It's reported that between 5 to 7 per cent of the workforce are affected by burnout due to changes in the work environment. 2022 has been a challenging year off the back of two exception years. Currently not a day goes by where I do not hear a colleague, teacher, client or friend refer to their fatigue. The burnout is real, and it does not seem to discriminate across gender, age, industry or occupation.
According to an ABC article on burnout, three experts identify several changes in the way we work that may be increasing burnout - shrinking job stability, mounting workloads, fewer resources to tackle that workload, an erosion of work-life balance, and so on.
In our previous blog How to avoid burnout in a creative ad agency we provided an overview of burnout and what the individual and ad agency can do to combat the problem. This week we want to expand upon the point of marketing resource management software and how it can help creative teams feel more in control of their projects and workloads. We created admation with many inbuilt features to do exactly that.
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In today's marketing landscape, staying organized and efficient is essential for success. Many teams are turning to marketing approval and project management software to streamline their processes and enhance collaboration. However, implementing such software requires careful consideration and readiness from your team. How do you know if your team is ready? What signs should you look for? Where do you start the process?
In this blog post, we will explore the signs that indicate your team is ready for marketing approval and project management software. By identifying these signs, you can ensure a smooth transition and maximize the benefits of these powerful tools. Additionally, we'll provide some questions to help you determine if your team would benefit from such software and guide you towards the next steps in your software assessment journey.
Overwhelmed with Manual Processes
If your team is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets, emails, and manual approval processes, it's a clear sign that you're ready for a more efficient solution. Ask yourself: Are your team members spending too much time on administrative tasks instead of focusing on strategic initiatives? Do you struggle to keep track of project timelines and deadlines? Marketing approval and project management software can automate repetitive tasks, track progress, and provide a centralized platform for seamless collaboration. By eliminating manual processes, your team can regain valuable time and energy to drive creativity and innovation.
Questions to Ask:
Are team members spending a significant amount of time on administrative tasks?
Do you struggle to keep track of project timelines and deadlines?
Are you using spreadsheets and emails for project management and approval processes?
Lack of Visibility and Accountability
When it becomes challenging to track project statuses, assign tasks, and hold team members accountable, it's time to consider implementing software that offers comprehensive visibility. Ask yourself: Are you constantly chasing updates and struggling to get a clear picture of project progress? Do you find it difficult to allocate tasks and resources effectively? Marketing approval and project management software provide real-time updates, task assignments, and deadlines, allowing everyone to stay on top of their responsibilities. Enhanced visibility fosters collaboration, reduces miscommunication, and improves overall project efficiency. By empowering your team with a centralized platform, you can enhance accountability and ensure everyone is aligned towards common goals.
Questions to Ask:
Do you often find it challenging to track project progress and get updates?
Do you struggle to allocate tasks and resources effectively?
Are you experiencing difficulties in holding team members accountable for their responsibilities?
Compliance Challenges
Ensuring marketing compliance is a top priority for many organizations, especially those in regulated industries. Ask yourself: Do you often face challenges in adhering to regulatory requirements and brand guidelines? Are you worried about potential compliance risks? Marketing approval software can be a game-changer. Ask yourself: Do you struggle to maintain version control of marketing assets? Do you need to create audit trails for approvals? Such software enables you to create approval workflows, manage version control, and maintain a centralized repository for marketing assets. By streamlining compliance processes, you can mitigate risks and protect your brand's reputation.
Questions to Ask:
Are you facing difficulties in adhering to regulatory requirements and brand guidelines?
Do you struggle with version control of marketing assets?
Are you concerned about maintaining audit trails for approvals?
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Lack of Collaboration and Communication
Successful marketing campaigns rely on effective collaboration and communication between team members, departments, and external stakeholders. Ask yourself: Are you facing difficulties in sharing feedback, coordinating tasks, or integrating communication channels? Do you experience misalignment or duplicated efforts? If so, it's a sign that you're ready for project management software. These tools offer features like shared calendars, document sharing, and integrated communication channels to enhance collaboration and streamline communication. By providing a central hub for discussions, file sharing, and updates, project management software enables seamless collaboration, improving team cohesion and driving better project outcomes.
Questions to Ask:
Do you face challenges in sharing feedback and coordinating tasks among team members?
Are you experiencing misalignment or duplicated efforts in your marketing projects?
Are your communication channels fragmented and not integrated?
Scaling and Growing Pains
As your marketing team grows and takes on more projects, manual processes and spreadsheets become increasingly inefficient. Ask yourself: Are you struggling to manage multiple projects simultaneously? Do you experience bottlenecks in approvals and delays? If your team's productivity is hindered due to scaling challenges, marketing approval software can provide the scalability you need. These tools offer project management functionalities, including task dependencies, resource allocation, and progress tracking, ensuring smooth operations even as your team expands. By automating workflows and providing a clear overview of project timelines and resource allocation, project management software enables your team to handle increased workloads efficiently and deliver high-quality results.
Questions to Ask:
Are you finding it challenging to manage multiple projects simultaneously?
Do you encounter bottlenecks in approvals and experience project delays?
Is your team struggling to handle increased workloads effectively?
