For Brand-Defining Marketing, an Olympian Emerges at Speedo
Denise Teti, Director of Marketing + Sales Promotion for Speedo USA, is our Manager-X Award winner for Predictability in Planning. We spoke with Denise about how she manages to cut through the chaos and lead her team to excellence.
Why You Should Care that Marketing & IT Leaders are Collaborating More (Infographic)
Collaboration is the new way to work. We no longer make progress in the silos of our own departments, we synchronize the efforts of multiple teams to get projects out the door faster and with better results. 55% of marketing leaders say they're now collaborating more closely with IT leaders than ever before. But there are still many kinks to work out in the collaborative process. It is not easy to collaborate with new teams for the first time — especially other departments who are used to different lingo, processes, and mindsets. If you want to prevent your collaborative efforts from devolving into a war between right-brained and left-brained colleagues, check out this infographic to see the common challenges facing Marketing & IT collaboration, and then think about how your team can overcome those barriers. Sources: The Creative Group (TCG) and Robert Half Technology (RHT) How to improve collaboration between Marketing and IT professionals TCG, RHT, and Wrike have published several articles to help you think about how to overcome the collaboration problems between these two power groups in your organization. They're worth reading, so take a look: Can We Please Get Along? 10 Tips for Collaborating with IT Professionals The Great Creative-IT Divide: Top 10 CIO Concerns 3 Collaboration Tips for Enhancing Teamwork Why Every Company Needs a Culture of Collaboration
Welcome to DroneCo — Wrike's New Weekly Comic
It’s like Big Brother but with a lot more SCRUM Welcome to DroneCo, the Valley’s latest startup darling. DroneCo is creating quite a buzz with intelligent remote delivery drones. “We make delivery drones,” says founder Miles “Dot” Commadore. “But that’s not all—we’re engaging the future with synergistic-social convergence or, as I like to call it, SynSocCon." Like any tech company experiencing massive growth against intense competition, DroneCo has more than its fair share of drama and dysfunction. Lucky for you, Dot has agreed to let us take a weekly peek behind the scenes. Starting with the Marketing department, we’ll bring you candid, uncensored moments from the conference rooms, cubicles, and brightly-colored, never-used “Creativity Pods.” Meet the Marketing Department Don't miss out on any DroneCo antics! There are several ways to stay up to date on DroneCo comics as they're released: Subscribe to the comic to catch every episode. And check back on Monday, April 6 to check out the first strip! Follow DroneCo on Twitter Follow our DroneCo Pinterest board We look forward to having you join us on this journey. Check in each week to see how DroneCo manages its way through the ups and downs of startup life!
Wrike's New Marketing Campaign Brings Work Management to the Masses
At Wrike, we're passionate about work management. So much so, that we often ask ourselves "How can we get our software in the hands of even more people to make the world more productive?" One day, inspiration struck. An ambitious new campaign was born. In this video, you'll look behind the scenes at our newest marketing effort. We're sure you'll be as excited as we are! Look for your Wrike trial CD in the mail this April! The beauty of this campaign is how easy it is for you to get started. Simply pop the trial CD into the player and your Wrike experience begins. Let us know what you think of our new campaign in the comments!
