“I love deadlines!”
Said no creative professional ever. Creativity takes time. And producing great creative content takes even more time. This is why so many creative professionals report their creativity is suffering. In fact, more than 70% say they feel pressure to be productive, not creative, at work.
But missing clients’ deadlines is bad for business, and as a result, many creative teams attempt to solve this problem by extending their resource capacity with a growing network of partners and freelancers.
On the surface, this seems to be a logical solution. However, if you take a deeper dive, you’ll discover that as more stakeholders are introduced into the creative process, it becomes more difficult to ensure everyone involved has visibility into projects and the ability to easily provide input and approve assets.
Large, distributed creative teams typically struggle:
- Project requirements are unclear.
- Competing opinions create confusion.
- Priorities frequently shift.
- Feedback and approval processes are patched together, forcing projects to move forward and then retreat.
The end result? Deadlines are still missed. Creative quality still suffers. And your creative professionals are more dissatisfied than ever.
But successful creative teams know these five secrets to producing great creative content on a deadline:
- Know Where Projects Stand
Like any other team, creative teams need visibility into projects in order to make the best use of their time. With the workflow management functionality found in Marketing Project Management software, you can track projects throughout the project lifespan and receive real-time alerts and notifications. Workflow progress becomes more transparent, allowing you to catch obstacles early on and avoid missed deadlines. In addition, managers can monitor alignment with priorities and allocate resources in accordance with these priorities. Ultimately, on-time delivery is better, your creative team’s productivity is increased, and creative quality improves.
- Capture the Conversation
Marketing Project Management software with online collaboration and proofing tools allows all of your stakeholders to discuss creative assets online, in one location. Comments from multiple stakeholders can be made directly on the creative file itself, and your team members benefit from a record of feedback, so it’s easy to retrace steps when necessary. Projects move forward with clear creative direction, enabling you to meet deadlines and deliver high quality creative content.
- Remove the Bottlenecks
Nothing slows a project down more than waiting for an approval. With the automated approval routing features found in Marketing Project Management technology, creative teams can configure approval paths that ensure reviewers act when they need to act. Even better: creative content is instantly available for anyone to review online without having to export a PDF every time a change is made, so there’s no need to route files for approval via email or (gasp!) hard copy.
- Let the Assets Come to You
Creatives professionals’ output is better when they have immediate access to brand standard, approved artwork files. With Digital Asset Manager tools found in Marketing Project Management technology, you can store all of your creative assets (pictures, photographs, videos, logos, etc.) in one single location. Rather than ask your creative professionals to search their own hard drives or email inboxes for the right asset, or even worse, risk your assets’ integrity by allowing external partners and freelancers to manage them, you can simply create a central repository where the right version of each asset is stored.
- Track Every Step
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different outcome. Break this cycle by using a Marketing Project Management solution that gives you the project visibility you need to set effective strategies for improving your creative process. The right metrics will allow you to set performance baselines, identify and eliminate obstacles in your end-to-end creative process, and ultimately make time for your creators to do what they love best – create.
Marketing Project Management software positions you to continually move the needle on a creative project’s progress as well as its quality. And the best solution will drive better business performance for your team as well as for your clients.
To learn more about how you can align all of your creative professionals to achieve better results for all, download our e-book: Eliminate Reactivity and Enable Creativity in Marketing.
