Marketing teams these days are expected to do more with less resources, whilst also generating better results. If you’re reading this you can probably relate. You have to keep on top of trends, industry changes, optimize budgets to your best ability and enjoy your job in the name of balance. All while launching bigger and better campaigns to keep your audience engaged and drive results.
Technology can help you out with these things, but many aren’t using it to its full potential. A lot of marketers also feel like the addition of new technologies can sometimes mean more and longer processes, taking up even more of their time. And with added pressure to prove the value of your work, optimizing marketing processes is essential.
Whether you’re a marketing leader looking to make your team and senior management happier (so you can get more budget for next year, we see you) or are a marketer looking to work smarter, not harder, then we’ve got you covered.
In this blog, we’ll focus on how you can change these marketing processes to improve your results, focusing on: planning, collaboration, automation and technology. Let’s get into it.
1. Review Your Existing Marketing Process
If you’re looking to optimize your processes, you probably already know some areas that can be improved. Start by looking at the processes each team member does in their daily role.
Ask yourself questions such as:
- What does each team member do everyday to complete a task within their role?
- Do they use templates to speed up repetitive tasks or start from scratch every time?
- How long do these tasks take? Can that time be reduced?
- Does this need to be done manually? Or can it be automated in some way?
- Do teams work in silos? Do they have all the data and insights needed to do their job?
- Do they have the right technology to assist them?
- Are there any bottlenecks? Am I the bottleneck?
- How effective are relationships with agency partnerships? Can this be improved?
- How can collaboration be improved?
- What can I lear from a digital marketing audit?
Once you’ve completed this analysis, prioritize the biggest issues and quick wins. For example, investing in marketing technology that helps you automate tasks, improve efficiency and reduces the number of processes, might fix a number of your biggest issues at once. If one team member uses templates to complete a task and another could benefit from the same template, then asking them to share it is an example of a quick win.
2. Implement Asynchronous Communication in Your Marketing Team
Communication is key when it comes to marketing. But, sometimes being too available can cause issues and disrupt focused work. Asynchronous communication is setting boundaries with your colleagues and changing the expectation that everyone must be available all the time. Asynchronous communication allows employees to take control of their working day. Especially when working remotely.
Marketing tasks like creating detailed media plans, budgeting for the next quarter, copywriting or designing ad assets, often require deep focus. Pressure to respond to emails or Slack messages interrupts that focus and reduces productivity. Research has shown that once interrupted, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus. Let that sink in. Each time every team member is interrupted, it’s a big deal!
Some teams set specific times where they respond to messages, which can be helpful for managing expectations with colleagues. Maybe you can allocate time at the end of each day to respond to messages. By doing the same task at once, recovery time for each email is reduced and you have more time to produce quality work.
There are of course times where synchronous communication is more helpful. For example when brainstorming campaign ideas it makes more sense to do this in real-time. But, it’s all about working out what works best for your team. By switching to this communication style, your team concentrates on results and outcomes, rather than hours invested. Meaning processes are reduced and work completed faster.
Emailing and messaging back and forth, chasing for approval or attaching the latest creative assets, can be so time consuming and add unnecessary processes to your workflow. Instead, create briefs, request approval and collaborate on plans directly in one place, with Mediatool.
3. Adopt an Agile Marketing Process
Agile marketing is where teams work in sprints to complete projects, measuring results and iterating the work along the way. This works especially well for one-off projects but can also be beneficial for ongoing campaigns to ensure work is done efficiently and to a higher standard.
Agile marketing is proven to improve teamwork and collaboration, along with performance. Teams usually work in 2-3 week sprints and tasks are split into stages within each sprint. Some ways in which agile marketing reduces processes and improves results are:
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Stand Up Meetings
Usually fifteen minutes long, these are meetings that can be daily or every other day to discuss the progress of the project. Everyone involved explains what they’ve completed so far, including any barriers they need to overcome. The team then fixes issues along the way, instead of identifying and trying to do so at the end once the campaign is live.
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Increased Collaboration
While individuals may complete their work alone, working in sprints means everyone is on the same page. Regular stand ups and constant iteration increases collaboration and clear communication between colleagues, and the project’s success is the responsibility of everyone involved.
4. Equip Your Team With the Right Marketing Technology
Investing in technology that can automate tasks and improve your workflows, can save you hours on your marketing processes. While it may seem like a big investment at first, the payoffs could be huge. And in this day and age honestly you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not allocating some budget to improving campaign results, whilst improving the day-to-day for your team.
For example, in Mediatool you can create briefs, templates and plans that everyone can access. Everyone works from the same plan inside one platform. Meaning everyone is on the same page, information is clear and communication is concise. Sharing documents, messaging and asking for approval is so much easier. For you and for them.
Investing in a new technology platform doesn’t stop there. You have to actually use it to its full potential to gain positive results. And you need to be a role model to your team to use it properly, otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time and not to mention your budget.
5. Constantly Review Results and Adapt Accordingly
The fact that you’re reading this tells us you’re an innovative marketer who is keen to spark change in your organization. In the same way that you should regularly review your marketing data and campaign performance, do the same with your workflow.
By placing as much emphasis on the processes behind the work, as you would your data, your results will increase higher and faster than ever before. In your campaigns if you try something and it doesn’t work, you iterate, test and change. If you try to change up your marketing operations and results haven’t improved, review them and make tweaks until they do.
When you focus your attention and resources on the how of your marketing strategy, you’ll find you reach your goals sooner.
