As teams grow, it¡¯s important for everyone to get together and talk about what they¡¯ve been working on in their corner of the world. Great meetings have clear agendas and end with clear action items. Beyond that, the content is .
Unproductive meetings suck. They¡¯re time for people to avoid doing actual work and stare blankly at each other. Sometimes, folks throw in generic comments to look like they¡¯re paying attention.
To ensure those marketing meetings aren¡¯t blocks of time the team dreads, make note of these tips for how to make marketing team meetings truly useful for employees.
Table of Contents
- TL;DR How to Run a Great Marketing Meeting
- How to Run an Effective Meeting
- Marketing Meeting Agenda
- Best Practices for Marketing Meetings
- Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing Meetings
TL;DR How to Run a Great Marketing Meeting
A strong marketing meeting has a clear agenda, focused metrics, project updates, shared learning, feedback time, and action items. To keep meetings productive, use the right cadence. Teams should stay on time and end with clear next steps and ownership. For teams with remote attendees, find ways to engage them in conversations.
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How to Run an Effective Meeting
While this post will primarily focus on marketing meetings, I want to address a team-agnostic section about effective meetings as a whole. (Psst: If you prefer visual learning, here¡¯s a video that can help.)
As I said above, meetings can be a grandiose waste of time. It¡¯s tempting to run your work by others, gather feedback or affirmation, or simply avoid the tough stuff by calling meetings.
I¡¯m here to tell you ¡ª don¡¯t do it. The first step to running effective meetings is to only when absolutely necessary.
Different meeting cadences serve different purposes:
- Quarterly meetings: Report on company progress and important news
- Monthly meetings: Review KPIs and recruit help for projects
- Weekly meetings: Share current responsibilities and asks, especially for larger teams or teams with new employees
Every moment in a meeting is time away from heads-down work, the work that arguably moves your business forward. Are meetings necessary to take a break, touch base, and rally with your team? Of course.
Secondly, to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of a meeting, ask your team. Ask, ¡°is [meeting] helpful for you? If so, what are its top two benefits for you?¡± This can help you understand what percentage of your teams finds value in your meetings and what components or agenda items may be able to be removed to save time.
Speaking of agendas, let¡¯s discuss next what your marketing meeting agendas should resemble.
Marketing Meeting Agenda
Whether a marketing team meeting is weekly or monthly, this section will explain the content teams should create single time. Martkers should create a slide deck for each meeting so participants can follow along with each agenda item.
Marketing Meeting Agenda Example
For every meeting, create a dedicated agenda slide that lays out three things:
- What will be discussed in today¡¯s meeting.
- Who will be leading each discussion.
- How much time is allotted for each discussion.
Outlining who is talking, what they¡¯re covering, and how much time they have to discuss it will help prevent the meeting from getting derailed. It will also prevent people from delving into unproductive conversations that are best had at another time and place.
As for what components should be on the marketing meeting agenda, let¡¯s discuss what to cover during a marketing meeting.
Review Important Metrics
Do a quick review of the most important marketing metrics. These shouldn¡¯t be niche metrics, like email unsubscribe rate, social media reach, or blog subscriber growth. Save those for monthly meetings where teams review month-over-month progress.
Instead, marketing team meetings should feature metrics related to goals. In other words, at the end of the month, what metrics will tell marketers whether the team succeeded?
While every business will likely review something different depending on its business model, here are some ideas:
- Leads waterfall.
- Sales waterfall.
- Volume of marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
- Paid vs. organic leads breakdown.
- Website traffic.
Marketing leaders use shared metrics to measure team performance and spot problems early. When the whole team can see progress throughout the month, marketers can adjust campaigns, reallocate effort, and improve results faster.
A Bit of Education
Marketing meetings should be a healthy mix of state-of-the-union content and educational content. Each week, have a couple of team members present briefly about interesting projects they¡¯ve been working on. This serves two purposes: it lets people know what their team members do all day, and they get to learn something new!
