Blog

From marketing operations best practices to industry insights, the Simple blog delves into all things relating to managing marketing projects, brand assets and technology.

Featured Blog Image

Youi Insurance selects admation to streamline its marketing projects

Youi Insurance has nominated admation as its preferred marketing project and resource management software. We're very excited about this new relationship and look forward to adding value to Youi's marketing content production.

Email approvals: an ancient practice akin to the horse and cart?

As a freelance copywriter, I write articles about best practices and tips for better managing creative projects. I?m a bit of an efficiency nerd, so I genuinely get a kick out of brainstorming, ?how can we do this better?? While Google is my go to for research, I draw inspiration from my in-house studio role as a copywriter and editor in trade publishing. That means I get to experience it too - the good, the bad and, sometimes, the ugly.

Have More Visibility Over Your Marketing Projects Without Losing Your Head

The Dilemma and The Fix Series - Part 4: The DilemmaJames is Head of Marketing and currently doing the annual budget for his department. Since ramping up operations, he has no idea how much time is being spent on projects. He checks the Marketing Resources Calendar saved on the server, but finds there are five indistinct versions. With the clock ticking, he?s tempted to go ?eeny meenyminy mo?, but he?s fairly certain this is not a sound strategy. He calls his Marketing Manager instead, only to find none of the spreadsheets is current. She?ll email an updated version in twenty minutes but two hours later, with no update, James is losinghis head.When the email finally arrives, he discovers a project has fallen off the calendar. He also notices that while some resources are overloaded others appear to be enjoying a daily siesta. James, meanwhile, has developed a major headache.

Featured Blog Image

Connect your workflow and finance software for greater ease and agility

Software solutions are becoming a critical part of streamlining operations in ad agencies. Still, technology can pose its own challenges. For example, the disconnect between specialised tools is placing more pressure on teams who spend precious creative time moving data across platforms. In today?s technology-driven world, it shouldn?t be this difficult.

Featured Blog Image

Protect your global brand with marketing approval workflow software

You know that moment, when great branding stops you in your tracks and makes you take notice. It?s clever, maybe funny, aesthetically beautiful or stark. But always memorable. If a business then delivers on what its promises, branding has the ability to foster intimate relationships, and turn consumers into long-term customers. It?s little wonder that global brands spend so much money on their marketing efforts. Nonetheless, it only takes a few inconsistent applications of brand assets and/or communications for a business to appear unprofessional, even unreliable if the issue persists. So how do global businesses succeed in keeping their branding consistent across their global offices?

Featured Blog Image

Why MRM software is important for marketing teams

The 2016 State of Agile Marketing Report found that the top challenge for 24.4% of marketers was 'doing more with fewer people and smaller budgets'. Fast track to 2018 and the frustration lingers. In fact, the pressure for marketers to churn out more content with less hands on deck is even more pressing. The good news: marketers arebeginning to see the light. Marketing Resource Management (MRM) software was cast back into the spotlight recently with a Gartnerreport that resounded new MRM capabilities to meet the growing demands of marketers. And brands are coming to the party. According to SiriusDecisions?2017 Global CMO Study,41 percent of CMOs expect to implement MRM software in the next couple of years.

Featured Blog Image

4 Ways to Effectively Scale Your Marketing and Creative Teams

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.

There's a Simple Way to Manage Your Marketing Resources

The Dilemma and The Fix Series - Part 3: The DilemmaJenny is a marketing manager who oversees a team of ten people, four of whom make up the creative team. Most days she feels like she?s managing 50 people with so many marketing projects on the go and never knowing who?s doing what. Her project resource spreadsheet desperately needs updating, but for now she's winging it by delegating tasks verbally. Now her boss needs a progress update for budgeting purposes and she's got two team members off with the flu. The pressure is 0n. Jenny is on her fourth coffee for the morning and currently googling 'career counsellors'.

