How to future-proof marketing operations to drive maximum impact

The marketing landscape is going through a seismic shift. Teams must keep up with rapid technological advancements, increasing consumer demands and the growing complexity of campaigns. Marketers need more content on smaller budgets, but must continue to be innovative, agile, creative and data-driven. Not only that, but they have to juggle various platforms while maintaining brand consistency and driving measurable impact. As the speed of change accelerates, it’s become clear that traditional approaches to marketing operations are no longer enough to keep pace. For marketing teams and creative operations across industries—from retail to finance to healthcare—the key to thriving lies in future-proofing their operations. This means not only adopting new tools but embracing agile and efficient processes that allow for seamless collaboration, smarter decision-making and scalable growth. However, businesses can’t grow if they’re bogged down in operational mires. Finding a balance between competing needs while moving with speed and accuracy is what hinders many companies trying to grow their brand. Unifying the modern marketing workflow Marketing has always been collaborative, but today’s operations are especially complex. Marketers are tasked with managing campaigns across multiple channels while coordinating with different teams for content creation, analytics, approvals and more. Not to mention across time zones—or oceans. The need for real-time responsiveness has never been greater, but when fragmented workflows and a host of disconnected tools are in play, marketing teams can lose time because of inefficiencies. Siloed data, misaligned goals and delayed approvals can disrupt progress, leading to missed opportunities and wasted resources. As companies grow and marketing teams expand, these issues often compound, leaving teams struggling to keep everything on track. To combat these pain points, companies must implement systems and processes that streamline workflows and foster cross-functional collaboration. Choosing a unified platform that brings all aspects of marketing operations together is the best answer to these challenges. Whether teams are managing content production, overseeing campaign timelines or analyzing performance metrics, having one program act as a central hub consolidates everything into one place. This centralization offers a single source of truth for marketing teams, giving everyone full visibility into the status of ongoing projects. This is especially helpful when an executive asks for a 30,000-foot view of a campaign’s performance. By tracking every task, approval and resource in real-time, decision-makers get a comprehensive view of the entire marketing process from start to finish. This transparency ensures that no detail is overlooked and that teams can respond to changes quickly and effectively. From recurring tasks to approval workflows, a good platform reduces the need for manual interventions, streamlining repetitive processes and freeing up time for strategic initiatives. Pre-built templates for marketing projects also help teams hit the ground running, ensuring consistency across campaigns without sacrificing creativity or agility. The necessity of real-time collaboration and scalability One of the biggest challenges marketing teams face is coordinating across departments, particularly when campaigns require input from everyone from creative to sales to finance. Different divisions have their preferred ways of communicating or platforms that help them keep track of deliverables. Alleviating these communication roadblocks with real-time collaboration allows team members across the organization to contribute to projects without the usual communication bottlenecks or platform rivalries. This is what Smartsheet has worked toward providing with its shared dashboards, comments and task assignments—a way for cross-functional teams to stay aligned and keep projects moving forward. As marketing operations grow in complexity, the tools needed to manage them should offer scalability so it can grow alongside a business, continually adapting to evolving needs and larger teams without sacrificing efficiency. Whether it’s a global campaign launch or a localized promotion, the platform should be able to handle projects of any size, providing the flexibility and control necessary for success. Streamline reporting and data-driven decision making Marketers need fast, reliable insights to measure success and optimize campaigns. They also need to make data-driven decisions. By using a project management platform like Smartsheet, centralizing team data makes it easier to access key metrics in real time while customizable dashboards allow teams to track critical KPIs such as campaign performance, budget allocation and resource management, ensuring that every decision is backed by data. This also allows for uniformity in reporting, another crucial piece of the performance puzzle. Real-time reporting allows marketing leaders to make informed, strategic decisions and adjust campaigns as needed, improving both efficiency and ROI. By reducing the need for manual data tracking and disparate spreadsheets, Smartsheet empowers teams to focus on driving impact rather than getting lost in the minutiae. For example, the platform allows Ogilvy to produce hundreds of assets a day for their thousands of clients and saves Webex 13 weeks per year by streamlining their processes. Or, consider a global retail brand planning a multi-channel holiday marketing campaign. The team was tasked with coordinating efforts across social media, email, paid search and in-store promotions, all while working across multiple departments, including creative, finance and customer service. Before adopting our platform, the company struggled to keep track of campaign assets, deadlines and budget allocations across different tools. But once they implemented Smartsheet, the team consolidated all project tasks, timelines and budgets into a single platform for the 2023 holiday season. They used automated workflows to manage content approvals, ensuring faster turnaround times and leveraged real-time data dashboards to monitor campaign performance. As a result, the brand reduced their time to market by 20%, stayed within budget and saw a 15% increase in overall campaign engagement compared to the previous year. Future-proof with continuous innovation Marketing technology is going to continue to evolve, and staying ahead of trends is essential for long-term success. Creative content trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt and technological trends differ greatly, but there is a straightforward way to unite the workflows between creative and the processes for business decisions. Whether it’s adding new integrations with popular marketing tools or enhancing automation capabilities, brands need a platform that continually adapts to the changing needs of its users. Moreover, as companies face new challenges—whether that’s integrating emerging technologies like AI or scaling operations to meet future growth—flexibility and adaptability are important for long-term success. As marketing continues to evolve, investing in the right tools is crucial for staying competitive so teams can drive maximum impact, make smarter decisions faster and ensure they’re always prepared for what’s next. About Smartsheet Smartsheet is the modern enterprise work management platform trusted by millions of people at companies across the globe, including approximately 85% of the 2024 Fortune 500 companies. As a pioneer and market leader in this category, Smartsheet delivers powerful solutions fueling performance and driving the next wave of innovation. Visit www.smartsheet.com to learn more.

How to future-proof marketing operations to drive maximum impact

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