A Better Way to Manage Marketing Projects
Originally posted on https://www.intelligencebank.com/blog/kanban-a-better-way-to-manage-marketing-projects
IntelligenceBank integrates Kanban with creative workflows & enterprise-grade digital asset management.
Kanban is a visual system for managing work as it moves through a process.
The beauty of this project view is that it clearly illustrates both the process (the workflow) and the actual work progressing through the process.
Imagine your team was ‘only’ responsible for one project – Tweeting about an upcoming event.
Project tasks could include:
- Confirming event details
- Tweet content
- Marketing approval
- Legal / compliance approval
- Publishing tweet
- Tracking Twitter engagement
- Reporting on results
In a large organisation, each of these tasks could include sub-tasks, responsible parties, dependencies and due dates, for example:
Task 2. Tweet content:
Wording
- Event Coordinator briefs Marketing Manager on campaign (Day 1)
- Marketing Manager briefs Copywriter (Day 1)
- Copywriter researches topic/campaign with Event Coordinator (Day 2)
- Copywriter writes 1st draft (Day 2)
- Marketing Manager reviews 1st draft & suggest changes (Day 3)
- Copywriter finalises 2nd draft (Day 3)
- Marketing Manager approves wording
CTA hyperlink
- Marketing Manager briefs Digital Marketing Specialist to create a trackable hyperlink (linked to the event campaign in the marketing automation system) for the tweet that takes respondents to the event landing page (presuming this has already been created) (Day 1)
- Digital Marketing Specialist provides the hyperlink to the Marketing Manager (Day 2)
- Marketing Manager tests the hyperlink (Day 2)
Image
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- Marketing Manager briefs the creative agency to provide an image for the tweet (Day 1)
- Agency sends 5 potential images to the Marketing Manager (Day 2)
- Marketing Manager doesn’t like any of the images and requests 5 more (Day 2)
- Agency sends the new images (Day 3)
- Marketing Manager approves an image (Day 3)
Exhausting, isn’t it?
Now multiply this project by 100 and imagine trying to keep track of the work, team member effort, quality, stakeholders & compliance.
Kanban is great for one project or multiple projects as it captures the workflow (process steps) and provides an easy view of who is doing what and when. It’s flexible and provides early warning of potential bottlenecks and great intel for future efficiencies.
We’ve integrated Kanban with workflows and digital asset management
You may be familiar with the Kanban view from standalone project management software, such as Trello or Asana, but we’ve seamlessly integrated it with creative workflows and enterprise-grade digital asset management.
According to our CEO Tessa Court, “marketers use agile methodologies to manage their increasingly complex operational environment, and we have met this demand not only by providing a Kanban view on projects, but also seamlessly integrating it with creative workflows and enterprise-grade digital asset management.”
Reverting to the earlier example of tweeting about an upcoming event, by integrating Kanban with the DAM and workflows:
Task 2. Tweet content: The appropriate version of the logo and image would be selected from the DAM.
Task 3. Marketing approval: Completion of the tweet content (e.g. moving the task to completed) would trigger a marketing approval workflow.
Task 4. Legal / compliance approval: Completion of the marketing approval task would trigger a legal / compliance approval workflow.
Reducing manual tasks, capturing the optimal workflow, safeguarding compliance – this is real marketing efficiency.
Say goodbye to siloed martech and hello to creating great work, quickly.