Google for Work Q&A: FootSteps Marketing
FootSteps Marketing — a digital marketing agency that specializes in providing websites and services to retailers in the hardware, outdoor, or archery industries — took time to share their experience using the integrations between Wrike and Google for Work. Their main focus as a company is partnering with larger organizations to provide affordable marketing solutions for their members and retailers, so they need the right tools in place to help their team work efficiently. This how Google for Work and Wrike have helped them reach success: 1. Tell us about your team and the role it plays in your company. Our initial need for Wrike stemmed from our Marketing Services (MS) department. They work as an external digital marketing agency for many retailers. Currently, we have 5 people on the production team for the MS department. Day-to-day, this team creates email marketing campaigns, social media posts and campaigns, and website landing pages. They also update websites on behalf of our clients. There is a high level of interaction that has to take place between them, as well as a high volume of tasks that need to be filtered through the team. 2. What were the goals that led you to connect Wrike and Google for Work? We work with many retailers in hardware, the outdoor industry, etc., and much of the content we use is repeated in our campaigns. Since not all of our clients participate in the same promotions at the same time, we needed a system that would allow us to keep track of a large volume of similar tasks. Due to the crossover, we needed the ability to segment our tasks by activity, and mass-edit tasks (such as rescheduling, etc.). All of our marketing requests are sent to us via email, so the Wrike Gmail gadget was a critical feature for us to efficiently get these requests into a tasking system. 3. How have Wrike and Google for Work helped your team reach its goals? Since implementing Wrike + Google Apps, we've become much more efficient in our workflows. The ability to create tasks directly from email is the biggest time-saver. To make work easier to track, we have now created a digital marketing plan template for our clients to make selections. Their selections are sent to us in a spreadsheet, which we then directly import into Wrike, rather than manually logging every marketing plan (as we did before). Our web development team is also able to use Wrike to keep track of our web development whiteboard, completely eliminating our prior system of passing around a document. This helps with efficiency, as everything for our teams can be kept in one place. 4. What improvements have you seen since implementing Wrike + Google for Work? Our overall collaboration, organization, and management of tasks has improved drastically. Wrike and Google Apps have helped each department gain transparency into other departments, alleviating the need for more emails or lengthy discussions. Share your story in the comments. How are you using Wrike + Google for Work to gain transparency into your projects? If you're a lover of Wrike + Google for Work, join our Wrike Google Apps Partner Program. You can learn everything you need to know about the program here.
Why Your Marketing and Creative Teams Can't Get Along (Infographic)
Marketers: Do you bang your head against the wall after receiving yet another "final” design that completely disregards the creative brief and your feedback on previous iterations? Designers: Have you ever strained a muscle rolling your eyes at marketers who leave vague feedback or stretch the original scope of the project? Marketing and creative teams must work closely together simply due to the nature of their work. But working side-by-side, day-by-day doesn't automatically mean those teams have a strong collaborative relationship. Like any relationship, it takes commitment to nurture and maintain. Take heart, however, if you're on either of these teams and struggling to work well with the other. A few simple tweaks to your communication style can make all the difference. As this infographic reveals, most of the major sticking points between marketers and creatives boil down to poor communication: Fewer than 40% of marketers say design teams follow the creative brief or ask questions to clarify expectations. 70% of marketers say their creative team doesn’t follow a transparent process, so marketers are left in the dark until the final product is delivered. Fewer than 30% of creatives agree that marketers give useful and timely feedback. However, 46% of marketers say they do. Fewer than 23% of creatives think marketers brief new projects clearly. Source: Visually Moving forward as a team With a more mindful approach to communication and a little honest self-reflection, marketing and creative teams can start working together to achieve better results — in less time and with fewer headaches. The right collaboration tool can also go a long way in improving communication and transparency, and achieving productive integrated marketing communications. For help finding the right software solution for your team, check out Wrike for Marketers.
