For many large companies, the marketing department is almost a corporation in its own right. To manage all the operations marketing requires, marketing leadership can utilize a system designed to manage all the resources and expenses. Marketing resource management (MRM) software automates the process, saving time and money.
When you have everything you need at your fingertips underneath one digital roof, it simplifies the resource management process. Instead of shuffling back and forth between a hodgepodge of non-integrated software, you can smoothly shift from content planning to publication to analytics at the drop of a hat.
Ideally, a marketing resource management suite would track and manage the following:
- Marketing strategy and workflows
- Planning
- Team management and development
- Content management, including media and social platforms
- Event coordination
- Marketing analytics
- Content asset management
- Marketing automation
- Scheduling, publication, and distribution
- Collaborative work
- Resource and time tracking and allocation
- Budget tracking and allocation
As most companies discover, finding a single platform that manages all of these aspects at a high level is virtually impossible. Most companies will, inevitably, utilize a “stack” of tools that are purpose-built and then work to integrate them as much as possible. Case in point, you can streamline your work by allocating all but the last two tasks to your content marketing platform. However, if your content platform has an open API that can integrate with third-party applications, you can easily push and pull data between your marketing resource management solution and your content platform.
For example, when you initiate and plan new campaigns in our content platform – DivvyHQ – you can push all your project data to an MRM, such as Screendragon, Mavenlink, MARMIND, or SAS, that can easily allocate time, resources, and budget.
Resource and Time Tracking and Allocation
Use your MRM to assign tasks and projects to an individual team member. When their schedule is full, the system will warn their manager or not allow that person to accept any more tasks or projects until their schedule clears enough to accommodate a new task.
Budget Tracking and Allocation
Input your budget for each project into your MRM. The MRM will allocate costs for the work your teams do, as well as the other expenses you incur for the project, and track those costs for budget reporting.
Other than that, your content platform can handle the rest of your marketing resource management, provided it has the capacity to handle it. But no matter which tools you use to manage your resources, good management starts with an overarching strategy that colors everything you do. Call it your roadmap to success.
Document Your Strategy
A 2021 Content Marketing Institute study discovered that only about half of today’s marketers center their core strategies around owned channels, such as blogs, websites email marketing, and resource centers that house things like ebooks, magazines, and white papers.
Image via Content Marketing Institute
Unless you make owned content the central hub around which all your marketing operations revolve, your content production won’t have the coherency you need to make the most of your resources.
Either you’ll be like the 11% whose content management model is “self-contained” (read: siloed in their own little world, unaligned with your company’s corporate goals) or like the 32%, who flit from campaign to project to meet a flurry of requests from various departments, as Content Marketing Institute’s Robert Rose points out.
Having a documented content strategy that aligns with your corporate goals solves this problem. Meet with your C-suite to set these goals, then create a strategy that will outline the steps you need to take – and the KPIs you need to meet – to help your company move forward.
Then publish your strategy right on your content marketing platform so that everyone involved in the content production process is on the same page, moving in the right direction.
Document Your Workflow
Sketch out the simplest way for your teams to work toward meeting the KPIs you’ve set. Document every step, right on the platform, as well as the tools your teams will need to perform each task most efficiently.
The same study we cited above revealed that nearly 4 out of 10 marketing teams aren’t taking advantage of existing technology to its full potential. Documenting the technological assets that can help your teams accomplish each task more effectively will help them deliver more targeted content in less time than ever before.
With the rise of outsourcing content production to agencies or freelancers, it’s even more critical for you to empower these key players with everything they need to succeed. Using every marketing resource to its full potential will do just that.
Plan Specific Content That Meets Corporate Goals and Customer Needs
You need to reach those KPIs that translate into better corporate ROIs. Your customers need informative content that helps them solve problems and build trust in your brand.
Do some deep research on your customers’ demographics, income levels, and pain points. Then, plan content that will earn their trust, moving them farther down the sales funnel with every piece of content they digest.
Again, documentation is a critical ingredient in translating those customer needs into great content. Creating buyer personas and documenting them on your content platform allows your content teams to target their content to each customer segment.
Once Your Plan’s in Place, Get It on the Calendar
Finding the types of content that will move the needle among your target market is only the first step. Scheduling each piece to go to print when your audience needs them most – and on the channels they frequent – is every bit as essential as the content you’ve planned.
Don’t forget the importance of whom you assign to create each piece of content. Your best marketing resources are your people. Knowing their strengths and subject area expertise can help you choose the right creative team for each project.
A content calendar allows you to map out every step along a project’s journey to publication, as well as everyone involved in its production. When all the team members can see at which stage the content is in the process, each person will take more accountability for doing their specific task well – and on time.
Shatter the Silos with Collaboration
Your content teams aren’t the only human resources you need to produce valuable content. Subject matter experts can add depth and detail that your creatives can only dream about.
For instance, an article about how your new piece of machinery works would fall flat without input from your engineering department. Content collaboration between the creative you’ve assigned to the article and an engineer can produce the kind of in-depth copy that can convince prospects that your machine is superior to your competitors’ offerings.
Or how about getting inside prospects’ heads with answers to their questions even before they ask. Collaboration with your sales and support teams can be a rich source of the types of objections prospects raise and complaints customers make. Using that intel to create content that can give prospects the confidence to buy gives you an edge over your competitors.
Get the Most Value Out of Every Marketing Resource
As Robert Rose advises, you need to treat your owned content assets as your corporate leadership does its products. Prudent marketing operations puts every piece to maximum use.
Effective content governance will ensure that you eke out the most value from these assets. Start with a content asset library organized so that your teams can find them easily. Whether linking to them in new content or repurposing them in new forms, these pieces of content will be hidden treasures no more.
Look at the content analytics for each of your content assets. Examine your underperformers for areas where they fall short, and assign content and SEO teams to revise them. Then, keep an eye on their performance, revising each piece until its performance is up to par.
Use your top-performing pieces of content to serve as models for your creatives to emulate. Amplify their reach through social media and repurpose them into different types of content. For example, if one of your videos drove sales through the roof, you might want to expand it into a white paper to reach prospects who need a little nudge to convert.
From strategy to analytics and everything between, DivvyHQ’s content platform can help you manage your content marketing resources and get the most out of your investment in content marketing. And, with its robust third-party integration capabilities, you can connect it with your MRM for tracking and allocating budget items, resources, and time. Try it for 14 days free, starting today!