From Chaos to Clarity: How Process-driven Operations Keeps Marketing on Track

Everyone who’s worked in marketing knows what it’s like when things don’t go according to plan. It could come in the form of a last-minute request from a client or realizing you need to rush ship an important resource to an upcoming industry tradeshow. There are days — sometimes seasons — that feel like your marketing job description should include being a part-time firefighter. While you may not be able to completely prevent chaotic moments, having a process-driven approach to putting out fires and staying on track with responsibilities can ensure you (and your marketing team) can keep moving forward with clarity and confidence.  

Recognizing there will be chaotic moments and proactively developing a plan to address them is one of the most important lessons we’ve learned over the past decade at Green Apple.  

The Most Common Chaos Creators for Marketing Teams

Here are a few of the most common disruptors that marketing teams and agencies must learn how to navigate: 

1. Last-Minute Requests

Every company has sudden requests from other departments or higher-ups that require immediate attention. These can obviously disrupt planned marketing activities and require an extra measure of attention and focus. To navigate last-minute requests, it is helpful to have a system in place for prioritizing and tracking them and to be clear with stakeholders about expectations and deadlines.

2. Lack of Clear Objectives or Change in Direction

When marketing teams lack clear goals and objectives, they may struggle to prioritize tasks and may get sidetracked by less important activities. That’s why it’s essential to establish clear marketing goals that align with your overall business objectives. In some cases, new opportunities may arise or your company might change directions on a particular product or go-to-market strategy. In these cases, there may be opportunities to pivot your marketing without abandoning your entire strategy. 

3. Technology Issues

Technology difficulties can create an enormous amount of disruption in your day-to-day activities. Technical glitches or failures with marketing tools and platforms can disrupt campaigns and lead to chaos. As a hybrid marketing agency, we’ve had the opportunity to learn how to manage our workload virtually to stay connected and productive. Every person on the team knows what to do if technology issues occur and how to implement a backup plan if communication tools aren’t working. 

4. Human Error

Even the best-laid plans can go awry due to human error. It could be anything from a typo in a press release to a missed deadline. That’s why it’s important to have clear processes and procedures in place for catching and correcting errors. It is also important to create a culture of accountability and transparency, where team members feel comfortable admitting their mistakes and learning from them.

Process-Driven Best Practices to Keep Marketing on Track 

Here are some helpful best practices that a marketing agency could implement to create a process-oriented approach. Implementing some of these approaches can help keep things running smoothly.

1. Create your marketing plan with involvement from key stakeholders.

Every good marketer starts with strategy. But one of the ways to prevent many of the stressful back-and-forth or navigating changes of direction is to involve key stakeholders to shape your marketing strategy as you build it. This has become an essential part of our approach to building marketing strategies for our clients over the years.

2. Establish clear workflows for status meetings and specific deliverables.

One of the most important factors for a successful business and agency partnership is defining clear and documented workflows for different marketing activities. This includes outlining roles, responsibilities, and timelines for expected deliverables. It’s important to ensure everyone on the team understands and follows these processes.

3. Set realistic deadlines.

Saying “yes” to every request is one of the quickest ways to derail your marketing efforts. As you identify new marketing ideas and make a plan to execute them, you want to ensure that deadlines are reasonable and achievable. Managers should avoid overloading the team with too many tasks within a short time frame.

4. Implement a foolproof quality control system.

An important part of marketing project management is implementing thorough quality control processes to catch and rectify errors before campaigns or projects go live. One of the benefits of working with a marketing agency is that they often have proven quality control measures in place — primarily because of the volume of campaigns we’re running at any given time. 

5. Have a backup plan for emergencies.

There will always be situations or scenarios that are completely out of your control. It could be a major PR crisis or a single social media comment that needs to be addressed. Whatever the scenario, it’s crucial to develop clear protocols for handling last-minute crises before they occur. You should also designate a point person who is responsible for evaluating the appropriate action plan and prioritizing the next steps. 

6. Use project management tools.

Technology provides a variety of tools that enhance our communication and collaboration. At Green Apple, most of our days are spent collaborating in Google, Basecamp, and Airtable. These tools can help our team track progress, manage deadlines, and communicate with team members.

