Modern Tools for Modern Marketers
If you’re part of a marketing organisation there’s good news and then there’s – well, if you’re a marketer you probably instinctively want to rework that “bad news” phrase into something with a little more, you know, positive up-speak. Let’s say there’s room for growth. The good news? Marketing budgets were up globally 10% in 2015 and are expected to hit a record $1 Trillion by 2017. In the UK, specifically, advertising budgets are expected to continue to grow, with digital areas such as internet and mobile advertising leading the way with 12.3% and 39.3% growth, respectively.
So about that room for growth. Well, it’s actually just that: with an increase in marketing budget how do you structure your organisation for growth? How do you align your team to make the most of the kind of digital transformation that’s reshaping marketing? In large part, it means taking advantage of the right mobile productivity solutions keeping your team up-to-date, connected and collaborating with ease.
Imagine the following scenario.
- Marketing Operations Manager: you’ve just spent the past half-hour tracking down the draft of that whitepaper that ends in “version.13.c_MKedits.”
- Creative Services Director: your remote team has to re-shoot, edit and get new web copy for a video you thought you finished.
- Content Strategy VP: you’ve got the fragment of a great idea stuck in the back of your head. It’s from a conversation you had with a colleague last month, but you can’t quite remember the whole story.
- Chief Marketing Officer: you’re asking yourself “is any of this stuff working?”
Does any of this sound familiar? If it does, then maybe your team is outgrowing your current productivity solution, and it’s time to take a closer look at some of the key features that make Office 365 the choice for today’s modern marketer.
Collaborative Content Creation
Rather than wasting time managing dozens of versions of the same document, Office 365 allows your team to work together on a single version in real-time. Co-authoring helps to streamline the content creation process as ideas can be discussed, honed, and strengthened with the rapid iteration and collaborative banter that makes good teams hum. With OneDrive for Business, you can share documents or even entire folders with your team or external partners, changing availability and access as the scope of collaboration changes.
Connect remote workers wherever (and however) they work
Marketing projects rarely stay within the four walls of your office: whether you’re working with a creative agency, contractors, or colleagues at other locations, your team needs to have the ability to communicate with more than just a phone call. Given that so much of our communication is non-verbal (facial expression, body language, etc.) it’s no wonder that workers are able to concentrate 52% longer in video teleconferences than in voice only calls. When you add in the ability to share documents and data on-screen, the productivity benefits of a video conferencing solution become even more pronounced.
With Skype for Business, workers can set up interactive calls between users and enable live broadcasts to thousands of customers, partners, and employees— regardless of whether they are Skype for Business customers. Employees can dial-in to Skype meetings from virtually any device with PSTN conferencing and make, receive, or transfer calls between mobile, tablet, and desktop devices whenever they have Internet access.
Keep track of your ideas and conversations
Modern marketers rely on a variety of tools to be productive in their jobs: from ad-hoc instant messages to complex formal project plans, and everything in-between. In fact, a Constellation Research report on collaboration technology shows that we regularly use over 16 tools for communication, collaboration and productivity. Sometimes it can be daunting task remembering where an idea or a tasking was shared, and we can spend hours searching for a single sentence across meeting recordings, social networks, or email. Making sure these tools can all communicate with each other is important, which is why Microsoft SharePoint Server (available in the cloud, on-premises, or as a hybrid model) integrates with every tool in the Office 365 productivity suite.
Is it all working?
Even when we, as modern marketers, use the right tools to increase our productivity and collaboration, it can be a challenge for us to know if – at the end of the day – what we’re doing is effective. Office Delve, can help you get insight into what your colleagues are working on and what’s working for them. What’s more, it allows you to understand how you’re spending your own time so that you can be more planful and effective in your day.
Does your team have the right tools for modern marketing?
Are you equipped with a platform that is fit to scale? Office 365 offers every tool your growing team needs to be successful. The Microsoft Office tools they have used throughout their careers come standard, supplemented by cloud-enabled features that enable them to work from virtually anywhere.
Find out more about Office 365 can help your organisation scale in our new ebook The Marketer’s Guide to Growing your Team.
