As society has struggled to cope with the COVID pandemic, the past year has brought big changes to the way people live and work around the world. For several reasons, these changes have had a particularly big impact on marketers, reinforcing the need for marketing work management tools that help them navigate more complex workflows.
But deciding whether your business needs a marketing work management platform requires the same steps involved in any software adoption, including a thorough self-assessment of your organization’s business needs and resources, staff , management support and financial resources.
Use the following questions to help you assess your organization’s needs and readiness for this type of tool:
Explore features from vendors like Adobe Workfront, Wrike, Airtable, Smartsheet, and more in full MarTech Intelligence Report on marketing work management platforms.
In some cases, it might be worth changing your workflow to take advantage of a tool, but in others, the need for that change might create more problems than it solves. Ideally, you want to find a tool that can be easily adapted to the way your employees are used to performing their tasks. It will also allow staff members to learn the tool faster, as their familiarity with the process will make the tool more intuitive.
The people who perform the functions within an organization will usually have their own ways of working to achieve their goals. Some may use the Pomodoro Method to maximize productivity, while others may subscribe to the GTD (Get Things Done) philosophy. Knowing how your employees work best will help you determine the best tool to adopt.
Marketing work management tools can serve as the foundation for a company’s operations, and some goals – cross-departmental coordination, for example – are more easily achieved if a tool has executive support and company-wide adoption. the company.
Many companies have strong commitments to existing tools like an office suite (Google Workspace or Microsoft Office), a CRM or a creative publishing platform. Which integrations are must-haves and which are nice to have?
If you find a tool that works well for you but doesn’t have the out-of-the-box integration you need, can you devote the development resources to creating a connection?
It is essential to train all employees who will use the platform, ensuring that they are trained in the tool itself as well as what is expected of them when assigning or are assigned a task. If you use the tool to engage with outside entities – customers, contractors, etc. – you will also need to familiarize them with the platform.
If you justify investing in a tool by how well it achieves the desired results, make sure you have ways to compare before and after so you know if you’re getting a good return on investment. For example, do you have fewer problems in producing deliverables? Do customers ask fewer questions about the status of a campaign because they can get the information themselves through the tool?
Simply licensing a marketing work management platform won’t instantly organize your operations. It takes time to customize a tool to your needs, for employees to be trained and familiar with the platform, and for projects to get off the ground.
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Managing Marketing Work: A Snapshot
What it is: Marketing work management platforms help marketers and their teams structure their daily work to achieve their goals on time and within budget, while managing resources and facilitating communication and collaboration. Functions can include task assignments, time tracking, budgeting, team communication, and file sharing, among others.
Why it matters today. Work environments have changed dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has increased the need for work management tools that help marketers navigate these new workflows.
Marketers have worked to develop processes that allow them to work with people outside of their own offices, as marketing projects (campaigns, websites, white papers or webinars) often involve working with outside sources .
Additionally, with marketers having to design interfaces, write content, and create engaging visual assets, more and more marketers are adopting agile workflow practices, which often have features to support practices. agile.
What the tools do. All of these changes have increased the need for marketing work management software, which optimizes and documents the projects undertaken by digital marketers. They often integrate with other systems such as digital asset management platforms and creative suites. Most importantly, these systems improve process clarity, transparency, and accountability, helping marketers keep work on track.
Read next: What is marketing work management and how do these platforms support agile marketing
About the Author
Pamela Parker is Research Director at Third Door Media’s Content Studio, where she produces MarTech Intelligence reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land and MarTech. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she held the positions of Content Manager, Editor-in-Chief, and Feature Editor. Parker is a respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its inception. She is a former editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
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