Think about it ... wouldn¡¯t it be interesting for a blogger to learn a little bit about a PPC experiment? Or for a social media intern to learn about the results of the latest email ?
Sharing lessons from projects helps everyone expand their knowledge base, sidestep landmines if a project backfired, and implement effective new techniques that they never knew worked.
Boom ¡ª everyone leaves your weekly meeting a smarter, better marketer!
The Nitty Gritty Retrospective
Each meeting should also contain a review of the projects each employee (or, for a larger marketing department, each team) worked on last month/quarter/year, plus the results they¡¯ve seen. This part of the meeting matters because it helps teams:
- Stay accountable by reporting on work and results.
- Learn from one another¡¯s projects and apply new ideas.
- Understand team performance and see which efforts are improving key metrics.
For example, if you have a team, this is their opportunity to report on the success of every single social network they manage. How is their reach faring? How much traffic are those networks sending to your site? How many leads are being generated? Why are some networks more successful than others?
While weekly meetings may focus on team-based metrics, a monthly or quarterly meeting is a good opportunity to do a deep dive into the channels and metrics that enable the entire team to meet its goals.
How You¡¯ll Meet This Month¡¯s Goals
After the retrospective, each employee or team should also present on their individual goals for the month or quarter, and how exactly they will meet those goals. This is not the time to be generic. Teams should explain, point by point, everything they¡¯ll be doing during the time period to meet the metrics they¡¯re measured by.
For example, let¡¯s say the team is responsible for driving more conversions this month. What exactly will they do to do that? Well, that slide might have some initiatives like:
- A/B test email copy with and without a P.S.
- An offer analysis to determine which offers convert at the highest rate.
- List segmentation experiments.
- Tailoring lead generation offers to align more closely with personas to improve CTR.
This is also a critical time for feedback. Build in time during every presentation ¡ª at least 5 minutes ¡ª for each team to solicit feedback on their proposed projects. This will help individual teams from getting derailed on projects that might not help them meet their goals. Or, perhaps other members of the marketing team have fantastic ideas that the teams hadn¡¯t even thought of yet!
Big Wins
A little bit of recognition is a good thing. Set aside a couple of minutes to showcase some of the amazing things your team members or department as a whole have accomplished. Big wins can include:
- Press coverage.
- Speaking engagements.
- Meaningful engagement with influential people on social media.
- A high-performing blog post.
- An email with standout click-through rates.
It¡¯s easy to harp on where you¡¯re falling behind, but a little cheerleading can help rally your team and remind them just how successful they can be when they put their mind to it.
Solicit Help
Everyone should have the opportunity to solicit help from team members during marketing team meetings. The larger the team gets, the easier it is to work in silos ¡ª but everyone has their own little superpowers that sometimes go unnoticed.
There should be a platform during every meeting for employees to share something they need a little help with. Teammates can then share solutions or resources that solve the problem.
There should also be a few minutes built into each presentation for feedback. If someone is sharing progress on an ongoing project, use that time to ask questions like:
- Is this project still worth pursuing?
- How should we measure the success of this project?
- Does anyone have a solution to a major roadblock?
So while there should be a few minutes at the end of each meeting dedicated solely to giving employees the floor to solicit help, time for feedback should be built into presentations if the presenter needs it.
Best Practices for Marketing Meetings
- Stay on time.
- Don¡¯t allow computers.
- Build in time for a break.
- End every meeting with action items.
- Consider remote folks.
- Review metrics and celebrate wins.
You know what content to include in your marketing team meetings. Now, let¡¯s discuss how to make those meetings run smoothly. These tips, despite helpful content, can make or break the usefulness of any marketing meeting.
1. Stay on time.
Start on time, end on time, and honor the budgeted time set for individual presentations. This can be tough with a good discussion going on. Delegate a timekeeper who lets presenters know when they¡¯re coming up to the end of their allotted time.
Eventually, people will start to self-edit their presentations. Meeting-goers will self-censor their comments, only contributing what truly needs to be said.
