Overcoming Communication Silos in Marketing

Marketing is a team game, requiring a mix of skills and resources. Delivering the best possible customer journey requires strong alignment between many different roles within the business. From creative design through to data analysis, a lot of effort goes into launching even the most straightforward campaigns. That often involves bringing together a large number of people to contribute to strategy development and campaign delivery. Close coordination is needed to deliver the messaging and customer journey required for a consistent experience. Good planning empowers conversion through the funnel and beyond. In turn, this enables close alignment of each activity and touchpoint to the overall marketing strategy.

Communication silos are one of the biggest barriers to corporate innovation. They directly impact the customer experience, frequently leading to duplicated effort. Misalignment between different areas of the business can seriously affect campaign performance. Your corporate structure may be essential to delivering the best products and the optimum experience, but your customers don't care about the internal politics. Any multi-product organisation requires close coordination and strong management to avoid a disjointed customer journey. The same principle applies within a single business unit at all stages of the campaign development process.

Assigning Roles

Open communication and close review are essential during the ideation of campaigns, all the way through to the end of the implementation phase. Approval processes are needed at every stage of the campaign development process. Input from every relevant stakeholder needs to be considered whenever necessary. Approval layers need to be clearly defined. Ownership needs to be agreed upon. To do all that, you need to be clear about who the stakeholders are and when their input is necessary. However, setting out roles and responsibilities is the easy bit. Making sure the right people are always kept in the loop is the hard part.

Approval processes are only worthwhile if they’re actually followed. Feedback loops are only relevant if all the right stakeholders can contribute in a timely manner. The channels and mechanisms of communication are just as important as the content of the communication. Project management tools have always pitched themselves as the solution to this problem. Slack sells itself as a replacement for email. Both technologies have their place in any organisation. They’re likely used for every campaign, but are they used to their maximum potential?

Increasing Visibility

The main benefit of project management tools is visibility. Teams which rely on email often suffer from communication silos. A project management tool allows anyone to see the status of every project. Everyone can clearly see when a campaign is approved or when further action is required. Furthermore, it removes the question of ‘who do I need to loop into this message’. When configured correctly, the system can make that decision for you. After all, people are generally left out of the loop due to accidental oversight rather than deliberate neglect.

Technology can’t solve every communication challenge. Process is ultimately about putting people first. However, having the right tools can definitely help. If the right tools are used in the right way, then marketers will have more time to focus on the content of their campaigns and less on the process of delivering them. Campaigns are complex beasts, with many moving parts and lots of detail to optimise. If the tech can do the heavy lifting, then better campaigns and better customer experiences should be the outcome. That makes your marketing programs better for everyone.