marketing collaboration guide - ragan communications€¦ · and teams. without a single source of...
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Marketing Collaboration GuideUnderstanding the drivers of highly effective marketing.
“For brands to be allowed a part in the hyper-empowered consumer’s life, they have to be able to both anticipate and assist with their needs. This means being relevant, tailored and personal —a huge shift from when brands tended to be built for the masses. And they need to do it all in real time, in context, in the language.”
– CMO OF UNILEVER, KEITH WEED, THINK WITH GOOGLE
Your customers have set the bar high. They expect great experiences
that cut through the noise, are personalized and relevant, and are
delivered anywhere and everywhere. They want a great story, they
want to be inspired, and what resonated yesterday isn’t guaranteed
to work tomorrow.
To meet (or, preferably, exceed) these expectations, marketers need to
move quickly and confidently. Strategizing and orchestrating your brand
message, however, requires effective communication across all channels
and teams. Without a single source of truth, marketers risk delivering
disconnected or confused messages, and the brand suffers.
Mitigating these risks is critical for marketers to deliver exceptional brand
experiences. Successful navigation of these challenges comes through
breaking down traditional silos and unlocking new forms of visibility,
ensuring messages are aligned, and providing teams with a consistent
framework for executing efficiency. These are the drivers of effective
marketing collaboration.
Overview
Creating the right message is no longer simply an act of getting
the right people in the room and pushing through from ideation to
publishing. Today, the successful delivery of your brand story requires
creative transparency, coordination across channels, and input from
collaborators across the globe.
As a result, collaborative activities within an organization have increased
exponentially. The good news? According to the Harvard Business
Review (HBR), effective collaboration is a key indicator of organizational
success. But there’s a catch. HBR’s research shows people are spending
up to 80% of their day in meetings, on the phone and responding to
emails. This leaves little time to complete the work they must do on
their own. This independent work is equally important, and a critical
component of effective marketing execution. This research also
shows that the distribution of collaborative work is uneven. The largest
percentage of valuable collaboration comes from a small percentage
of the organization. As people are identified as willing helpers, they are
drawn into more projects and larger roles. This leads to over-taxed and
burned-out team members.
Communicating Effective Brand Stories Takes Teamwork
“It’s not just about one team doing one piece of work. It’s about the collaboration of teams coming together to make it happen. We need all of the teams, all of the hands, working in one place, all together from end-to-end.”
DIVERSE, DISPERSED TEAMS
Today’s marketers are siloed in almost every
facet of their work. Coordination, creation
and approvals now take place across
disciplines, business units, borders and time
zones. Problems are exacerbated when
information is locked in silos. According to
a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8
hours per day searching for and gathering
information as a result of being isolated.
That lost time could be spent performing
much more valuable activities including:
developing new marketing strategies, creating
more compelling messaging or ensuring the
quality of work.
EXPANDING, EVOLVING CHANNELS
Wrangling omnichannel marketing efforts
isn’t getting any easier. With so many options
to choose from, customers no longer engage
with one channel at a time. According to
a recent report from Gartner, campaigns
integrating four or more digital channels
outperform single or dual channel campaigns
by 300%. In the same report, more than
90% of marketers said they struggle to
connect more than three channels in a
single campaign. Marketing teams don’t have
the time or resources they need to tell a
consistent story across these expanding and
evolving channels.
ANTIQUATED, MISMATCHED TOOLS
Endless meetings, clunky spreadsheets and
meandering email threads slow marketing
teams down. There is too much activity across
teams and channels to manage, and it’s made
harder with antiquated tools and outdated
technology. According to recent data from
Bain research, the most productive companies
lose 50% less time to unnecessary and
ineffective collaboration while the best
companies save more than half a day per week
for all of their employees. Without a single
source of truth that seamlessly connects the
entire marketing team, it’s too easy to make
mistakes and miss opportunities.
Obstacles to EffectiveMarketing Collaboration
“Our consumer is very savvy. Authenticity is key. I need to make sure that everyone is focused on the right things and knowing how often we’re hitting our key themes. If we do that well, we’re going to earn loyal customers.”
Visibility, Alignment,and Efficiency
The drivers of effective marketing collaboration.
The context needed to make informed decisions and produce effective marketing.
VisibilityToday, marketers are forced to make business decisions without access to all the
information. The result is overlapping messages and wasted effort. Marketers must be
empowered to see and understand how their work relates to the bigger picture. The
ability to visualize campaigns—past, present and future—surfaces gaps, dependencies
and opportunities that empower everyone — no matter the marketing function,
channel or location.
When marketing teams collaborate effectively, they have ready access to the
information they need to produce work that delivers results.
CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Can you see marketing work from any distance, at every angle?
Does your team understand the brand footprint, channel strategies and campaigns in play?
Do they know what’s coming next week, next month, next quarter?
The structure necessary to keep work consistent and teams organized.
AlignmentMarketing content fuels brand experiences across campaigns, channels, and
geographies. But most marketing organizations lack structure, operating in siloed
systems. This results in inconsistent content and marketing experiences resulting in a
negative impact on the brand. Adopting a unified approach to marketing organization
enables greater consistency across teams and provides the backbone for successful
marketing execution.
When teams are operating in sync, individuals are empowered to self-align,
messaging is well orchestrated and campaigns have greater impact.
CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Is everyone and everything operating consistently?
Is everyone in sync with communication plans across the entire organization?
Are campaigns consistently coordinated so they support the larger strategy?
Does your team’s work fit within the bigger picture?
The processes required to produce higher quality work, faster.
EfficiencyToday, marketers are challenged with accelerating complexity. But traditional ways
of working—spreadsheets, presentations, email and endless meetings—were not
designed to keep pace. The results are reactive marketing processes that stagnate
the organization, making it both painful for individuals and dangerous for the brand.
To be effective in the face of this complexity, everyone on the team—from content
creators to senior executives— needs to be working in concert, avoiding duplication
of effort and ensuring maximum utilization of resources. When the entire
organization is working better together, teams produce higher quality work, faster.
Increased efficiency ensures the time marketers spend creating great marketing is
time well spent.
CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Are you realizing the full potential of marketing resources?
Are you duplicating efforts across teams, channels or locations?
Do you have a smooth process for content creation?
Does your entire team know what they’re responsible for?
Investing in more effective marketing
collaboration requires commitment. An
understanding of how visibility, alignment
and efficiency creates value for marketing
organizations is a good foundation. But to
really understand how this will impact your
organization you need to get other
stakeholders involved.
To help kickstart the conversation, we
recommend the following questions as
a discussion guide. These will highlight
strengths and gaps in how effective your
marketing teams collaborate.
Are You Ready toStart the Conversation?
Marketing Collaboration Discussion Guide
How well do you know your brand footprint, channelsand campaigns?
Can you see what campaigns other teams are developing?
Can you visualize content across channels, two weeks out or more?
Are you confident you are always seeing the latest work?
What would help increase the productivity of your marketing meetings?
Is your team strategically aligned with other teams?
Do your paid, owned and earned channels work together toward a consistent strategy?
Can you easily produce reports on content plans for senior management?
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Conclusion
Effective marketing collaboration is critical to delivering brand experiences that produce results. By empowering your teams with the visibility required to make smart business decisions, stay aligned and work efficiently, marketers can reduce the risk of making costly mistakes while optimizing maximizing business impact.
Want To Know More?
Opal developed the Marketing Collaboration Index to measure how you work individually and across teams for insights you can use to improve overall marketing effectiveness. Take the four-minute assessment and learn how you score across the key drivers of effective marketing collaboration.
TAKE THE ASSESSMENT