7. Maintain documentation of your processes.

Well-documented processes can help to prevent errors by ensuring that all of the necessary steps are taken. It also helps when onboarding new team members and provides a reference point for resolving issues. Based on our experience, we’ve learned that it’s essential to document your processes for areas like campaign planning, content creation, social media management, email marketing, campaign evaluation, and website management.

8. Be flexible.

While processes are essential, it’s also important to cultivate flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances or seize unexpected opportunities. Things don’t always go according to plan, so be prepared to make adjustments as needed. 

Minimize the Marketing Chaos with Green Apple Strategy

At Green Apple, we’re proud of our track record for helping clients take advantage of new opportunities while minimizing chaos and disruption to their daily operations. We have a deep understanding of the changing marketing landscape and know how to help our clients stay ahead of the curve. We also have a team of experienced and dedicated professionals who are passionate about helping our clients succeed.

If you’re ready to build momentum through an effective marketing approach, you can learn more about our process or schedule a consultation with our team.

Marketing & Operations: 4 Keys to Successful Scalability

People sitting around a conference table with laptops

One of today’s business realities is that everything is marketing. Gone are the days when marketing and sales worked in their own silo. The effectiveness of your marketing department impacts other departments. At the same time, other departments have a direct impact on areas of marketing such as brand perception or customer experience.  

Over the years at Green Apple, we’ve found the connection between marketing and operations is one of the most important relationships in a business. On one hand, successful marketing should lead to more customers. More customers will naturally impact operational needs. On the other hand, many operations teams make decisions that directly impact marketing needs. Whether you’re the CEO of a company or a leader of a specific department, it’s essential to ensure both teams work together so that your company can thrive.

4 Keys to Successful Scalability with Marketing & Operations 

Here are a few specific ways marketing and operations can collaborate. That way, marketing is focused on the right areas of growth, and operations have what they need to scale the business:

1. Define your ideal customer. 

Operations are responsible for ensuring your company can fulfill the business it generates. Unfortunately, most marketing departments are only focused on generating leads… not how you’re going to serve them through the sales pipeline.  

When marketing and operations align, marketing understands the company’s capabilities and what it takes to follow through on what’s promised. This can help significantly when it comes to defining your ideal customer for better lead generation results. 

2. Align your technology and tools to optimize your processes. 

Most businesses function on an array of various technology platforms and software tools. In some cases, there might be more than a dozen platforms that support your marketing, sales, and operational efforts. While it’s not essential for there to be a seamless integration between all of your tools, it’s important to make sure the core components of your marketing technology stack are aligned with operational tools. 

When marketing and operations align in their technology strategy, they can run the race faster and farther for successful, scalable marketing.

3. Leverage data from both teams to make more informed decisions.

We have access to more data than ever before. Every marketing campaign provides dozens of analytics that can be measured. At the same time, the operations team has insights that can inform customer needs and marketing investment. But we all know there’s a difference between reporting on analytics and creating a data-driven culture for growing your businesses.

How can marketing and operations make sure they are collecting data in ways that can be used by everyone? Both teams need to agree on key business objectives and define which metrics are most helpful in evaluating success. 

4. Create open lines of communication between both teams

Effective communication breeds collaboration. That’s why consistent and candid conversations between the marketing and operations teams are vital. It’s not enough for marketing and operations to simply meet once a year or only collaborate if there’s a PR crisis. 

Instead, there needs to be a consistent feedback loop between marketing and operations. Operations can provide marketers with insight into what customers value. Marketing can inform operations about what’s being said about your business online. 

Need Help Getting Marketing & Operations on the Same Page?

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past decade, it’s that you can’t create your marketing plan in a vacuum. As we work alongside clients to develop a marketing strategy, we’ve found that having operations in the room for important marketing discussions is key to building a plan that supports your entire business. 

A rising tide should lift all boats without causing one to capsize. If you’re struggling to get marketing and operations on the same page, our team can help. Schedule a discovery call to learn more about the specific ways our team can help you design a marketing strategy that supports every area of your business.