Identifying the signs that your team is ready for marketing approval and project management software is crucial for optimizing your marketing operations. By asking yourself key questions related to manual processes, visibility, compliance, collaboration, and scaling challenges, you can assess your team's readiness and evaluate the potential benefits of such software. To take the next step, we invite you to embark on a software self-assessment journey. This will help you delve deeper into your team's specific needs and provide valuable insights to guide you in selecting the right marketing approval and project management software solution. Streamline your processes, enhance collaboration, and unlock your team's full potential with the power of technology. Download our Self Assessment Checklist to get the process started!
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Read more While it is commonly assumed that project management software is only essential for large agencies serving multiple clients, the reality is that even in-house agencies encounter similar challenges that can impede their success. Effectively managing creative projects is crucial regardless of an agency's size. In fact, small agencies often face resource constraints and heavy workloads, resulting in overworked creative teams.
Without the right tools in place, it becomes challenging to keep track of all the projects, leading to missed deadlines, dissatisfied clients, and unhappy employees. This is where agency or marketing project management software becomes an indispensable asset, ensuring that projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the utmost satisfaction of clients and stakeholders.
Let's take a look how in-house creative agencies can benefit from adopting agency project management or marketing project management software across their team.
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Marketing compliance is a critical aspect of any business that engages in marketing activities. However, it can get overwhelming for marketing teams to keep up with the ever-evolving regulatory changes, particularly in tightly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and legal. To avoid the risks of non-compliance, it's crucial for marketing teams to be aware of the common challenges they may face and know how to tackle them effectively. In this article, we'll discuss seven issues that marketers may encounter and offer solutions to overcome them.
Issue #1: Inadequate Planning for Legal Requirements
You may have planned an exciting social media competition that's about to go live in a few days. However, during the approval process, the legal team alerts you to the fact that you need to apply for trade promotional permits in specific states. This situation can be frustrating, and your competition may have to be postponed while you sort out the legal requirements.
Solution: To avoid such situations, involve your legal or compliance team in the planning stage of your marketing campaigns. They can provide advice on any legal requirements that need to be fulfilled for the project to be compliant. This approach will help you to build legal requirements into the project's scope and prevent any last-minute issues that could derail the campaign.
Issue #2: Inefficient Marketing Approval Process
An inefficient marketing approval process can cause headaches for marketers and lead to non-compliance issues. When critical stakeholders like legal or compliance are left out of the approval process, last-minute changes may be necessary when errors are discovered. This scenario can also result in non-compliant materials going live to the market, posing a risk to your business.
Solution: To streamline your marketing approval process, create a documented approval framework that ensures artwork is reviewed by the right stakeholders at the right time. This approach will reduce errors, avoid non-compliance issues, and eliminate bottlenecks that lead to excessive artwork changes.
Issue #3: Lack of Compliance Training and Documentation
When new marketing team members join your team, they may lack sufficient compliance training and documentation. Without updated protocols, they may be at risk of non-compliance, and current staff may have no reference materials to consult when in doubt.
Solution: Document your marketing compliance protocols and keep them updated as regulations change. Understand what you need to do to meet marketing compliance requirements. Schedule regular compliance meetings to discuss any issues your team may be encountering. Ensure that marketing compliance is part of the induction process for new marketing team members.
Issue #4: Poor Project Management and Tracking
Managing multiple marketing projects simultaneously can be challenging, and it's easy to lose track of who is working on what. A lack of visibility over your projects and approvals can lead to chaos and compliance risks.
Solution: Use marketing project management or marketing approval workflow software to manage your projects effectively. The software creates an automatic audit trail of work, which helps you track and monitor tasks and resources. Software with a strong focus on marketing compliance should incorporate a range of compliance features to help manage the needs of different stakeholders including checklists, tiered approvals, approval checklists, audit trails and many more.
Issue #5: Neglecting Compliance Protocols
When marketers are busy with multiple tasks, it's easy to neglect marketing compliance protocols. However, this negligence can lead to mistakes, such as using old assets and legal terms in artwork that's up for review. Such mistakes can put your business at risk of non-compliance.
Solution: Schedule regular compliance meetings to keep yourself and your team up to date with current compliance regulations. Use resources such as consumer regulatory bodies to stay informed of any changes that could affect your brand. Global marketers also need to be aware of regional regulations outside of their local sphere.
Read more For a moment, think about everything that goes into a creative project, from receiving the brief from the client to brainstorming ideas, creating content artwork, reviews, approvals, and more. Sure, for one or two projects, managing these effectively wouldn't be too challenging.
Now, multiply the number of projects by 10, 20, or even 30, and, suddenly, managing your projects becomes much more complicated. So, it's a good idea to optimise your creative workflow for it to be as efficient as possible, which will not only enable you to complete projects faster but also allow you to be more productive.
But how should you do this? Fortunately, we're here to help, and in this post, we'll show you some tips you can use to design and optimise your creative workflow.
Read more As the marketing industry grows increasingly fast-paced, with the expectation of producing more content and campaigns across a growing number of channels, burnout is becoming more common, and many marketers are considering leaving the industry, as reported by Forbes.
In light of this, it's clear that adopting the best tools, processes, and culture to support marketing and creative teams is essential. Businesses still relying on outdated systems such as email and spreadsheets, and managing projects without dedicated creative project management tools, need to consider the negative impact these inadequate tools can have.
To improve efficiency and better support your most valuable assets, your people, it's worth exploring more advanced, collaborative tools.
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