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

Assessing ROI on implementing Ad Agency Project Management Software

Recent studies show that the return on investment (ROI) for businesses implementing project management software lies somewhere between 15-30%. It?s worth noting, though, the ad agencies that profit from integrating this kind of software typically dedicate time to research, cost and select the rightad agency project management software.agency project management software.

Featured Blog Image

10 great benefits of agency project management software

If you?re an ad agency experiencing the perpetual grind of high artwork revisions, a lack of transparency on projects, missed deadlines and budget blowing outs, perhaps it?s time for a change. Agency project management software can eliminate many of the headaches associated with managing projects. Here are 10 great benefits ad agencies can derive from implementing agency project management software.

Featured Blog Image

Solutions to your marketing project management challenges

Last week, we looked at the most common marketing prioject management challenges. Now that we'veidentified the challenges with managing marketing projects, let?s look atsome of the solutions.

Featured Blog Image

Benefits to brands who choose smaller agencies for marketing projects

Today, brand marketing is no longer limited to television and print media. The internet now enables marketers to leverage opportunities through a multitude of channels such as mobile, social media and digital. For brands to respond to this new immediacy, they're hiring smaller agencies with specialised skills. This trend is resounding in Australia. 'The Valentine's Day revelation shows that the space of specialism has become one of the biggest growth areas in advertising, with some small agencies earning millions from their big brand dalliances.' 'Big brands enjoy million dollar deals with small agencies as adland abandons monogamy', says mumbrella.com.au But specialisation is only one of the reasons big brands are turning to smaller agencies. Here's an overview of the great benefits of working with nimble ad agencies.

Featured Blog Image

Know the risks of working with smaller ad agencies

Over the last couple ofweeks, we?ve been looking at the benefits for brands working with smaller ad agencies. This week we?re going to review the flipside of the argument and outline some of the risks associated with working with boutique agencies. While these offer agility, innovation, specialisation and lower rates, hiring smaller agencies can also be problematic for brands.

Featured Blog Image

Small ad agencies compete with global agencies

To many, the idea of competing with global ad agencies is a daunting task. But smaller agencies are doing exactly that and with great aplomb. This isn?t so surprising given that smaller agencies are renowned for their fearless work cultures. Often founded by creatives who have extensive experience working with bigger agencies, they?re kicking off smaller enterprises with not only a wealth of knowledge but gutsiness and vision. This is leading the charge on innovation in the industry.

Featured Blog Image

Hiring freelancers: the pros and cons for your ad agency

It?s common practice for ad agencies to hire freelancers to get them through a busy period or to meet a deadline on a major project. And while there are many benefits to contracting work out, there is also a downside to this practice. Here we weigh up some of the pros and cons of hiring freelancers.

Featured Blog Image

Choose the right tool for managing agency projects and resources!

Spreadsheets can play an excellent role as an individual project planner. As a project grows, complications snowball. Spreadsheets are built for data, but it doesn?t play well with others. When it comes to real-time project management, Spreadsheets falls short and here are a few reasons why you should consider moving to an agency project management solution.

Featured Blog Image

6 ways to become a more productive ad agency head!

Productivity in the workplace is a subject that is garnering a lot of attention at the moment. Constant interruptions, such as checking emails, endless meetings and urgent tasks, are reportedly decreasing productivity and the quality of output. As the head of an adagency, I?m sure you know the frustration of dealing with day-to-day operational or compliance issues that preside over your own work.

Featured Blog Image

Tips for managing approval workflow on a co-marketing campaign

In its Modern Trail Campaign the US lifestyle brand, Timberland, launched a social media campaign that saw its independent retailers spruik its products across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The campaign proved to be highly successful for re-igniting interest in Timberland's products as well as demonstrating the power of co-marketing. But while co-marketing offers new and creative ways for brands to leverage their products and services, how does one manage the complex approval workflow of such a strategy?

Featured Blog Image

Overview of Admation Resource Management Software Features

Admation?s marketing resource management software can help you manage your projectsmore effectively by reducing the time you spend on planning and tracking your tasks and resources. It?s user-friendly dashboard and inbuilt tools provide greater transparency over your resources so there?s less room for error. Here?s an overview of admation?s resource management features:

Featured Blog Image

Risks of not using Resource Management Software

With an already heavy workload, how do I find the time to implement resource management software? If this question has ever crossed your mind, perhaps the more fitting question is this: can your agency or marketing team risk not implementing a resource planning software?

Featured Blog Image

Benefits of implementing a resource management solution?

Resource management solutions offer ad agencies and marketers the tools to manage resources more seamlessly. The software provides users with a centralised, online platform from which they can accurately plan and track all resources for their creative projects. There are multiple benefits to using these kind of solutions but first let's look at some of tell-tale signs that you need to implement an agency management solution or marketing resource management software

Featured Blog Image

Understanding resource management and resource management software.

What is Resource Management? Resource management is a term used to describe the process by which ad agencies and marketing teams organise their labour across creative projects. Effectiveness is key to managing resources, so labour is allocated based on skills, availability and demand. The ideal outcome of ad agency resource management or marketing resource management is to reduce non-billable hours, hit deadlines and budget targets, and produce quality campaigns.