3 Questions to Make Your Marketing Technology Stack Even More Powerful
Marketing technologies can be powerful assets, helping you automate routine tasks, improve customer engagement, and coordinate and collaborate with your team. But you only reap the full benefits when your tools work together, fitting naturally into your established processes and tangibly moving the needle when it comes to converting customers. Just because a tool seems useful, doesn't necessarily mean you should use it — and adopting too many just gums up the works. So when it comes to setting up or revising your marketing technology stack, ask yourself these three questions to identify where adding a tool might be helpful, as well as where you can easily streamline. 1. "Where does this tool fit into the customer journey?" As a marketer, your customer personas and detailed buyer's journey should always be top of mind. Take a look at your customer journey and list which of your tools contribute to each step. This will help you see gaps where new marketing asset management software could help you out, as well as identify unnecessary or overlapping technologies. 2. "Does this tool help convert prospects?" A popular tool may help you tweet 1,000 times a day, but if your customers aren't on Twitter, what's the point? Look at the data and be realistic about which technologies make a real difference when it comes to conversion rates and team productivity. 3. "What if this tool didn't exist?" Although it’s only a hypothetical, taking this question seriously can help you see other ways of accomplishing the same objective, think creatively, and streamline the number of tools you're using (and paying for). What's Next? Asking these questions will help you be strategic in building an effective marketing technology stack that helps you accomplish — and even exceed — your goals. Free Marketing Tech Map Template Download our free eBook, 5 Steps to Transforming Marketing Operations For Maximum Growth, for a simple template you can use to start building or improving your own marketing toolkit.
7 Resolutions All Marketers Should Make for a Successful 2017
Time moves fast—but the marketing industry moves even faster. Changing customer needs, new campaign management tools and technologies, and emerging trends make it difficult to keep up and continue serving up fresh campaigns. Now that 2017 is here, it’s time for marketers everywhere to review their strategies and make some new resolutions. What should you focus your efforts and resources on in the coming year? What ineffective strategies or old habits should you leave behind? Which trends will have the greatest impact on your business? Find out in the infographic below: [caption id="attachment_421020" align="aligncenter" width="626"] Infographic by MDG Advertising[/caption] Set Your Marketing Team Up for Success in 2017 Looking for a complete marketing solution to drive your marketing and creative teams? Check out Wrike for Marketers to enhance collaboration and streamline workflows. Further Reading Quiz: What's Your Team's Agile Marketing Score? The Creative Brief Template: Elements of an Effective Creative Brief 5 Steps for Making Your Marketing Team More Efficient
Wrike at Integrated Live UK: Helping Marketers Navigate New Trends
Over the course of two days, the Integrated Live conference in the UK brought together 120+ speakers hosting a large number of workshops and seminars, all aimed at helping marketers better navigate the quickly shifting world of marketing, technology, and marketing trends. And Wrike was there, helping spread the word about our project management software.
Top 3 Takeaways from the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit 2016
It's the tail-end of the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit 2016 and despite the 90-degree Las Vegas heat, this year's Marketo summit has brought together some 5,000 marketers and thought leaders from around the world to discuss best practices and learn about marketing trends in over 100 sessions and networking events. Some of the information gained was too valuable NOT to share, so we figured we ought to blog about it. Here are our top 3 takeaways from the 2016 Marketo conference.
New Report Released: How Marketers Get Things Done: The State of Agile Marketing in 2016
The old-fashioned way of working is quickly becoming outdated and inefficient. Working set hours, coming into the office everyday, and sitting at standard cubicles has all become obsolete as mobile productivity and remote work continues to spread. With work management evolving, marketers are pushing hard to keep up. Adapting standard methodologies, such as Agile, establishes a process where flexibility and collaboration are key components to executing any project. Today we are excited to announce the release of our latest report, How Marketers Get Things Done: The State of Agile Marketing in 2016. With this report, we explore the world of Agile and the challenges marketers are facing today. We surveyed 800 marketers about their work management, use of digital tools, and their collaborative relationship with other departments. Some highlights from the report: 26% of marketers are very satisfied with the way their team manages work 20% of marketers say that sales is the most difficult department to collaborate with 20% of marketers have fully embraced Agile as a work management methodology Improved quality of work is the top benefit of using Agile Here's a sneak peak at the results. This chart highlights the top challenges for today's marketers: Read all the results in our full report. Click below to download your free copy: Eager to improve the way you work by becoming an Agile organization? Start your two week free trial with Wrike and begin collaborating today.
