to keep your team hungry to win.

PLUS, because you’re awesome, I’ve got something extra special for you… Read "How To Sustain Positive Changes In Your Marketing Team"

#12. Your Awesome Team Is Using CoSchedule! Now What?

Now it's time to rock this amazing platform as a team and get the best results of your career. To do this, you're going to need to do a few key things, learning:

• Facebook-ify CoSchedule for your team. This helps them consistently use the tool ?
• Develop smart marketing habits. These become your built-in mechanism for sustained results.
• Use the power of accountability (probably in a way you've never thought of before). Exactly why (and how) to keep your team hungry to win.

Most importantly, you'll find out how to align CoSchedule with your team's purpose. As one sweeping study on accountability with over 40,000 participants found:

"85% of survey participants indicated they weren't even sure what their organizations are trying to achieve..."

Your team will thank you. Your boss will promote you. And you'll look like a BA marketing genius! Read "Your Awesome Team Is Using CoSchedule! Now What?"

Beat Makeshift Marketing For Good!

Now it's time for lucky number thirteen...

#13. How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing: The CoSchedule Buyer’s Guide

The plague of #MakeshiftMarketing is so painful because...

• It makes developing efficient workflows impossible. Switching between multiple tools that don’t sync with each other leads to a lot of tab-switching.
• It necessitates a lot of inefficient hacks and workarounds. Tedious copy-and-paste processes aren’t fun, and they leave too much room for error.
• It makes collaboration feel like a trip to the dentist. Clunky tools lead to clunky processes that lead to dreading going into the office.

This post sums it all up in one neat and tidy package (with a handy infographic to boot!)... Learn how to overcome makeshift marketing forever with CoSchedule.

Before You Go...

But if you only take two things away from this epic guide...make it these:

1. Makeshift marketing is the #1 killer of productivity, communication, and results in marketing today.
2. CoSchedule is the only way to fire makeshift marketing for good.

And the quickest way to find out what problems CoSchedule can fix in your context, is to pick a time for a free 1-on-1 marketing demo of CoSchedule today. Get guidance from a CoSchedule expert. And break up with makeshift marketing forever ?