Marketing teams have a lot to do each day. There are many factors that go into a successful marketing plan for any business, and a marketing team has a lot of data to run, changes to make to campaigns, and other considerations to attend to every day.
It can be tough to keep up with all of the necessary tasks to manage just a single client, so marketing teams often come up with improved workflow solutions that are needed to create the best overall workflow for their unique needs. Staying on top of all of the moving parts of multiple marketing campaigns can be stressful as well as fatiguing if these processes are not managed correctly.
If you want to learn more about the right ways to organize your marketing team’s workflow, read on for more information!
What Are the Problems That Happen When You Lack a Workflow Plan?
If your team is not organized, there are many pitfalls that could cause damage to your timelines as well as your overall management of each client’s unique needs. There are only so many hours in a day, and you need to be sure that you are maximizing your time during each one of those hours.
The main struggles that occur due to a lack of organization are disjointed and disorganized workflows that lead to duplicated work, missed work and missed deadlines.
At the end of the day, you want to be sure that your team knows who is working on what and that all of the deadlines and details for each project and task are clear and assigned to the right people. There is no trade for good organization when working with a large team who are busy with a variety of tasks each day.
Tips On How To Organize Your Marketing Team’s Workflow Better
There are some really great ways to organize your team’s workflow to work better and you will be glad that you took the time to fix up your processes when you see the results of your efforts! There is no exchange for taking the time to make sure that things run smoothly on a day-to-day basis and your clients will thank you for your hard work on their behalf.
1. Organize Your Content Strategy
This can be a major stumbling block to do with the process of generating content. There can be a lot of duplicated work if no one is sure that the final determination was regarding the content that needs to be built for each unique client. There can be shifts and changes over time to the focus for client content, and these additions need to be made clear to your team through a shared access arrangement.
You can use many different applications to make sure that people are clear about the content that is being used for each client’s goals and their posts and ads, but things like Google Sheets and management software like Asana make these processes easy in most cases.
You will need to be sure that everyone on your team knows what to look for and where to find it. This will prevent poorly targeted content from being posted as well as preventing people from working on the same tasks at the same time as one another.
Content determinations can change based on many factors, so making sure that your team can access the most up-to-date information about the kinds of content that is being generated is important to make sure that your team meets deadlines and generates results for your clients.
2. Log All Results
If one person runs test emails or tests ad campaigns for your marketing strategies, you might find that not everyone is on the same page about the end results of the data that was collected from these tests. You will need to track this information in the same manner that you track other client details. You do not want to have a single person as the source of truth for this kind of information.
Making sure that your test results are logged and tracked effectively can help to make sure that everyone knows which improvements need to be made to ad copy for future work that is done on the client’s behalf. It can be easy to run test emails or test ads and not input the data in a shared location, but you want to avoid this at all costs. This is typically done by using apps like google tag manager and inserting the code given by the tracking software in each page for your website.
This kind of sharing technique becomes particularly relevant when you lose an employee who leaves the company, or when someone is on vacation and cannot be tapped for information. Just like everything else that needs to be tracked for the sake of clarity, you need to be sure that test results are shared with everyone on the team, not just a few people.
3. Use Software For Your Project Management Workflow Process
Applications like Slack, Teams, and Asana can greatly improve your team’s communication processes. You will find that a team that has easy access to means of communication will work together much better than teams that are not able to chat without email. Being able to send off a message in real-time to a teammate can generate faster responses as well as improved project results.
Management software can allow you to organize and share information as well as remind everyone of deadlines, dates, and other important highlights that need to be tracked. There is never any need to lose track of information or timelines when you are working with the right software for your needs. There are so many applications that offer this functionality these days that there is really no excuse not to be leveraging this technology for the betterment of every process your team works on.
You can do some research to see which products on the market will meet your needs and then when you have isolated a few that seem to offer the best coverage for your unique needs, talk with your team about them. You might get some insider information from team members who have used these products in the past, and this information can help you to find the right management software for your team’s workflows.
You might need to give the implementation process a couple of weeks, but all of these tools offer easy-to-use functionality as well as very user-friendly interfaces that will not require a huge learning curve. Everyone will be able to jump right in and use these products with ease and your team will thank you for the assistance in tracking project dates, timelines, and changes to the keyword or SEO needs of each client.
4. Have Oversight
When you are in the trenches and working hard on your own personally assigned tasks, it can be hard to look at the big picture. There are so many things that are going on during any given day when you are managing a large amount of work and unique projects that it can be tough to take a step back and look at the big picture.
While it might seem like this would be detrimental to communication, you always need to have at least one person in charge of looking at the big picture. This project manager role needs to be given to someone with the experience and patience to handle a lot of questions as well as daily command decisions to do with account management. You will need this person to look at the bigger picture so that everyone else can work on their own tasks without being concerned about tracking all of the bigger details of each project.
A project manager can assign work, make sure that deadlines are being kept, and interface with clients as needed. This can be a very rewarding role for someone who loves to organize information and help teams to work efficiently. You will find that assigning a project manager will improve every aspect of your workflow and keep everyone on task and happy as they work through their assigned tasks each day.
5. Schedule Review Meetings
Without meetings, it can be hard to get everyone on the same page. Review meetings are a great way to make sure that everyone knows what is going on with each job that is being handled by your team. Whether you work on the project in question or not, having an idea of what is going on with it can help you make sure that you can fill in when someone is sick or leaves the company.
Being able to meet and talk about reviews can also allow your teams to discuss pain points and potential issues with client accounts and deadlines. You want to be sure that your teams know that they can vent, ask for help, and reach out to the rest of the people who work with them as needed. Meetings need to be kept short and succinct, but these kinds of review processes can help get visibility on tasks that are taking too long for one person to work on them, or projects that need some attention.
Review meetings can also make sure that your whole company knows what has been going on with the larger goals of the company and any management changes or other important alterations that have taken place in your workflow routines. Meetings should not dominate your days at work, but you will need to have a certain amount of time that is devoted to them each week to make sure that everyone is in the loop.
Frequently Asked Questions?
What if my team is very small?
While you might not need to use as many of the oversight tools or management tools that are mentioned in this article for a small team, you should still consider which areas of your workflow can be improved. There is almost always room for improvement and efficiencies should not be neglected just because the team is small.
What do I do if my marketing workflow is performing poorly?
You can always adjust your processes if they are not working! The right marketing workflow can be different for each company and each group of workers, and you should not lock yourself into management styles or organization styles that are not generating results for your teams.
How do I change the workflow of my teams and projects?
If you are not sure how to alter the workflows that your teams are currently using, break down the needs of each team into bullet points. Have your teams indicate which bullet points are the most important to them and which ones are pain points for them. Start tackling your workflow changes from the pain points and then work your way out from there.
Do I need to hire a project manager?
You might not elect to hire a project manager to help your teams organize their workdays, but someone will still need to check in on the bigger picture a few times a day at least. This might be you, or maybe you will assign a senior team member to take on this task. Without a higher-level look at your overall strategies, you will likely run into many issues to do with timelines and forgotten work. This should be avoided at all costs through the use of oversight.
Using a Marketing Workflow Management to Improve Your Processes
There is no exchange for organizing your workflow into effective patterns that make sure that everyone on your team is on the same page. You will never be able to hold all of the information for your work processes in your head, and you should not expect your teams to remember everything either. This is where using the right applications and workflow processes can help keep everyone on track without causing undue stress and panic all the time.
Make sure that you use the right workflows and applications to help your team stay on point, and you will find that your teams have never been more productive!
