4 Ways to Effectively Scale Your Marketing and Creative Teams
By Jodie Byass
If you?re thinking about scaling your team, then it?s obviously time to invest in more talent to meet an increasing demand. It?s also the perfect time to review your current operations to ensure that growth delivers a return for your business. For example, if your approval workflow process is barely cutting it with a small team, then it?s only going to get worse with a larger team. The good news is you can plan for growth and succeed by making sure you have the right tools and processes in place.
Here are 4 ways to scale your team so that they thrive along with your business.
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1. Streamline your approval workflow process.
Bottlenecks, high artwork versions, delayed approvals, missed deadlines, frustrated team members? If this sounds all too familiar, then it?s time to get your approval process in better shape prior to scaling your team. Think about the kind of framework you need to achieve optimum results from your team.
Here are a few tips: Be sure to collaborate with your current team about the best way to enhance the approval process so they?re more likely to welcome change. Think about how the new roles fit into the process. Offload any unnecessary stakeholders and designate an approval pathway that is inclusive of the reviewers you actually need. Nominate just one person to manage approvals so that feedback doesn?t get overlooked when switching roles. Always have a secure location to save your final, approved assets.
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If you?re scaling your team to meet demand, then it?s likely you?re juggling more projects than ever before. Brands and ad agencies are beginning to see the benefits of implementing approval workflow software to manage a growing number of projects while achieving faster turnarounds.
Check out some of the benefits:
- This solution offers a centralised platform where all project files and communications can be saved.
- Your team doesn?t have to waste time searching multiple folders on a server for files, communications and marketing assets.
- Users can view all projects and tasks in progress on one screen.
- Approvals and feedback can be managed with full visibility online.
- Feedback can be batched and sent on to your design team.
- Tasks can be assigned to resources in just a few clicks.
- Less time is spent managing projects because the software automates tasks such as updating marketing calendars and resource workloads, and sending reminders to approvers.
- You get some great proofing tools so that stakeholders can quickly and easily mark-up artwork onscreen.
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3. Hire the right talent for the right role.
Finding talent that?s a great fit for your team and culture is essential. At a micro level, you also need to identify the roles that are going to enhance your team?s skills and expertise to deliver on new project work. In other words, there?s no point hiring a generalist when what you need is a UX designer or digital copywriter. Work out exactly what role you need to fill before you go through the lengthy process of recruiting people.
4. Measure growth and evolve your team to be the very best it can be.
It?s a satisfying feeling watching your team grow. Still, you need to be prepared to track and measure growth so that you can understand its impact. Once you have scaled your team and they?ve been working together for a while, it?s time to review the changes. Does your team have a better understanding of what they?re doing at the start of each project? Are approvals turning around faster? Are there fewer artwork revisions? Are deadlines being met? Is time being saved on each project? Are campaigns bringing in the revenue that was forecast? Is your team satisfied? Have the new roles met their expectations?
Approval workflow software can be a useful tool to measure some of these results in no time at all. Remember, the more you delve in, the more knowledge and power you have to keep growing your team in an effective way.
If you are keen to learn more about how approval workflow solutions can help you grow your marketing team or advertising agency then our Understanding Approval workflow solutions guide is a great place to start. Download your copy now!