Wrike's API Helps a Marketing Team Create Custom Reports Automatically
Northcutt’s team of inbound marketing experts takes care of several simultaneous projects for each of its multiple clients. No wonder they need to collect and analyze large amounts of data on a daily basis. But fortunately, Wrike's API made marketing efficiency much easier for them! Before adopting Wrike, Northcutt used Base?amp without much success. According to Corey Northcutt, the team’s project manager, it seemed to slow the team down even more, instead of making it easier to work on several ongoing projects at the same time. What the team was looking for was an easy way to track the status of each campaign and to report on the progress to the clients easily. Now, with Wrike’s help, they have a complete overview of tasks in the pipeline for each client. But the main key to success turned out to be Wrike’s API, which saved them more than five hours of work per week on creating reports. Since the team needed to get detailed information on the progress in each area of work, Wrike’s API helped them to retrieve this data from each folder automatically. Here are more details of how they achieved such great results. Pulling custom data with Wrike’s API. First, Corey Northcutt created folders to indicate each area of inbound marketing: Building external links, creating social media content, website optimization, etc. The integration they built with Wrike’s API automatically pulls the data from each folder into the special Google Drive spreadsheets. By looking at the spreadsheets, the project manager instantly sees the number of tasks assigned to each team member in each area of work, as well as the percentage of completed goals and the number of days left until the end of the current project. There are separate tables for active, backlogged, completed and deferred tasks. Whenever the task is updated in Wrike, the new data automatically gets updated in the corresponding table cell. Since the updates are collected in real time, team members are always sure that the table data is up-to-date. This way, Northcutt's team creates detailed and accurate monthly reports for clients much faster than ever. Additionally, Corey Northcutt set up custom widgets with tasks of each stage on his dashboard. As a result, with every login, Corey Northcutt instantly sees all current marketing initiatives at each stage and the people who are responsible for them. If some of the assignments become overdue, they are highlighted in red at the top of the list, so it's easy to quickly track them and adjust the deadlines appropriately. What about your team? Have you considered using Wrike’s API to integrate it with your favorite tools and optimize your work? Then let us know in comments! “Wrike succeeded at simplifying some of our really complex problems. It allowed me to manage tasks via simple task lists and a Gantt chart while letting all the complex organization happen in our reports. We also now use the Wrike API to help generate our monthly digest summaries for reporting, which is a better alternative than paying for a solution that wasted someone's time by forcing them to manually re-compile data by hand each month.” —Corey Northcutt, CEO at Northcutt
Product Launch Success: Using Wrike to Connect Marketers and Developers
Launching a new product is a huge undertaking, with the future of the business often riding on its success. You need every team pulling together to coordinate efforts and prevent costly mistakes. Efficient collaboration is essential, especially between two key teams: developers and marketing. Developers to listen to customer feedback and build the ideal solution, and marketers and their marketing program manager to speak to customer needs and capture their interest. Yet getting these two very different teams on the same page can be extremely difficult. They have different processes, priorities, and oftentimes, communication preferences. And if these departments aren’t in the same office, things only get more complicated. Enter Wrike’s project management tool. Breaking Down Barriers Between Teams With a major product launch on the horizon, marketers and developers are both hard at work. The development team is putting in overtime building features, testing code, and squashing bugs, and marketing is tirelessly preparing campaign materials and ensuring they have an accurate, up-to-date picture of the end product. Both teams are sending a volley of emails and files back and forth, and attending a slew of meetings to share status updates that are often out of date as soon as the meeting ends. It’s inefficient, important emails are easily buried, and teams waste time working with outdated information until the next status meeting. Instead of scrambling to stay up to speed, give your marketing and development teams a shared, real-time workspace where they can collaborate without so much time and effort. With Wrike, each team can see what their colleagues are doing and where in the process they are without sending emails or attending time-consuming meetings. Everyone has access to the information, resources, and people they need in one spot, so nothing stands in the way of the best possible product launch. 4 Ways to Get Your Team on the Same Page 1. Shared Custom Dashboards Clear priorities are a must for delivering products on time. Set up a custom Dashboard for your product launch and share it with everyone involved. It's easy to keep tabs on where critical tasks stand and who's responsible for what by glancing at your widgets. 2. Subtasks Link interdepartmental tasks for better organization and coordination between teams. Create a subtask for a press release or brochure that's attached directly to the main feature task so your marketing team has the latest details and can always see its current status. Or, use Wrike’s Zapier integration to automatically create a new task whenever an issue or feature is created in Jira. Your marketing team will always have the latest updates and accurate details without having to interrupt developers. 3. @Mention User Groups Use the @Mention feature to send instant notifications with requests for feedback, instruction, or approval to individual teammates or entire user groups. A developer can @mention the entire marketing team to notify them of a delayed release or an important new feature in a matter of seconds. All @mentions and new assignments are collected in each user's notification center, so nothing gets overlooked. 4. Custom Workflows Every company has its own optimal processes, which is why it's important to use a flexible tool that supports how your teams work. Create custom workflows in Wrike to take tasks and projects all the way from initial development to launch. Handoffs between developers and marketing are as simple as a few mouse clicks, since teammates can simply update a task to pass it on to the next stage in the workflow. Keep Teams Connected with Wrike Wrike makes it easy for all your teams to work together to launch products faster, decrease time to market, and increase market share. With a real-time, collaborative workspace, everyone can see what their teammates are doing and can easily align efforts for improved communication, greater efficiency, and ultimately, a growing business. See how Wrike can tap your team’s potential by starting a free trial.
