Are Your Digital Marketing Processes Working for You?
Whether they’re formalised or not, following certain digital marketing processes is one thing – but how do you know if they’re having the desired effect?
The processes your team are using right now could mean they’re putting the work in with very little in return. And when you’re running in place in this way, the results you think you’re heading towards might actually a lot further away than you think.
So how can you tell you’re on the treadmill? Let’s take a look at whether your digital marketing processes are actually working for you – and the things you can do to start making sure they are – below.
What are digital marketing processes?
Digital marketing processes help keep the many disciplines within digital marketing flowing in full force. There’s a lot of plates that need to stay spinning at any one time both in teams and across them. Let’s say a content marketer requires an infographic to be designed, or a tech SEO team needs a wordsmith to wring out the maximum potential from certain keywords.
These processes will help to facilitate these kinds of things to make sure the optimal outcomes take place. By making ways of working, best practices and the ways in which roles and channels interlock with each other as clear as possible, everyone stays on the same page. And when this happens, goals remain in view and achievable.
The importance of digital marketing processes
Digital marketing processes are important for a range of different reasons. Here’s just a few of the most vital ones…
- Collaboration: When the tools and processes for collaboration are in place, teams can work together to make sure tasks and projects get completed on time – consistently. Without them, you’ll often find yourself putting in more effort for the same amount of output.
- Cost effectiveness: Improper processes can mean missed deadlines, repeated work, and crossed lines of communication. All of which is going to cost you – especially if it keeps happening. The right digital marketing processes save time and money – which you can then use in more strategic ways elsewhere in the team.
- Reduced risk: Processes create transparency. When everyone knows what’s expected, then it becomes far easier to identify potential mistakes before they have time to set the team back.
- Productivity: When everyone’s working efficiently, team members know how much time each of their tasks tends to require. This way, they can put more focus onto higher-value tasks, rather than working through time-draining jobs.
Assessing your digital marketing processes
So how do you know if your current digital marketing processes are working? Below, we’ll offer up a broad overview of what yours might look like, so you can get the lay of the land, process-wise…
- Your core processes and ways of working exist, but they’re fragmented and informal. And rather than being formally documented, they tend to exist in team members’ heads. This makes things more of a guessing game, which can be stressful for colleagues and clients alike. There might be some planning to formalise things, but they take place in siloes, and any decision making tends to be from gut instinct rather than genuine data and insights.
- The processes your team use are more formally documented, ways of working are adhered to and best practices come to the fore more and more. Decision making is also backed up by data and forecasting, but it remains siloed – an indication that the focus is on medium-term performance across different types of activity.
- Here, digital marketing processes are fully formalised, well-documented and frequently reviewed in line with the business’ goals and requirements. Knowledge is shared and spread throughout the team – including at the onboarding stage – so that everyone is up to speed with what’s followed and expected.
Improving your digital marketing processes
See some of yourself in one or two of the above? No problem. There’s plenty of approaches you can take to improve your own digital marketing processes. Let’s take a look…
- Continuous improvement: Processes aren’t set in stone, so it’s a good idea to get into the habit of reviewing what’s working well – and what’s not working well – so you’re never resting on your laurels.
- Ways of working: Everyone has their preferred methods when it comes to completing tasks. And while you can’t make each team members’ style all fit the same mould, it’s well worth understanding their preferences so you can discover their strong points.
- Collaboration: Once you can identify everyone’s way of working, you’ll be in a much better place to enable stronger collaboration between teams, suppliers and stakeholders.
- Insight & analytics: Through this collaboration, you’ll be able to bring in sights and analytics from other parts of the organisation to create more effective marketing strategies and decisions.
- Business goals: Without long-term business goals in place, you could run the risk of making your processes a little futile. Grounding them in goals the whole team can work towards makes sure that none of your efforts go to waste.
Elevate your digital marketing
Looking for a little extra help on how you can improve your marketing processes – and more? Here’s what we can do for you…
Download your Digital Marketing Maturity Matrix
Once you know what level of digital marketing maturity you’re at, it makes knowing the changes you need to do to make to keep growing a whole lot easier. Let’s get that happening with our free digital marketing maturity matrix then. Fill in your details below and get those commercial goals in full view.
Whatever your digital processes look like right now, our Strategy team is ready to help you grow. Book an initial discovery session here to discover how we can get you towards your goals.