Featured Blog Image

Avoid a Tree Change with Better Marketing Compliance

The Dilemma and The Fix Series - Part 2 The DilemmaMatt is part of a Legal team for a big brand. His likes include legal protocol, tennis and home-made burritos. His dislikes include anything to do with motorsports and compliance issues. Unfortunately, marketing compliance is getting harder for Matt?s team to manage with Marketing sending harried, last-minute approval requests. Last month, Legal was missed altogether in the sign off process for a major campaign ? a major headache for Legal in the fallout! Now Matt?s team is trying to keep tabs on marketing projects with very little transparency. Twice already, Matt and another colleague have doubled-up on reviewing artwork. Matt is seriously considering a tree change. Are you in a Legal or Compliance role where your brand?s reputation is on the line because of clunky marketing processes and tools? Do you feel Matt's pain? Well, here?s our fix for your marketing compliance issues.

Featured Blog Image

Marketing Project Challenges: Managing Your Marketing Approval Workflow

The marketing approval workflow process relates to the full cycle of creating marketing content, from briefing in a creative project to gathering feedback on artwork to final approval. With the success of marketing campaigns hinging on the quality and timeliness of projects, an effective approval workflow process is critical to the output of marketing content.

Featured Blog Image

Why are Ancient Marketing Practices Still in Place?

Today, marketers are under ever-increasing pressure to push out more projects, faster, to feed a range of hungry marketing channels. If there ever was a good time for brands to rethink their marketing practices, it would be now. Still, a recent Content Marketing Institute report showed that only 40% of Australian marketers ?are delivering content consistently? compared to the previous year.

Take the Angst Out of Managing Your Brand Assets

The Dilemma The Fix Series - Part 1: The DilemmaSerena is a Brand Manager for a global business with stores in five countries and an online sales portal. It?s only morning time but she has a good feeling about today which is forecasted to be bright and sunny. She?s already received news that the latest product catalogue has been printed and is ready to be dispatched. Sure it?s the same catalogue that went through endless rounds of changes and is nearly two months overdue, but it?s all good now. Suddenly one of her team members appears at her door looking anxious ? Errr ? there?s been an oversight. Somehow the wrong logo ended up on the front cover of the catalogue. In the previous catalogue, it was the wrong CMYK colour! Last month, the wrong tagline on an ad campaign! Seriously, what could go wrong next? Serena's day just went from bright to very gloomy. Like Serena, are you tired, perplexed, at your wit?s end about the wrong branding being used across a range of marketing campaigns? Seeking an easy fix for this never-ending dilemma?

Featured Blog Image

Make Adoption of a New Approval Workflow Process Easier

Getting approvals across the line isn't always a simple feat. In fact, approval delays remain a key challenge for marketing teams when it comes to producing content. We recently talked about how to improve and refining your approval workflow to ensure that you're maximising your marketing time and resources. The next step is implementing the new marketing process and achieving uptake. Given that people are typically creatures of habit and don?t like to invite change, how do you make the experience easier?

Featured Blog Image

How marketing technology is making life easier at Mumbrella 360

With all the new technology solutions at our disposal, it's hard to believe that over 60% of marketers still use email approvals and Excel spreadsheets to manage their marketing projects. But there must be a good reason for this. Right? Actually, no.

Featured Blog Image

Best Practices S9: Getting the most out of your ad agency freelancers

Freelancers play a crucial role in the advertising industry, often swooping in to save a creative project on the brink of collapse. They not only fill skill gaps but also provide ad agencies with the flexibility and cost savings that come with avoiding full-time hires. However, mismanaging freelancers can be a costly mistake. With this, here are our best practices for maximising your return on freelancers, and ensuring they want to work with your brand on your next project.

Featured Blog Image

4 strategies to improve your marketing team's efficiency

You?ve done the preliminary work in getting the right people onboard, so now your creative team should be operating like a well-oiled machine. Right? Well, not exactly. Even if you?ve got the best people on the job, they still need to be supported by effective processes, an organised project framework, transparent communications and schedules that allow them to be at their creative best. Here are four strategies that will enhance your team?s performance:

Featured Blog Image

Tips on Refining Your Marketing Content Approval Process

This year, marketers plan to ramp up their marketing output to maintain a competitive edge. But even so, the area of content creation remains a challenge for many. According to Curata, one of the top five content marketing challenges for B2B marketers is producing content consistently. The fact that only 30% of marketers believe their content marketing is successful might also say something about their challenges at an operational level.

