It’s great to be part of a creative team that’s excited about a new project. Ideas are popping, collaboration is flowing and workers are focused and engaged on the task ahead. And when that project utilizes an array of assets and contributions from various sources, it’s bound to become something rich and engaging.
But when there are so many pieces to the puzzle, things can get a little tricky. Keeping large amounts of media assets and products organized while also tracking productivity so that everyone involved stays updated is tough when there’s no unified system.
Almost three-quarters (72%) of marketing and creative stakeholders report wasting five or more hours a week switching between tools to complete tasks, with an average of 7.3 hours lost per week, according to research by Smartsheet.
On top of that, 83% of marketers and creatives feel pressured to demonstrate the business impact of their work, and 60% note the tension has increased in the past year. But sadly, industry professionals lack recognition for their contribution: Only 51% say that their marketing team is viewed as a strategic partner by their organization. Part of the issue is that campaign strategies are constantly shifting. Almost all marketers (95%) attribute their difficulties in demonstrating impact to changes in company strategy.
Proving impact is hard, but 87% of marketers believe better tech tools would help them work more efficiently, with project management tools and AI being top priorities. Fortunately, the tools exist to help marketers overcome these hurdles.
A cohesive work process to bring people together
Global education publisher McGraw Hill was looking to solve a variety of pain points. The company was handling hundreds of thousands of media assets, and it needed to track these in one place so projects could stay up-to-date and organized. Contributors also needed to see work progress without the tedium of searching multiple spreadsheets and emails. And creatives were too often interrupted with requests to give updates on where a given project stood or handle administrative tasks.
McGraw Hill’s leadership took into account the various ways workers approach their projects, stayed open to feedback and iterations, automated time-consuming processes and made sure everyone had information about what next steps should be. Smartsheet Senior Solution Specialist Tygre Hamilton, who was previously a design operations lead at McGraw Hill, used Smartsheet to create a system that implemented project and role-specific dashboards. The new system also featured processes similar to the ones the team was already using, so it wasn’t such a shock to anyone involved.
Internal and external partners had a consistent way of knowing what work needed to be done, where to find their work, and managers could instantly see what the teams were working on, which eliminated monthly media counts and projections. By streamlining its creative process, McGraw Hill was able to triple productivity.
Leave room in your strategy to be flexible when problems arise
Marketing and creative teams can find it challenging to prove to management that a new process will work for the entire organization. So it’s important to be empathetic to any hesitancy, whether from the team itself or management, and let them know that you’re just showing them a way to do what they’re already doing but more effectively.
There’s bound to be pushback when people are used to doing things the same way. But when stakeholders know their feedback and suggested iterations are welcome, they’re more likely to take a chance and commit to trying things out.
And when all teams have the same dashboards for every project, there’s no question where to find things, who to contact for questions or what work needs to be done. Creatives can do their work faster and deliver it faster, which means teams can get ahead of their timelines and get a head start on their campaigns.
And by creating transparency and accessibility, creatives can focus on what they do best: being creative. Leadership can see whether a campaign is on target with its budget, for example, so the creative operations person doesn’t have to leave the creative side of their brain and quickly put together a performance report.
The right tech helps the creative teams’ focus remain on goals
Standardized processes and visibility are crucial, and visibility into project and campaign data is key to enabling better decision-making and demonstrating impact. All too often, teams have limited time for creative work because they’re handling time-consuming administrative tasks and project tracking, as well as attending meetings and fielding an onslaught of emails, direct messages and other correspondence.
With the right tools, creative teams can spend more time thinking about the content instead of constantly checking status updates, handling pesky tasks and ultimately getting frustrated. By implementing a centralized tool and a streamlined workflow, marketers and creatives can do their jobs faster and better. This means happier teams with higher production levels and more compelling creative output.