2. Don¡¯t allow computers ...
Only the meeting coordinator should have a computer to pull up the agenda and presentations. If others bring their laptops, people can¡¯t help but check their emails, get little bits of work done, and chat online, no matter how riveting the presentations are.
3. Build in time for a break.
A weekly meeting may only be 30 or 60 minutes, but the monthly meeting could take a lot longer. In that case, build in time for people to get up, stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, get coffee, whatever.
You¡¯ll start losing people¡¯s attention otherwise.
4. End every meeting with action items.
Whatever gets discussed talked about during a meeting should be revisited briefly at the end, preferably by the meeting coordinator. If the team spend 20 minutes talking about how to solve a lead shortage problem at the beginning, there¡¯s a good chance some of the to-dos and initiatives trickled out of people¡¯s minds.
The meeting owner should document decisions, assign action items, and confirm deadlines before the meeting ends. Team members should leave knowing what they own, when it¡¯s due, and how success will be measured.
5. Consider your remote folks.
Whether it¡¯s the entire team or just a few members, leaders should . Marketing teams use collaboration tools to keep in-office and remote attendees aligned.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø helps teams track follow-ups, share notes, and keep meeting outcomes connected to campaigns and goals in one CRM. is obviously a great choice, but other technology like may be a good fit for the team.
At the start of each meeting, test connectivity and walk through slides to be sure the message is clear for folks at home. Most importantly, gather separate feedback from remote team members to understand their struggles and accommodate their requests.
6. Review metrics and celebrate wins.
You know those you decided to measure and review in the first section? The ones that noted your team¡¯s progress throughout the month?
Now¡¯s the time to see whether you hit your goals or not! If you hit your goals, do two things: celebrate, and explain exactly why you hit those goals. That second one is critical. Someone should explain what marketing activities strongly contributed to you hitting, say, your leads goal. That way, you can repeat those activities this month!
Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing Meetings
What should be discussed in a marketing meeting?
A marketing meeting should cover key performance indicators, campaign and project updates, lessons learned, upcoming priorities, and any help or feedback team members need. The goal is to leave with clear next steps, owners, and timelines.
How often should you hold a marketing team meeting?
Most teams benefit from a weekly meeting for priorities and blockers, a monthly meeting for deeper KPI and campaign review, and a quarterly meeting for strategy. The right cadence depends on team size, pace of work, and how much cross-functional alignment is needed.
Who should be invited to a marketing meeting?
Invite the people who own the metrics, projects, or decisions being discussed, and avoid adding attendees who only need a recap afterward. For larger teams, use separate meetings for full-team alignment and sub-team execution.
What is a marketing meeting?
A marketing meeting is a structured team meeting where marketers review goals, performance, active projects, and next steps so everyone stays aligned and accountable. It can be held weekly, monthly, or quarterly depending on the team¡¯s needs.
What are the 5 P¡¯s of meetings?
The 5 P¡¯s of meetings are commonly defined as purpose, participants, process, preparation, and payoff. In practice, they help leaders make sure every meeting has a clear goal, the right people, and a useful outcome.
What is a sales and marketing alignment meeting?
A sales and marketing alignment meeting is a recurring meeting where both teams review shared goals, lead quality, pipeline feedback, and campaign performance. It helps reduce handoff issues and keeps both teams focused on the same revenue outcomes.
Meetings Don¡¯t Have to Suck
Meetings are a necessary part of work. They¡¯re a time to celebrate wins, ask for feedback or help, and get aligned with the team and company.
Sit down with your colleagues to audit the team¡¯s meeting schedule to see what to trim or cut altogether. Effective and efficient meetings are much more important than meetings for the sake of it.
Editor¡¯s note: This post was originally published in July 2012 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø's Guide to Workplace Collaboration
Actionable advice AND customizable templates to enhance your teamwork skills and build stronger, more successful teams.
- Templates to create smarter meeting agendas
- Frameworks to help boost brainstorming
- Techniques and tips for working in different scenarios
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
Form not available
You're all set!
Click this link to access this resource at any time.
Meetings