The Secrets to Streamlining Marketing Workflows

Marketing in today's fast-paced world involves complex workflows, multiple stakeholders, and the need for speed. To keep up with the constantly evolving landscape, businesses need to adopt agile and effective strategies. Here are five secrets revealed by the most successful marketing teams on how they simplify, standardize, and collaborate to deliver better work more efficiently.

1. North Star Alignment is Key

The most effective marketing organizations have one thing in common - crystal clear strategic alignment. This includes alignment on goals, priorities, roles, and responsibilities. Each team member understands their role and how it contributes to the overall vision. Without this alignment, the rest of the secrets won't be effective. Conduct a survey to assess your team's alignment and focus on areas that need improvement.

At the project level, these organizations have visibility into planned and active workload, project status, and overall team capacity. This allows them to stay on track and prevent any potential issues. To achieve this level of alignment, consider using a project management system like Workfront, Asana, Trello, or Monday.com. If you already have a system in place but are not seeing the desired collaboration and outcomes, it may be time to reassess your configuration or provide additional training.

2. 'Right-Communication' is Key

Effective marketing teams follow clear and consistent communication protocols, even in the busiest of times. This includes communication within the project management tool, appropriate communication channels outside the tool (e.g. chat, Slack, Teams, email), established response time norms, and consistent agendas for recurring meetings. They also record meetings and document outcomes in a central location, utilizing tools like Otter.ai for automatic transcription summaries. With a 'right-communication' strategy in place, there's no need for over-communication, which can slow down the pace of work.

3. A Good Governance Model = Freedom and Speed

The marketing ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex, with multiple stakeholders, global teams, and external partners. The most successful marketing organizations have found a balance between rigid decision-making processes and the ability to move at the speed of business. They use a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) or RASCI (Responsible, Accountable, Supporting, Consulted, Informed) model to identify roles and responsibilities for each step in their workflows. Alongside this, they also have a clear system for decision-making delegation and exception/escalation processes. If your team doesn't have a RACI or RASCI in place, work with senior marketing leaders and key partners to create one. Remember to adjust and revisit the model as needed.

4. Embrace Automation

The most successful marketing teams have a 'slacker mindset,' meaning they try to delegate as many tasks as possible to automation. This frees up time for more strategic and innovative work. From automating email campaigns to scheduling social media posts, there are many tools available such as Zapier, Hootsuite, HubSpot, and Workfront to help with routine tasks and streamline workflows. Start small and gradually build up your automation muscle to see significant productivity gains.

5. Partner Up

Outsourcing is a common strategy used by successful marketing teams to maintain efficient workflows throughout the year. It allows them to focus on their core strengths and reduce internal workload. However, this requires a clear and intentional strategy, not just randomly delegating tasks to available partners. Identify specific tasks or competencies that can be delegated to external experts, and vet them thoroughly before bringing them on board. Start with smaller projects and gradually move on to more complex ones, providing clear direction, frequent check-ins, and feedback to ensure success.

Streamlining marketing workflows is an ongoing process, and the destination is always a moving target. But by implementing these strategies for alignment, communication, governance, automation, and partnerships, businesses can operate more efficiently and increase their impact on the market. And don't be surprised if you see improved employee engagement as a result.

Originally reported by Martech: https://martech.org/5-secrets-of-streamlining-marketing-workflows/
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