State of Marketing Operations and MarTech in 2015
The marketing technology and marketing operations landscapes are shifting rapidly, as marketing departments adapt to an increasingly digital world and tech-savvy consumers. Find out the current trends, strategies, and common practices for many marketing ops and martech professionals with this collection of current statistics, to help you build your martech stack. 1. Marketing Operations Statistics 64% of marketing operations teams have 10 or fewer members. (Source: Mo-cca.com) 83% of marketing ops teams report to the most senior marketing leader (CMO). (Source: Mo-cca.com) Most-Desirable Skills in Marketing Ops Professionals: -General marketing skills -Analytics skills -Project management skills -IT skills -Change management skills -Lead management experience(Source: Mo-cca.com) 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing, but only 36% believe they're effective at it. (Source: Webbiquity) 73% of B2B marketers use video in their content marketing. (Source: Business2Community) SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have a 1.7% close rate. (Source: Hubspot) Search Engine Marketing will continue to get the largest share of resources, at 14% of total marketing budgets. 10% of the budget will go to online display advertising, like banner ads and re-marketing/re-targeting campaigns. (Source: Business2Community) 60% of B2B marketers measure success by web traffic rather than sales lead quality or social media sharing. (Source: Business2Community) Many marketing organizations say managing data is their biggest challenge: data storage (36%), data quality (23%), and making data actionable (15%). (Source: The Wise Marketer) 84% of top-performing companies are currently using or plan to start using marketing automation by 2015. (Source: Business2Community) Yet only 5% of all marketers are currently using a full-featured marketing automation solution. (Source: Hubspot) Of companies using marketing automation and ROI metrics, 69% report an increase in total marketing revenue contribution. (Source: CMO.com) 2. Marketing Technology Statistics Scott Brinker's 2015 marketing technology landscape includes 1,876 companies in 43 categories. The landscape has seen year-over-year growth of 170%. (Source: Radius.com) 65% of marketing executives plan to spend more money on marketing technology in the coming year, including 28% who plan to increase spending by more than 25%. (Source: Conductor) 51% of marketing execs say that their marketing technologies are only loosely integrated or not at all. (Source: Signal.co) 76% of marketers say that analyzing performance data has made either "more" or "much more" of an impact on their decision making. (Source: Chiefmartec.com) Only 7% of those in a martech role have "marketing technologist" in their title. Marketing, business, and technology titles dominate. (Source: Chiefmartec.com) 43% of marketing technologists come from a technical/programming background. 33% come from a marketing/communications background. (Source: Chiefmartec.com) Top 5 Skills for Future Marketing Success: 1. Marketing Strategy and Positioning 62% 2. Target Market Identification 44% 3. Web design (including responsive and adaptive) 43% 4. CRM systems and platforms 43% 5. Ability to persuade and negotiate 42%(Source: Chiefmartec.com) Want to Learn More About MarTech? Check out our guide to the top martech conferences and events in 2015 & 2016.
6 Top Marketing Trends for 2015 (Infographic)
2015 is upon us! (Can you believe it?) Time moves fast, but the marketing industry moves even faster. Alongside constantly changing customer needs, marketing teams have to cope with new technologies and trends popping up every day, or risk being left behind. In our latest infographic, we’ve compiled six top trends that all marketers should watch out for this year in order to stay on top of their game. Do you have your own ideas for what the top marketing trends will be? Cast your votes and see if others agree! Make sure your friends are in the know. You can share this infographic on your site using this embed code: Wrike Collaboration and Project Management Software Related Reads: Is Agile Viable for Marketing Teams? 4 Ways to Arm Your Team for Content Marketing Success Using Wrike for High Performance Marketing Teams
Vote! What Marketing Trends Do You Expect to Have the Biggest Impact in 2015?
With 2015 just around the corner, more and more companies are releasing their views on top marketing trends that will come to light in the new year. But with all of these separate articles, we're interested in gathering a consensus. Which trends are going to have the biggest impact? What marketing technology innovations may be coming our way? And which trends are wishful thinking, won't be able to move the needle in the next year, or simply never going to happen? We've collected trend ideas from companies and marketing leaders all over the internet and brought them together in one list. Now it's your turn: 1. Vote for the two or three trends you think will have the biggest impact in 20152. Add your own predictions to the list if you don't see them already 3. Embed this list on your site or blog & share it with your friends and readers (click here for embed code) Vote! What Marketing Trend Do You Expect to Have the Biggest Impact in 2015? You can view more lists from the Wrike Team on Listly. Read through all of the 55 potential trends? Make sure you vote for the 2-3 trends you think will have a huge impact next year year, and add your own thoughts if we missed something. We're waiting to hear your feedback in the comments below!