7 Secrets of the Best Marketing Operations Teams
By Lynn Hunsaker and Gary Katz, President/CEO and Chairman/Chief Strategy Officer, respectively, of Marketing Operations Partners Value creation is the ultimate measure of success in business: value to customers, shareholders, alliances, employees, and the community at-large. In the quest to be best, follow the money, or better yet, be the one that enables value (money, capability, opportunity) to be created. Marketing Operations is a role that can facilitate the whole marketing department responsibilities in value creation. Here are 7 secrets for success: 1. Know which side your bread is buttered on It’s a fact of life that you get ahead faster when you cater to whoever holds the purse strings. For Marketing, that’s first and foremost your customers. If your marketing is out of sync with content, timing, and methods that customers prefer, there’s not much point. Always start with WHO. This applies not only to messaging, but also to your strategic plans, tactical plans, process designs, people, tools, performance measurement – really, everything that Marketing does. This analysis and management of stakeholder needs is also known as ecosystem. 2. Set your CMO up for success Going hand-in-hand with the big picture of the ecosystem, the next layer in the bread-buttering hierarchy is enterprise objectives. Your CMO will be successful to the extent that the C-team perceives strong fit and contribution to their strategic goals. This is the WHY of the Marketing organization. You can align everything in Marketing with what the C-suite cares about by using a technique called cascading objectives. It’s the logical starting point for all marketing plans and performance monitoring. This orientation is the basis for your Marketing strategy. 3. Be a strategic enabler Someone needs to ensure the strategy comes to life, and that’s you. See yourself as a facilitator of Marketing’s success. Standards and oversight to help all marketers achieve enterprise goals are the WHAT of your role. It’s not about bureaucracy, but rather, connecting dots between strategy and execution, connecting people, connecting diverse data, and connecting interdependent processes. This is also known as governance or guidance. 4. Formalize the methods to your madness Process diagrams and procedures go a long way in accelerating necessities like onboarding, minimizing duplication of resources and effort across geographies and lines of business, and maintaining know-how when key persons depart. This is the HOW for your delivery of the why and the what for the who. Everyone’s work methods in Marketing comprise processes. 5. Remember: What gets measured gets done Help every Marketing sub-function select metrics that monitor early signals in their work. Typically, metrics are focused at the extremes of the spectrum: click-throughs (activity) and revenue (outcome). Don’t confuse outputs of a process to be early signals. These are junctures within a group’s work that signify potential re-work or scrap, or otherwise, potential successful outputs and outcomes. This is the SO WHAT? of everything Marketing does. By monitoring early signals before stakeholders can see outputs and outcomes, marketers are empowered to make adjustments that are efficient and effective. Measurement of progress is commonly known as metrics. 6. Prevent accelerators from becoming imploders Technology is intended to be an accelerator of everything. Select technology per who, why, how, what, and so what. When it’s selected in a vacuum, or without a firm understanding of the preceding, technology often derails strategy. Rushing to technology prematurely typically requires people and processes to bend in ways that aren’t sustainable. Conversations are taken over by what’s needed by the technology, instead of what’s needed for strategic opportunities. Make technology choices wisely to ensure Marketing’s strategic impact. 7. Ensure the horse is before the cart The combination of processes, metrics, and technology forms Marketing’s infrastructure: the vehicle to get from point A to point Z. This is the means for all the moving parts to function as intended. Remember that who, why, and how – ecosystem, strategy, and guidance – inform the necessary characteristics of infrastructure. The seven secrets of the best Marketing Operations teams fit together as shown in this framework.Notice the flow beginning with the ecosystem. Metrics, especially early signals, indicate what needs to be adjusted in every component of the framework. In our benchmark study, Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity, this framework represented the secrets of the best Marketing Operations teams, and is your path to value creation. It’s the lifeblood of your enterprise. In turn, it’s the ultimate measure of your success. These seven secrets can take root in your Marketing organization readily through our new Marketing Future Forum, which allows you to personalize these ideas to your business, access them on-demand in half-hour bites, and share them across your marketing organization. Join our Leap Day announcement webcast to learn how you can ready your Marketing organization for the future. Register now at http://ow.ly/YDCV1 Author Bios: Gary Katz, Chairman/Chief Strategy Officer and Lynn Hunsaker, President/CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, an organization that aims to transform marketing organizations as a value center via Accountability, Alignment, and Agility.
