There are some things you might think are pre-requisites for working in marketing- creativity, able to work in teams, even a bit wacky at times. One trait in particular is that a person needs to be highly organised. Is being organised something that comes naturally or is it a skill that can be learned?
I have worked in marketing for over 20 years now and each job I have had has meant juggling multiple projects at any given time and my love of a “to do list” has always kept me on track. There was a time when that meant lots of paper lists, post it notes and whiteboards. Changes in technology have evolved this old-fashioned method and turned it into interactive tools that we can access wherever we are. After all, carrying a whiteboard around to meetings was never practical!!
When you are juggling multiple campaigns and team members on paper with no central point of information, it can be easy for tasks to fall through the cracks. Using a planning tool to structure both your tasks and your team members leads to a more organised approach and the whole team being on the same page with 24/7 updates.
All work carried out in a marketing team is essentially a large project (the marketing plan) and a series of mini projects within that. With these mini projects including tasks such as:
- Web design
- Event planning
- Campaign planning
- Content planning and editorial calendars
- Social media strategy and implementation
Many task management tools which marketers would traditionally turn to are great at keeping tasks and projects on track. However, they miss one very important element- the planning stage. Take for example, an overall marketing campaign plan. This is scoped out by looking at target market and what campaigns and channels will be used to reach that audience. Once that is decided, each of the campaigns needs to be planned in terms of content and timings. Everything that a marketer does requires careful planning to define scope, followed by breaking that down into individual campaigns which also require planning. All of this planning could be done by getting your team together and planning it all out on whiteboards, followed by turning all of that into tasks and finally resource assigned to complete the work. If you are using a tool then all of the information captured in your planning meeting will need to be transferred to a system to be monitored.
With the approach outlined above, there is still some manual effort required in transferring thoughts and ideas into tasks. With MindGenius Online, our approach is to combine planning and doing into one tool. You can hold your team planning meetings together or from different locations and capture everyone’s thoughts and ideas in one area. From there, you can decide on the best approach moving forward and seamlessly convert plans into tasks, assign resource and monitor progress. This ensures all of the information from your planning stage is not lost- it is saved and accessible from your task lists. In addition, you can communicate with your team meaning that conversations regarding the project are also all saved centrally and not lost within multiple emails.
Marketing depends on an organised approach, being organised ensures you are better prepared and ultimately, being better prepared brings success.
Get started with MindGenius Online today, free for 14 days and see for yourself how this approach to marketing planning can help your team be better prepared
