Bringing our People First Value into Quarterly Goal Setting

We talk about values quite a bit on our website. The subject even has it's own page for reference! But how do values actually translate from words on a screen to a useful, guiding tool to make good decisions?

One example here at MKG: Quarterly Team Goals.

Each quarter we set and attempt to achieve a quarterly goal as a team. This is a measurable goal or objective that helps MKG continue to grow stronger as a team as well as become better service providers for our clients.

Some other context for having a quarterly theme includes:

1. Companies often focus only on financial goals -- e.g. Sales -- as the only goal communicated throughout the organization. While Sales activity is important (hey, nobody is working for gummy bears around here!) on it's own this singular focus falls short of the mark. People drive sales activity - both team members and clients - and we recognize that with our People First value :)
2. Our amazing Account Directors like to plot PPC and SEO activities on a quarterly basis. We've learned that if you plan too far in advance and the ground will shift beneath our feet and plans will need to be changed. Quarterly themes align with our laser focused client goals over the 90 day course of a fiscal quarter.
3. Gives MKGers a fun reason to celebrate every 90 days! With the agency growing so steadily in the past year (new team members and client requests/size) we want to create a cadence that celebrates the outcomes of our hard work on a regular basis.

In October 2018...

...Someone new joined the team and their timing coincided with a setting the Q4 2018 Quarterly Company Goal. Kerry and I thought about our values, the fact that they were new to the team and asked each other a question:

What's it like to start a new job?

My own initial responses were:

• It's scary walking into the 'unknown' - new colleagues, clients, processes. It's all unknown!
• Building on the point above: It's all new! There is no sense of order yet in your physical workspace, your schedule, etc. It's all new to you!

To live our People First value and assist Karl in getting up to speed faster (Velocity!!!) we decided to set the following goal in Q4 2018

Every team member must learn 3 and teach 3 things to Karl this quarter (6 total)

This was selected for a few reasons:

• Accelerates the speed of Karl learning client history, work styles of his colleagues and overall workflow process at MKG.
• Reminds us of our “People First” value and mentality.
• Shows the importance of making time to learn from one another.

In terms of the numeric goal:

1. There are 8 MKG folks in total (minus Karl who makes 9).
2. Each needs to learn 3 / teach 3 things (6).
3. 8 x 6 = 48 total learns/teaches this quarter

What happens if we hit our goal?

And of course there will need to be a celebration if we achieve this goal. So how will we celebrate if/when we hit 48 learns-and-teaches?

1. Virtual pizza party: Will have pizza delivered to office locations for a late lunch over Zoom where we can put some carbs down, talk as a group and celebrate reaching our goal.
2. Matinee Movie Tickets: After our late lunch, MKG will drop some movie passes in everyone's inboxes so we can take the late afternoon off to go enjoy a movie together with your colleagues in New Orleans, Portland Metro and Seattle Metro areas.

So...did we hit it?

As a group we had a total of Fifty (50!) Teaches-and-Learns between the beginning of October and the end of December.

Pizza party, here we come!

What did we learn from or teach to Karl?

Of the dozens of things that were learned from getting to know Karl, a handful of examples include:

LinkedIn Targeting! Karl showed me there's a lot of different filters including our favorite: target "first connections" from people at a certain company. Take "Client X" testimonial and target first connections of "Client X" to serve their connections relevant content.

How he got CPCs and CPA so low for "Client Z. Seriously, amazing numbers...and sure, there's good intent there. But it worked SO WELL because of his bid strategy. Maximize clicks is a bid strategy I steer clear of because of potential for Google to abuse it...since you are relinquishing your control over individual keyword bids. But man, with a super high QUALITY SCORE and user intent...you can really, really kill it.

A GREAT display strategy for remarketing - use an image for conquesting THEN reuse the image

On the flipside: the team taught Karl two dozen very specific things about our clients, MKG process and overall workflow.

A few examples include:

Asana! Gave a deep dive into how Asana is setup and the processes we work with so he can hopefully find his own level of comfort in how much he wants to interact with Asana vs go through the Account Directors.

I taught Karl about Smart Display. Specifically, you cannot define by device (so 95% goes to mobile) and that you cannot update ad schedules (so it'll run 24/7).

About Facebook Ads; optimizing for CONVERSIONS and not for CLICKS. Lots of garbage traffic via clicks. Always get a pixel firing and always optimize for conversions for exponentially better quality traffic.

We use our values everyday

As we mentioned before, our values assist in making important decisions and guide the day-to-day life here at MKG.

If you're curious about working at MKG, mozy on over to our Jobs boards to see what roles we're looking to add to the team in the future.

Here's a direct link to the jobs boards: Jobs