Featured Blog Image

Tips to Manage your Brand's Marketing Compliance in 2023

The beginning of 2023 has seen an increased focus on marketing compliance, particularly among brands in the banking, finance, and insurance sectors. Regulators are monitoring these brands closely to ensure they adhere to the rules and regulations. As a result, it is now the responsibility of the marketing team to understand marketing compliance and its impact on their processes, and to ensure compliance in all steps of their marketing campaigns. Failing to do so may result in fines and damage to the brand's reputation. To avoid these consequences, here are some tips to help safeguard your brand against non-compliance.

Featured Blog Image

A guide to evaluating online proofing software (Part II)

If you haven't read Part I of "A guide to evaluating online proofing software" then make sure you go back and do so before reading this post. It covers an essential phase in evaluating online proofing software so it shouldn't be missed. Otherwise stay here while we take a look at the second phase of the evaluation process: selecting the right online proofing software for your business.

Featured Blog Image

A guide to evaluating online proofing software (Part I)

It's one thing to realise you need online proofing software to enhance your team's work performance. It's another to find the right solution that does exactly that. Many businesses have gone in search of approval workflow software and, not fully understanding the selection process, have been burned with the wrong solution. Here's Part I of our guide to evaluating online proofing software to ensure you select the right one for your business. Before you even begin to research online proofing software, you first have to determine some internal processes and practices. This phase is often overlooked in the selection process and yet, it's a vital one.

Featured Blog Image

Admation?s digital asset management will change the way you work!!

Wit h an ever-increasing number of digital files to manage, it?s more important than ever for businesses to have an efficient management solution for housing their digital assets. In addition to its approval workflow, and project and resource management features, admation?s digital asset management (DAM) tool is something that every business should have. Here?s what it can do.

Featured Blog Image

5 Integrated Modules of Admation: Manage Marketing Operations Better

Previously we looked at some of the great benefits associated with a range of marketing and ad agency project management software in the marketplace. This week we're going to look at how admation integrates its many features to offer one complete solution for managing creative projects, from beginning to end.

Featured Blog Image

Benefits of integrating online proofing & project management software

As a standalone solution, online proofing tools offer many great benefits to marketers and ad agencies. Nonetheless, when you're juggling multiple projects at any one time it's a win-win if your online proofing tools are integrated with project management software. Here are some of the great benefits of combining these two handy solutions.

Featured Blog Image

Admation's new drag and drop feature streamlines marketing approval process

At admation, we strive to continuously improve our software, to ensureour user experience is 'getting better all the time'. Many of the updates and improvements our product team deliver come from our client's feedbackand requests.As an agile development team, we are able to quickly respond to these needs and deliver these changes. This is one of Admation's point of difference as a technology provider. This month, we delivered of heap of improvements across the software that collectively make admation more intuitive and continue tostreamline the approval process. However, the feature I am most excited to announce is theDrag and Drop file upload. Now when you are uploading files toadmation, youcan utilise thisDrag and Drop file upload. Rather than using the traditional browse and navigate method to upload a file, yousimply drag a file onto the admation screento upload the document to the project. Currently, this new feature can be accessed in thefollowing areas of admation: Uploading of multiple deliverable artworks during the New Project/Deliverable creation wizard Uploading of a single artwork on the Details tab of a deliverable Uploading artwork to many deliverables at the same time Uploading new assets to the Final Assets and Asset Library Our product team will continue to incorporate this new feature across otherareas of admation inthe coming months. Browser support for drag and drop file uploads is restricted to Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 10. All other browsers will revert to previous upload methods. To learn more about admation's key features and benefits, register for our webinar on demand now. {{cta('8d268aac-e480-4b8d-aa8c-1a2f72e2476c')}}

Featured Blog Image

Selecting Approval Workflow Software at the wrong time is risky!!

Selecting approval workflow software or agency project management software in response to a requirement for a new business pitch seems like an easy fix. I recommend, however, that you proceed with caution. If your business pitch is successful, you could be setting yourself up for failure.

Featured Blog Image

Stay in the driver?s seat when selecting project management software!

More and more brands are getting on board with project managment and approval workflow software. And why wouldn?t they? With inbuilt project management and online proofing tools and benefits such as greater transparency, better collaboration, less artwork revisions, staying on deadline and meeting budgets, it?s a no brainer.

Featured Blog Image

Benefits of digital agencies adopting project management software

The good news coming out of the SoDA Report on 'The State of Agency Workflow Management' is that 80% of the 170 agencies surveyed are utilising a version of project management software. Technology proves valuable to profit growth. 51% of the agencies using some type of Project Management Solution stated an overall net profit increase. In addition, 38% claim a profit increase of 11% or more.? SoDA Report on 'The State of Agency Workflow Management'

Featured Blog Image

Challenges faced by digital agencies not adopting project management

Recently I ran into an old colleague, Penny, who has started working for a small to mid sized digital agency. I asked her how it was going and she told me the agency had experienced a significant increase in clients and projects over the past twelve months. While this is great news for any business, Penny went on to reveal her workplace was chaotic. During its growth, the agency had not implemented any real processes to keep work in check, and it was still using email for approvals and Dropbox for file transfers. To keep up with deadlines, overtime had become the norm for staff who were spending much of their time being reactive (not proactive) when it came to projects. The owner, Penny added, was still keen to take on more clients and projects.

Featured Blog Image

Brand choose small digital agencies over traditional ad agencies

In 2014, digital marketing comprised 40% of the revenue made by US based ad agencies. These figures come as no surprise and echo a growing trend where brands are choosing small digital agencies over traditional ones for their online campaigns. The question then is: why are brands scaling back to smaller digital agencies to deliver their message?