My primary responsibility at Hanapin Marketing is leading a team of account managers and production staff. Building and molding a strong paid search team is the most important and challenging aspect of my role as an associate director.
Today, I’m going to share five tips that have helped me to build successful paid search teams — the kind that overdeliver against expectations and provide enormous value to clients and stakeholders.
Tip #1: It’s not about you; it’s about the team
Being an effective leader means understanding that it’s no longer about your individual contributions, but rather the performance of the team you lead. I lead a fairly large account that has from one to three people working on it at any given time. The greatest performance improvements have resulted from work done by my subordinates.
Once my subordinates were trained, I gave them ownership of individual areas of the account. The team has the freedom to test new ideas and innovate without having to wait for direct sign-off from me. It was made very clear from the beginning (once their trust was earned) that they could do whatever was necessary to grow the account but were held accountable for results.
Giving an opportunity to contribute to the success of a high-profile account pushed the team to expand their skill sets and to make bold, yet defensible decisions.
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