Today’s Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are quickly becoming key C-suite players, facing growing pressures and demands related to planning and performance. The McKinsey survey revealed that 83% of CEOs worldwide consider marketing a major driver for almost all of their company’s development agenda. Besides being responsible for brand or advertising, CMOs are now expected to deliver on the growth promise. New ways of thinking and operating require CMOs to be more agile, quicker to react, and more effective. 

We at TodayMade know how often marketing to-dos can be on hold for months, waiting to be done. In-house designers can't handle the extra marketing workloads, and campaigns miss their launch. All of that leads to stress and an increasing feeling of being overwhelmed. In the meantime, a well-organized workflow management process and the right tech tools that work together can improve operational efficiency and productivity, as well as relieve stress. 

So, what’s the best way to manage your workflow? In this guide, we've collected workflow management best practices that can help organize a smooth workflow. But first, let’s start by defining what workflow management is. 

What is workflow management?  

CMO workflow management is an iterative process that consists of sequential activities and marketing tasks through which the work passes from start to finish and is done in the most efficient, fastest, and satisfying way possible. 

The demanding nature of marketing process and workflow management often involves juggling numerous projects, teams, and responsibilities simultaneously. To do it fruitfully, McKinsey recommends focusing NOT on what marketing does but more on transforming HOW the work is done. This approach helps unlock 5 to 15% of additional growth and reduce 10 to 30% of marketing costs.

McKinsey represents modern marketing tasks in the form of a circle divided into two main parts that foster the transformation of the CMOs’ work: 

• Capabilities are initiatives that help marketers track all the tasks and understand how they should work together.
• Enablers are team members inside or outside the company, from sales and product innovation to copywriters, designers, and HR, who help deliver marketing work.

McKinsey authors emphasize that developing plans and programs that clarify these two areas is crucial. Additionally, technology is everywhere now, allowing CMOs to automate workflows. Overall, planning, partnering with the right talent, and using the best workflow management tools form the core 3 components of effective workflow that we’ll discuss in more detail right now.

What are the 3 basic components of workflow?

Here are three critical components that are also strategies we recommend following to avoid becoming overwhelmed when handling workflows:

• Workflow planning is thinking in advance about what tasks to prioritize, how to do them and when, and who is responsible for doing them. The cost of poor planning is high, so, it’s important to divide tasks and activities into things that you can control (“controllables”) and those you can’t (“uncontrollables”). To identify such things, ask yourself two questions:
  – How to maximize the impact of things we can control and reduce the impact of the ones we cannot?
  – How to improve the interaction between controllables and uncontrollables?

Based on these answers, marketing leaders can develop their personal approach to planning. For example, McKinsey offers modern CMOs to develop the “Market Map” that identifies strategies for change and includes such drivers of choice as situational factors, needs and attitudinal drivers, and loyalty. To make sure the plans are realistic, McKinsey advises using analytics, like marketing mix models and ROI (marketing spending allocation by effectiveness and cost efficiency), Volume Due-To (sources of historical change to better manage controllable and uncontrollable factors), and strategic learning principles (short- and long-term marketing plan development through quantitative scenario planning). 

When documenting a workflow plan, CMOs can present it visually, showing the progression of tasks. For example, the Content Marketing Institute recommends using a Swimlane Diagram to show each role and the progression of tasks across roles and time horizontally.

• Hiring the right talent. It is clear that the driving force for great performance and smooth workflow is access to world-class marketing talent. However, 82% of companies don’t think they hire highly talented employees. Partnering with external teams can change that. For example, TodayMade brought together creative minds to speed up delivery and let marketing teams at tech companies get their marketing design done with just one subscription. From website design and presentations to e-books, ad creative, and brand identity design, our clients trust us with all types of creative assets. Let’s look at our client Кірsi, an accounting, consulting, and specialty law firm's platform. We helped create various marketing materials for them, including a pitch deck for participating in the exhibition and LinkedIn post designs. This helped Kipsi free up their teams, avoid bottlenecks, and ensure the project's visual style consistency in all communications.

• Using marketing project management software to streamline processes, centralize data, and enhance collaboration. Many different tools can help the CMO get a clear overview of ongoing projects, deadlines, and priorities. For example, planning, management tools, and digital dashboards, like Trello or Jira, can provide real-time updates on project statuses and help teams track their workflows.

Often, teams use spreadsheets to track start dates, task durations, and dependencies. Messaging and collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are used to bring teams together.

So, how to effectively manage your workflow?

The CMO's ability to select and implement the solutions that best meet the team’s needs, as well as delegate tasks to reliable partners, helps significantly simplify workflows and allows marketing leaders to focus on things that matter more. 

Here are a few tips to create workflows that are easy to manage:

• Communicate clearly and determine effective communication channels for your team to ensure that everyone involved in the workflow understands their roles and responsibilities, and avoid confusion or duplication of effort.
• Plan a structured marketing calendar to keep tasks organized and on track.
• Do regular check-ins when delegating tasks to stay informed without micromanaging the work and its progress daily.
• Identify and prioritize tasks based on their importance and urgency to focus on the most critical tasks and avoid getting stuck in less important ones.
• Break down tasks into smaller steps to identify areas where you can automate or delegate tasks.
• Use templates and checklists for common tasks to ensure you don't miss any important steps and reduce the time needed to complete each task.
• Monitor progress to identify bottlenecks and areas where improvements can be made.

And remember, delegating is a great practice to eliminate routine tasks and have more time to solve priority pieces of work. CMOs can delegate content creation to the external content marketing teams, social media management to the social media specialists, and market research to the research team. 

TodayMade is here to help with marketing designs. With just one membership, you get access to a team of creative marketing designers, illustrators, and animators who can handle multiple projects simultaneously. If you want to learn more about what we do, contact us.