Ultimate Guide to Marketing Resource Management Organize Every Asset

Ultimate Guide to Marketing Resource Management Organize Every Asset Marketing departments don’t have it easy these days. If you’re a Marketing Manager it can often feel like you’re trying to tame a multi-headed beast. Back in the day, Marketing Managers had only a couple of channels to manage. Today, there’s about a hundred things you *could* be doing and endless channels vying for your limited attention and resources. And it’s all further complicated by complex team structures, collaboration hurdles, and the necessity to pivot at the drop of a hat. It can kinda feel like you’re expected to move mountains AND be the goose that lays the golden egg WHILE juggling fire. Enter Marketing Resource Management†¦ or MRM if you’re into acronyms. So What is Marketing Resource Management Anyway? Marketing Resource Management sounds like something reserved for mega-corporations planning global domination. In reality, it’s a solution that can help marketing teams both large and small accomplish more, in less time. Everything a Marketer needs to know about Marketing Resource Management.MRM software is designed to assist teams in navigating and managing the complexity of today’s marketing environment. (It has also been known to keep Marketing Managers from pulling all their hair out in frustration.) MRM tools usually help solve the following marketing problems: Strategic planning Budgeting Project management Creative content development Asset distribution Collaboration Download Your Free Marketing Management Templates Before committing to an MRM tool, check out some of these free templates to get your team organized. Marketing Strategy Guide (PDF):  Plan an entire marketing strategy efficiently (with team collaboration in mind from the start). Marketing Project Calendar Template (Excel):  Collaborate on project timelines with a single version of truth. Marketing Project Management Plan (Doc):  Get all of your team on the same page before every project starts. Marketing Project Checklist (Excel):  Keep track of due dates and workflows with this spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are made for strategic planning. Get on board with Marketing Resource Management,...Strategic Planning For Marketing Resource Management Spreadsheets just aren’t made for the needs of marketers and strategic planning. Marketers need to see interactive views, updated in real-time of how each activity fits into a larger campaign. Not static rows in a complex spreadsheet that only you, the manager, can make sense of. MRM tools allow marketing managers to easily communicate with everyone (from intern to CMO) how each task, project, and campaign contributes to accomplishing a higher strategic goal. Things to think about You may want your MRM tool to have read-only access. Just because your boss wants to see everything that’s going on, doesn’t mean they should be able to edit and reassign tasks on a granular level. Many Marketing Managers like to see an agile view of what each person on their team is working on that day, week, month etc. AND a calendar view of campaign duration and overlap. Budgeting Managing your marketing budget isn’t just about tracking media spend or CPC on paid search. While that is undoubtedly an important part, MRM is also about maximizing your team’s output. By improving visibility into team tasks on a micro level, you can maximize task allocations AND ensure individuals aren’t being overloaded. As the old adage goes, watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. Things to think about Your MRM tool should have some team reporting capabilities to track task output, etc. From a monetary expenditure standpoint, what type of tracking capabilities do you need and for what channels? Project Management Marketing Managers are de facto project managers. Aside from all your day-to-day marketing tasks, you’re also responsible for coordinating internal resources, developing detailed project plans AND monitoring progress of all your campaigns. This is one of the biggest benefits of MRM. An MRM tool will give you a firm grasp on your team’s progress and workload - at any given moment. Allowing you to delegate, assign, and reassign projects tasks, so you can effectively manage your team’s week in a more effective way. No more lost emails, endless chat threads and unnecessary meetings. Things to think about Can you templatetize a workflow? This ability can save you a ton of time by auto-assigning tasks and due dates to each member of your team. You won’t have to think through each project’s steps time and time again. Is there an easy way to suss out what everyone is working on an when? MRM should solve your issues with visibility into who is working on what and when.Creative Content Development Producing great content and visuals take a lot more than just a designer. There are often several people involved in editing, approving and mocking-up until something is ready to be seen by an external