How to Automate Marketing Project Creation with Duplication
It's Friday afternoon and a new project has just landed in your lap: a new banner for SXSW must be submitted by Tuesday, and yet you're still dealing with your backlog of work from this week. To get the banner done quickly, you'll probably have to copy and paste all the information from the tasks you used in the most recent banner project, right? Wrong. With Wrike you have the power of templates and duplication at your fingertips. What are Templates, and Why Use Duplication? Quick Recap: Templates are easily duplicable projects that include all attachments, tasks and subtasks, text descriptions, assignees, time durations, and work dependancies — all of which can be included or removed. If you find yourself constantly repeating the same multi-step projects over and over, then you will greatly benefit from creating a batch of project templates. This will mean you can easily pop into your 'Templates' folder in Wrike, bring up the banner design template, and quickly duplicate it for your 11th-hour project. Beyond mere speed and convenience, templates also help your team be thorough in your work. Using an existing, tested template ensures you don't accidentally overlook crucial steps which could have led to delays, errors, revisions, and general confusion (e.g. who is working on which part of the process). Easy Duplication Using Project Templates in Wrike Here's the step-by-step process for quickly duplicating projects from templates: FIND IT: Head into your template folder in Wrike and find the "Banner design template" folder/project that your team created in the past. DUPLICATE IT: Right click on the "Banner design template" folder/project and choose "Duplicate." With Wrike's latest update, you can immediately select the destination folder for your duplicated project. CUSTOMIZE IT: Name your duplicated project (e.g. "SXSW Banner Design"), and specify the appropriate prefix to include before the name of every task and subtask (e.g. "SXSW"). Prefixes will help you create Reports or Dashboards, and they'll keep your work organized and concise — instead of creating an ambiguous "Design draft 1" task every time you duplicate, using your prefix you'll create "SXSW - Design draft 1" for easy identification. You can also specify whether you want to copy tasks with or without their descriptions, attachments, assignees, custom fields' values, and more. Once created, the new project will be highlighted within your folder tree. Learn more about creating project templates in Wrike Check out our blog post for more info on creating and duplicating project templates in Wrike. And as always, if you have any questions feel free to get in touch with our Support team.
Marketing Agencies: Are You Showing Your Clients the Love?
