Crystal Clear Communications Blog

Marketers often have too many priorities, which can result in marketing project pitfalls. From campaigns and events to social media and content, ensuring everything is on track can be tough.

It’s even more complicated when the leadership team throws wrenches in your plans, such as asking for things sooner than originally agreed on!

This can lead to missed deadlines, sloppy work, and mistakes.

Here are three things you can do to avoid marketing project pitfalls:

• Create – and stick to – a project schedule.
• Have someone else review the work.
• Step away for a few minutes.

Stick to a schedule to avoid marketing project pitfalls

Most marketers I know always create a schedule for every marketing project. The pitfalls arise when they don’t stick to the schedule. Juggling priorities and demanding executives can wreak havoc on marketing project schedules.

So how can you stick to your marketing project schedule? Put time on your calendar at the same time every day to review all your marketing projects. And do everything in your power to protect that time.

Even taking just 15 minutes a day to check in on the status of all marketing projects in motion can pay off in the long run.

If something happens and you miss your scheduled review time, don’t skip it for the entire day. Move it later in the day. It may be initially stressful, but it will help avoid marketing project pitfalls.

Have someone else review everything

At a company, I worked for many years ago, every single item that left our department had to be reviewed by two other people. The result? We rarely made mistakes.

Having not one, but two people review everything really improved our quality. And we built it into our schedules, so it did not slow us down and impact deadlines.

When assigning your reviewers, remember to ask them to review for any mistakes and to ensure the content reflects your Message Map.

Creating a Message Map for your company and your content can keep things running more smoothly throughout the year because everyone should have initially signed off on the messaging – before you create any content.

Step away for a few minutes

If things start to slip and you literally don’t have time for someone else to review an item, walk away for a few minutes. Take some deep breaths, grab some water, and go or at least look outside.

Try to come back with fresh eyes to spot mistakes, and a positive attitude to ensure you don’t write a snippy email that you may regret.

The one time I failed to do this, I missed a typo – an “88” that should have been an “86.” Unfortunately, the executive on the receiving end was having a bad day, so you can imagine how the rest of my day went.

Taking just 10 minutes to breathe and review with fresh eyes can save the day, and, 99.99% of the time, no one is going to harass you about taking 10 more minutes.

It can be tough to avoid marketing project pitfalls. Sticking to a schedule, asking others to review all content, and even stepping away for a few minutes can prevent headaches and help ensure success.

For assistance with marketing or communications needs, email me at ariana@crystalclearcomms.com.