One of the most important things to remember about marketing systems and tools is that they’re not magic. They work best when used as part of your overall strategy and process, rather than replacing it with tools! It’s easy for me (or anyone) get excited by shiny new objects; but we must always keep in mind what makes them effective: how do these various platforms fit into the overall picture?
On the other hand, people are hesitant to talk about systems and processes because they’re seen as boring, dry material. With these two divergent pieces to the same puzzle, what is a marketer supposed to do?
Documenting and Publishing Marketing Systems
Congratulations! By reading this paragraph, you’ve already started the work. Documenting and publishing your processes is important because if you don’t, people will complain about transparency lacking from those in charge – they’ll have a point too ;). Marketing Systems to consider documenting include:
- Managing Events
- Writing internal contributor blog posts
- Collaborating on long-form content
- Determining “who does what” when it comes to approvals, including a DACI chart
Tools for Collaborative Project Management
Collaboration is a cornerstone of any successful project. The following tools can help you collaborate better across your team, and throughout the organization as well!
Google Calendar
A central calendar is the perfect solution for transparency. It can share information throughout the year, and give stakeholders an overview of what’s happening when it matters most! This could be done with Google calendars or similar tools
Freshdesk
A ticketing system such as Freshdesk ensures that your team is able to handle all of the marketing requests, or tickets, coming in. It also tracks how much time you spent on reactive issues last year, which can help give insight into how proactive initiatives can help in the year to come.
Asana
The next time you put together a project plan based on some of your internal processes, be sure to map it all out in Asana. When it’s time for stakeholders or admins on that particular task see what they need from the current status of each item, this will allow everyone involved with transparency into how things are going.
Slack
When collaborating on projects, stay in touch with your stakeholders through the use of Slack. This will allow you to get quick responses from your point-of contacts and remove any blockers that could be hindering approvals or similar matters. If each team member has a Slack connection with their points of contact, they can be
Final Words
I’ve seen a lot of marketing teams in the past few years. And I’ll be honest, one thing that has been really apparent to me is how many marketers are trying new things without giving much thought to what works and why it does – or doesn’t work. That’s not smart when you’re up against some tough competition for attention these days!
So here’s my advice on two pieces of your puzzle that will make your marketing more effective than ever:
1) Get organized by creating processes to help coordinate all those shiny objects, so they can actually do something useful
2) Focus on a few, important things to improve instead of spreading yourself too thin across everything under the sun.
Contact me today if you want help starting strong on solid ground with an effective marketing team – we can’t wait to hear from you!