True story: my colleague was preparing a launch video for one of Silicon Valley's tech giants, and when they were 90% done, their project manager finally showed the clients the almost-complete version of the final deliverable. The clients said they hated it. It wasn't what they wanted. Change it or else. The marketing management was a disaster on so many levels: the team wasted time working on something the clients didn't want, the project manager failed the team by waiting until the 11th hour to ask for client feedback, and the clients waited for something they could've easily outsourced to a different, more communicative agency. As it stood, the team was able to pull some last-minute all-nighters to get the video up to the client's standards. But it was a close call. And yet, this is a situation that is all too common in any creative services organization. So how can a marketing agency manage client expectations better, and avoid such stressful situations? The simplest answer: nurture your client relationship like you would a sweetheart. Here are 3 ways to treat your clients like your sweetheart (and win big in your clients' eyes). 1. Get to Know Them How do relationships start? You get to know the other person. You go out on a date and find out what movies he likes, what hobbies she's into, what he's all about, what values she believes in. If you ever hope to serve your client to the best of your ability, then you have to know what motivates them and what they hope to accomplish. That means investing time to meet your clients face to face, take them outside of the office for drinks, and discover why they do what they do. Insights like these will help you understand where they're coming from when they ask for revisions to your project, or if you get into difficult standoffs about project direction. 2. Communicate Constantly We all know relationships don't work without constant communication. You have to call/text/Snapchat your better half, tell her you miss her, and talk about your day so that you can stay involved in each other's lives, even when you're apart. Managing clients properly means seeking client feedback early and often. You collaborate with your client in an ongoing process to produce something you and the client can both be proud of. By keeping them in the loop you avoid surprises, and you feel like you've accomplished something together as opposed to handing off a completed project as part of a one-sided relationship. By proactively sharing status updates with a project management tool like Wrike, you can also head off persistent “checking in” messages. Clients see how a project is developing at every stage, can look in on progress whenever they want, and are able to give you their insight as needed. This transparent communication will reassure your client. 3. Give Them Something They Want When birthdays and holidays come around and you want to give a gift to proclaim your love, do you give something cheap and generic? Absolutely not. You have to find out what he really wants and then to the best of your ability (and budget) you get it customized with his name, or find something that’s just the right look. Managing a client’s expectations is the same. Ideally your marketing project will have a clearly defined scope and a list of very specific deliverables that the clients have agreed upon. Your job as an agency is to deliver exactly what they want — on time and under budget. Solicit client feedback early and often so slight adjustments can be made throughout the process. The end result should be a deliverable that's exactly what they were looking for. Show your appreciation this Valentine's Day With Valentine's Day just around the corner, take this opportunity to express your appreciation for your clients' business. But more than that, take the appropriate steps to make the relationship work long-term. That means excellent communication skills and excellent service. Read Next:Project Manager from Hell [Slideshare]4 Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders
10 Skills Required for Great Digital Marketers (Infographic)
"Great men are not born great, they grow great." —Mario Puzo, The Godfather Being a great digital marketer is partially intuition and the ability to speak the language of your audience; but a larger part is continually studying and learning new skills to make sure your marketing team is evolving at an equal pace with the ever-changing digital world. Below are 10 skills you need today to go above and beyond in digital marketing. Take a look, and see what you can improve. Follow a project management methodology Understand SEO best practices Communicate with technical staff and upper management Be able to create or provide direction on creating a digital marketing strategy Understand email marketing best practices Manage your marketing staff and the costs incurred to provide the best outcomes Evaluate your social media options Be able to continually provide business justification of your projects Understand Google Analytics to interpret and communicate data, metrics and marketing analytics Know and drive the entire team toward your project goals Source: Premium IT Solutions What else does it take to be great at digital marketing? If you've worked with great marketers, or you've honed your own skills year after year, share your wisdom in the comments. What does a great digital marketer need these days?
Wrike as Marketing Project Management Software
We prepared a video in which our users, Philip and Laura, tell you how Wrike helps them with their marketing project management. Additionally, you will learn how to: create tasks attach files to tasks set the due date of tasks add folders organize tasks in folders delegate tasks to your associates give the responsible party 24/7 access to tasks be notified about changes in tasks and, finally, how to get control and a unique visibility of operations Watch the full-sized video: How a manager plans a Product Launch in Wrike Feel free to ask questions and make comments. We’ll be happy to give you additional details about how you can benefit from Wrike.