Featured Blog Image

4 Costly Mistakes You Can Avoid with Approval Workflow Software

Advice on how to improve your marketing approval processes exists for very good reason. The bottom line, to excuse the pun, is to save your business money. Whether you like it or not, persistent errors in your approval workflow will financially impact your business on a number of levels.

Featured Blog Image

Champion your Best Workflow Management Software

There are many factors that will determine whether the implementation of your small business workflow software is a success. Obviously, a well-planned selection process and adequate training prior to launch are integral to a successful roll out. However, one important step that often gets overlooked in the implementation process is nominating a champion for the software. So what do I mean by 'champion'?

Featured Blog Image

Best Practices Session 7: Retaining your ad agency talent

Losing your ad agency talent can be a costly endeavor, with replacement costs estimated to be anywhere between 50% and 100% of the person's annual salary. And that's not even considering the immeasurable value of their unique skills and attributes. Surprisingly, statistics show that one in four people are likely to leave their agency job this year in search of better work cultures, challenges, and opportunities. With staff turnover eating into your profits, it's essential to find ways to retain your valuable talent.

Featured Blog Image

Marketing Project Management Challenges, Meeting Deadlines and Budgets

There are many challenges that marketers face today: a fiercely competitive marketplace, the pressure of producing memorable content for multiple media channels, and the day-to-day management and execution of marketing projects. If we shine a light on managing creative projects, a common issue that marketers face is deadline delays, a symptom indicative of other issues bubbling away below the surface.

Featured Blog Image

Is juggling multiple project management tools good for business?

Something is multiplying at a rate of knots and it?s not the number of hours that marketers are being freed up each work day. Not only are marketers feeling the pressure to perform across multiple platforms, now they?re managing their creative projects with more than one marketing tool. According to Winterberry Group?s research report , 55.1% of marketers are using five to ten different marketing tools to manage data and advertising campaigns, with 27.3% juggling up to 20 tools. Aside from marketing automation tools, these figures include marketing project management tools such as time tracking, collaboration, file management, resource management, online proofing tools and asset storage.

Featured Blog Image

Best Practices Session 6: Solving Marketing Project Management Issues

According to the Asia Pacific Content Marketing Report 2016 by HubSpot and Survey Monkey, a remarkable 63% of businesses in 2016 increased their efforts in content creation. However, an astonishing 56% of marketers encountered the challenge of producing high-quality marketing content. The quality of marketing output has always relied on the efficient management of the creative approval workflow. Smooth-running marketing projects result in a harmonious fusion of quality and speed. However, when obstacles arise, it is no surprise that the quality of output suffers.

Admation agency management software offers integrated DAM features.

Recently, we caught up with again Dave Ewers who is a technology consultant to the advertising and marketing industry specialising in digital workflow and digital asset management (DAM) software solutions. With over 30 years of industry experience, Dave has a wealth of knowledge on current market trends and leading software solutions. Previously, as a guest blogger Dave has highlighted the importance of a DAM solution being integrated with other agency project mangement software. Today, Dave is reviewing admation and the benefits of its integrated DAM functionality.

Featured Blog Image

Is your agency project management software too feature rich and complex?

The internet ? no training required? Think about it for a moment, you use the interne t every day to do some amazing things. You check your email (probably too often), search for and locate almost anything, book flights and holidays to anywhere in the world, buy and sell any product you need, watch and listen to literally anything you want. But how did you get to this point?How much training were you required to take before you were let loose on the web? The answer is almost certainly none. And yet look at what you can achieve with no training. The power at your fingertips is staggering. So why is it that this feeling of empowerment is often missing when using agencyproject management softwaresupposedly designed to help you to be more productive?

Featured Blog Image

5 Tips to Streamline Approval Workflow & Eliminate Distractions

Workday interruptions have become commonplace across many professions today. Responding to relentless emails, phone calls, meetings, urgent work (the list goes on), have proven to reduce productivity. Additionally, studies show that distractions are putting more pressure on workers making them increasingly prone to tiredness and error. With clunky approval workflow,tedious administrationand manual processes,creative teams are not immune to these issues. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. In this post, we'll show you how to streamline approval workflow, eliminate those workday distractions and let your creativity flourish.