audience. Does the lack of a clear approval process cause bottlenecks for your team and slow down time to market? MRM can help solve this by creating a central hub where everyone knows who is responsible for what and where a project is within its lifecycle. One of the best parts about this you no longer have to endlessly chase down approvals. Things to think about Are individuals notified when something is ready for approval? Do external clients or agencies need to be involved in the process? Asset Distribution Have you ever spent way more time than necessary trying to track down an image or logo? Even with your entire organization using Dropbox or Office 365 it can be a challenge. Different naming conventions coupled with a folder structure that no one follows can make someone want to bang their head against the wall. Most MRM systems also have built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities. DAM components centralize a company’s digital assets, which eliminates the need to spend hours tracking down logos, images, header graphics, etc. Things to think about There can always be a bit of pushback from your team when changing the status quo.   This is often one of the more difficult areas of MRM to implement since people are used to looking for things in a certain place. Collaboration Collaboration is often one of the biggest challenges faced by marketing teams. The challenge usually stems from the need to have many specialities involved in the production process. Copywriters, designers, social media strategists, bloggers, email specialists, project managers, maybe even an agency or a client†¦ Solving the collaboration conundrum without an MRM tool usually means†¦ †¦ meetings on top of meetings†¦ †¦ countless emails flying back and forth†¦ †¦ and little time for working on *actual* marketing projects. Using MRM software creates a central repository for all project related communication, assets, tasks, and timelines for better and more efficient collaboration. Things to think about In Cella’s 2018 study of the creative industry, 71% of creative leaders named not enough time to complete work in a quality manner as their number one challenge. By simply implementing better collaboration/workflow processes, teams could reduce work by 30-50%. What a Marketing Manager Should Know About MRM Tools A time-strapped marketer’s problem is exacerbated by what we call Makeshift Marketing. You’re hacking multiple tools to manage your resources and marketing projects†¦ none of which are made for a marketing team. You need one tool that’s made for you. Here’s a list of some MRM tools to check out is an all-in-one marketing project management platform. Claim to fame? Task social templates: Save time using workflow templates and social sharing templates so you never have to reinvent the wheel. Built-in social media scheduling: Plan all your social media sharing directly in for one less tool to manage. ReQueue - smart social automation: Automatically re-share social campaigns to drive more traffic to your site. Agile view (Team Management Dashboard): See daily scrum summaries of each team member’s tasks. Calendar view: High-level views of every campaign, email, social message, etc. in an easy to see calendar view. Percolate Percolate is a cloud-based Content Marketing platform designed for enterprise customers. It integrates with enterprise CMSs and business intelligence platforms. Claim to fame? Kanban style workboards DAM Content metadata Integrated campaigns NewsCred NewsCred is an enterprise Content Marketing platform specializing in integrated marketing campaigns. Newscred enhances productivity with content workflows designed for an integrated team. The platform’s workflow allows for assigning tasks and deadlines to ensure your team is on track with their content marketing. Here are a few other features: Integrated campaigns In-app keyword research DAM Content advisory services Kapost Kapost is a software solution for B2B enterprise organizations aiming to solve their content marketing and content creation hurdles. Kapost does not operate as a calendar-based platform. It has a visual timeline to plan and create content. Customer insights ensure teams are driving their content strategy in the right direction. Features include: Content consulting Kanban board style overview Custom tagging by persona/buyer stage MRM Challenges Marketers May Face Marketing Resource Management aims to solve a lot of challenges facing modern marketing teams†¦ *BUT* implementing an MRM system and sticking to it has challenges in and of itself. Firstly, gaining internal support from the C-suite and your marketing team can be your first hurdle. Teams grow accustomed to the status quo, even if it’s broken and a total time suck. Your C-suite might be reluctant to open the purse strings for yet ANOTHER tool. They’ve grown weary of every tool promising the world only to be slowly phased out in favor of the status quo. This brings us to the first challenge†¦ overcoming the status quo.