14 Essential Books for Content Marketers
Whether you’re just starting out in content marketing, or you're a veteran looking for a few new tricks, add these 14 titles to your bookshelf for a shot of inspiration, a review of the fundamentals or some information on marketing tools to add to your arsenal. Content Marketing Basics 1. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less (2013)From Joe Pulizzi, head of Content Marketing Institute, this book is the perfect primer on all things content marketing. Pulizzi explains why good content is essential for attracting customers, and takes readers through the process of curating and creating effective content. 2. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (2012)CCO at MarketingProfs, Entrepreneur columnist, and keynote speaker Ann Handley offers tips to find your company’s unique voice, discover which topics resonate with your customers, and get the most out of social media. She covers all kinds of content, from podcasts and webinars to eBooks and blog posts, and presents concrete strategies for producing each. 3. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly (4th ed., 2013)Online Marketing strategist David Meerman Scott wrote nearly 400 pages of advice on developing your brand's reputation and authority online. He covers case studies and real-world examples of companies with successful content marketing strategies (and a few examples of what not to do), plus platform-specific tips for social media sites like Google Plus, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 4. Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand (2011)“Be a publisher.” “Engage your customers.” You may know the core principles of content marketing, but how do you actually do them? Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi (again!) offer a practical 12-step guide to building a content engine, from developing a personal strategy to finding the right distribution channels. Writing Tips 5. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (2014)Another bestseller from Ann Handley, this book includes best practices, tips for reluctant writers, and a “Things Marketers Write” section with guidance on 17 kinds of content that marketers are most often asked to create. 6. How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times (2013)In the age of microblogs, Tweets, and status updates, marketers need to be convincing and concise. Pick up a copy of writing professor Roy Peter Clark's book for a guide to crafting compelling headlines, Tweets, blog posts, and more. Social & SEO 7. Social Media Explained: Untangling the World’s Most Misunderstood Business Trend (2014)Social media consultant Mark Schaefer dives into the psychology and sociology behind social media. He not only explains why you should be doing social media marketing, he helps you formulate a real plan of attack. Each chapter ends with a series of questions to help you apply the book’s principles and create your own social media strategy. 8. Big Book of Content Marketing: Use Strategies and SEO Tactics to Build Return-Oriented KPIs for Your Brand's Content (2013)SEO pro Andreas Ramos teaches readers how to boost content marketing results with effective SEO strategies. He also covers a range of distribution strategies, and outlines key metrics to analyze your success and make improvements. 9. Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing (2012)Lee Odden gives his top tips on how to combine SEO and social media with content marketing to make your content marketing efforts more effective. Learn how to plan a content strategy that will get the best results for your company, and measure the business value of every effort. Getting Your Content to Stand Out 10. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (2013)It’s not enough to develop high-quality content — it must be placed in the right context in order to grab your target audience’s attention and spread to new potential customers. Social media and brand building expert Gary Vaynerchuk teaches you how to create content tailored to succeed on social media. If a “jab” is a touchpoint, and a “right hook” is the knockout punch that’s sure to convert, Vaynerchuk shows the best combination of jabs and hooks to nurture leads and win new business. 11. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2006)This classic from renowned psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini gives a peek into the psychology of persuasion. Learn what drives people to say “yes” — and how to use principles like social proof and perceived scarcity to create effective CTAs that get audiences to take the next step. Absolutely essential for email marketers! 12. The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One (2013)Brand strategist and award-winning business blogger Bernadette Jiwa explains how to tell your brand’s story and establish powerful emotional connections with your target audience. Pick up a copy to learn how to differentiate your brand from competitors and earn the loyalty of your customers. Creating Visual Content 13. The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand (2014)As the average attention span continues to shrink, visual content is becoming more and more important for grabbing and holding your customers’ attention. Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Giolio outline strategies for the best marketing videos, infographics, Slideshare presentations, and other visual media. 14. Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work (2011)Sometimes words just aren’t enough. Explaining complex concepts, making ideas memorable, and snagging your audience’s attention needs the perfect visual. Dan Roam's book shows you how to liven up your content and engage your audience through visual media. What are your content marketing must-reads? Even in an industry that changes quicker than you can turn the page, these books will keep your marketing skills sharp! What content marketing books have you read? Share your recommendations in the comments! And if you're looking for more great reads, check out these 5 Best Project Management Books for Beginners and Accidental Project Managers and 15 Books Every Manager Should Read.