Process

The Brief

I work on a high-performing marketing team for a global company. We have numerous audiences, products, and services to consider. So who’s our target audience? What are their pain points? What’s our goal? Who are the stakeholders? How are we planning to reach our audience? A campaign brief should be succinct, but not lack vital information. It’s the foundation for everything that follows. This is where it all begins.

Research

If I’m pitching the campaign, this step comes first. Otherwise, I’ll review the brief to ensure my team has everything we need to move forward. Research plays an important role even if I’m familiar with the product and target audience. Things change over time. Pain points shift. New competitors emerge. It’s also important to stay apprised of trends, news, and new tech within our industry as well as within the design world. This is also why I have 37,589 tabs open at any given time. Too much?

Ideation

This stage might involve writing down ideas, sketching concepts, or organizing discussions. The point of this phase is to figure out how to effectively communicate our message, influence our audience, and/or achieve our goals, before we fully build something out. When it comes to design, there are usually multiple viable solutions. We narrow down our top ideas and take them into the next phase.

Mockups & Prototypes

Depending on the type of project, this step ranges from creating digital mockups to building physical prototypes of objects to be photographed. This helps my team quickly see if changes need to be made early on. If I plan on handing off the project to another team member—a developer for example—mockups and prototypes improve communication and help bridge the gap between design and development.

Reviews & Revisions

Whether my work is under review or I’m reviewing a team member’s work, good communication and organization is vital. Having a project management tool and an agreed-upon review process are a must. This helps reduce miscommunication as well as the number of revisions needed.

Launch

This is the exciting part! But it’s not just about sitting back and watching the MQLs roll in. It helps to continue to be active in the project, making sure everything continues to function properly after launch, even make tweaks depending on how your audience is responding. Which leads us to the next step.

Analytics

Keeping an eye on your marketing analytics and making data-based decisions are vital for continuous improvement. Watching how prospects engage with your content in real time allows you to adjust your strategy quickly to be as effective as possible. Sometimes with design though, analytics aren't always available. Or analytics could be deceiving—for example, prospects who see a print ad might not type out the URL they see, but it could still be great brand awareness, and they might Google our company after seeing it. That's still an effective ad. So it's important to keep all of this in mind when trying to understand the efficacy of a design.
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After a campaign has retired, it's also helpful to do a retrospective and discuss what worked and what didn't.