Effective marketing, without question, is a collaborative effort. To be successful, your campaign must be a 360-degree strategy incorporating research, graphics, copy, user experience, analytics, and more. Because each of these functions requires a very different kind of brain, an effective marketing team generally has several people involved in any given project.
So if you’re a digital marketing project manager, it’s up to you to maintain steady and effective collaboration across your projects. How do you do it? We put together this guide for increasing collaboration between clients and your team of strategists and creatives.
Embrace the power of creative briefs
In case you don’t already know, a creative brief is a shareable document that defines the scope of a piece of work. Creative briefs are created by the customer (whether that’s a client or the agency) for the preparer of the work (whether that’s an agency or a freelancer) and can be used to define the project of a marketing campaign, piece(s) of copy, web design, promotional video, ad campaign, etc.
In general, a creative brief will include the objectives of the project, the target audience for the project, the tone, a deadline, and the given budget. It’s important that the digital marketing project manager invest time and consideration into the creative brief, because the more thorough it is, the more likely the project will come out as desired.
Stop groaning about meetings
In the 21st century, meetings are met with a certain level of skepticism. We anticipate they’ll waste our time, veer off course, or be rescheduled ad nauseum.
Unfortunately, as much as we dread them, meetings are essential to improving collaboration in marketing projects. If you are a digital marketing project manager, it’s up to you to create productive meetings that get stakeholders on the same page.
The best way to keep meetings on track is to set an agenda well in advance and send it to all relevant members beforehand. This gives them time to gather their thoughts, so they can best articulate them during the session. Be sure to exclude any non-relevant team members from meetings. Many professionals like to host standing meetings to add an extra level of energy to the collaboration session (and to keep it brief and efficient).
Work with a team collaboration software
As a digital marketing project manager, team collaboration software is your best friend. In fact, it does a lot of the coordinating for you. Look for a cloud-based software that allows you to create project boards that unite all relevant team members in one place.
Clarizen’s newest task management software, Planview AdaptiveWork Go, has these features and more. Planview AdaptiveWork Go is a user-friendly task management system that allows your team to deliver results in a more agile way. It gets team members on the same page with deadline and milestone tracking. You can create workflows and assignments within each board and check off tasks as they are completed. You’ll spend a lot less time worrying about team members “dropping the ball” over the course of the marketing project.
A marketing project is a multifaceted beast that requires many different players and many different parts. As a digital marketing project manager, it is an enormous task to keep track of all these moving pieces across multiple projects and multiple clients. Creative briefs, collaborative meetings, and team collaboration software will keep the cogs in the machine moving, so you can focus on bigger picture items, like long term strategy and landing that next big client.
If you’re interested in learning more about Planview AdaptiveWork’s team collaboration software, we’d be happy to set you up with a 30-day free trial. Get in touch to learn more!
