Digital marketing demands we challenge previous notions of brand value and representation to shift expectations and shape strong relationships.
And who isn’t up for a good challenge?
Instead of clamoring for solutions by recreating the digital wheel with each new challenge, we have helped change the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing by creating dynamic processes that empower our clients while allowing ourselves to grow with each campaign’s journey.
To ensure our clients’ voices are heard, we have implemented practices that allow us to maximize our client relationships. Here’s how.
Discover, Design, Develop, Analyze, Repeat
Last month we talked about the importance of discovery when forming a digital marketing partnership, and we stand by that ideology.
Our process begins by identifying an opportunity that leads to strategy long before we can act on the client’s overall needs. This requires planning and research to emerge as the cornerstone of our creative work, so we are hitting the mark at each checkpoint.
After all, there is nothing more crushing than working on a project for weeks, only to learn the client isn’t happy, or that the users are not using the system because it doesn’t solve the real problem. That’s why our agency processes exist.
What Does Our Strategic Digital Marketing Process Achieve?
No matter what the internet tells you, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all digital marketing process. Sure, some steps align in similar industries, and checkpoints throughout that seem familiar across the board.
But it is up to us to maintain and streamline our processes to drive a diverse approach that delivers results for each unique organization we represent.
First: We Positively Drive The Conversation By Aligning Expectations
Everyone communicates differently, and what may be clear to our developers may be completely unfamiliar to our clients — and the other way around.
When there is a lapse in inclusive meetings, check-ins, and scheduled deliverables, the flow of communication hits a roadblock that can damage not just the campaign’s success, but our client-vendor relationship.
Each of our clients brings something great to the creative world. Whether they are an agency that requires our technical savvy, or a brand that is partnering with us to develop their website or mobile app. And we understand that communication allows both the client and our staff to preserve our resources while creating exacting solutions.
This includes client briefings and project milestone confirmations that solidify our approach to creating solutions through:
- Targeted goals and objectives
- Strategic planning
- Discovery and research methods and administration
- Approved concepts
- Design delivery
- Development and testing
- Revision expectations
- Timeline modifications
- Successful deliverables
- Measured, analyzed, and optimized results
Structured communication removes unnecessary subjectivity, placing stakeholders and decision-makers on the same page in terms of the expectations and goals of the project we are creating solutions for together.
Second: We Allow Flexibility To Foster Inclusivity
Our agency processes are designed to benefit both the client and our internal teams.
The goal is to avoid issues that arise from miscommunication, which is why structured processes are so important to the campaign’s success.
But adapting to the client’s needs is equally important.
Both the client and our office have a job to do and a goal to achieve, which will require some flexibility from each side.
Keep in mind that being flexible does not mean abandoning our process altogether. No one should be expected to adapt to a one-sided approach where the fundamentals of the partnership are compromised.
However, flexibility does allow the project’s stakeholders and decision-makers to have their voices heard in a preferred medium, which is simply a matter of customizing the process — not abandoning it.
As a result, real inclusivity reveals itself through the relationships we maximize.
Third: We Shake Things Up.
Our customized approach to delivering digital marketing successes for each of our clients requires recognizing and implementing versatile and creative options that adapt to their target demographic’s needs.
Our clients are typically not the end-user, but rather the application owner. This means we must create a clear understanding of the product, vocabulary, and needs that apply to their specific target audience.
This could mean including a new team member whose skill set provides a unique insight into our client’s challenges or diversifying our staff to ensure each target market and their voices are represented equally.
No matter the audience, our processes, and solutions change the way our clients use technology for marketing by creating dynamic processes that foster relationships.
What Happens When The Communication Process Fails?
Our internal processes are purposely designed to add value to our client relationships. We pride ourselves on taking advantage of concept and design milestones and checkpoints to understand if we are on the right track.
And believe us, it is a learned behavior.
By nature, we’re programmed to believe we are hitting the mark at each turn, and are often assured by an internal dialogue that says “We haven’t asked the question outright, but this is definitely what they are looking for. Right?”
And that’s when assumptions begin to emerge.
As professionals, we are required to make assumptions. Assumptions play an integral role in the creative process and allow us to ask the right questions, bridging the gap between the challenge and the solution. When assumptions are not validated and documented before proceeding, they can become dangerous and cause our internal processes to fail.
From discovery to delivery, the goal is to build on the processes that work and learn directly from those that result in collapsed communications.
That isn’t to say certain challenges will not apply when we are working to create solutions in different industries, but those challenges should not come from inside our organization.
We partner with our clients to create purposeful design solutions that work for their organization and their audience, no matter what the communicative challenges might be.
Advancing Client Confidence By Improving Our Digital Marketing Processes
Part of our approach to advancing our clients’ confidence in our ability to achieve marketing success comes from proactively developing and maintaining processes that put them at ease.
We discuss their target market and audience at length, revealing our knowledge and asking questions when we are unsure of important details.
We learn about their challenges, and how they are (or aren’t) being met.
We explain the details and value of our internal teams and their abilities, forming a cohesive and effective partnership throughout the campaign.
We initiate timelines that span from concept to solution, including milestones and checkpoints that keep us all on the right track going forward.
Each component that is communicated between our agency and our clients requires a dedicated process to emerge, and the more exacting our solutions — and ability to articulate how we will reach each milestone in between — creates confidence in our ability to produce results.
Our processes allow us to understand that each meeting is an opportunity to implement a successful strategy that leads to creative action that ensures the client’s expectations are aligned and maintained throughout our partnership.
If you would like to learn more about our digital marketing processes, and how we create customized solutions for our clients, contact us today and allow us to create something beautiful together.
Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash
