The Number One Complaint! Top Ten Demand Generation FAILS (Part 8)

Our modern word project derives from the Latin projectum which means “to throw something forward.” Sometimes that gets actualized as “throwing something over the fence.” Which does not really hold to the original meaning of the word.

More often than not, when projects do not get completed on time, on budget and of the expected quality, we can trace the root cause back to a deliverable that got thrown over the fence, usually too little, too late. Copy was a week late. Copy was a week late and full of errors and had to be re-written. Creative left out a critical CTA. Somebody forgot to run the finished document past legal. You probably have your own “favorite.”

While the components are all different, the root cause is consistent: failure to deliver components on time and to specifications. As a demand gen practitioner, you are at the end of the line, counting on campaign components delivered on time and to specifications. Your job requires the assembly of these “finished” parts into the executable campaign, ready for public consumption. In {Demand Gen Brief} we have often referred to demand gen as a “marketing factory” and this makes a great analogy. If you were the automobile final assembly plant, putting together all of the pieces built elsewhere and delivered to your plant, you would have a 100% expectation that these delivered parts would be built to spec, and be there when you needed them. Imagine how well your assembly line would execute if the engine delivery showed up a week late, or if the seats arrived without upholstery. Would you be expected to just “bolt it all together” and ship it out? I can only wish that were a rhetorical question.

We understand the problem (only too well, I suspect). Fortunately, the solution is really pretty straightforward: formal project management. And by “project management” I mean a systematic method for managing projects, not yet another software tool you need to buy and learn. The complexity of your project management (PM) system should reflect the complexity of your campaign execution process. The more resources, disciplines and project components required to build the campaign assets, the more complex your project management needs to be. There are definitely a few essentials any formal PM system needs to be successful.

Timeline
Everyone involved in the project needs to understand the timeline. In virtually every case, the major timeline needs to be broken down into component timelines. Start with campaign deployment date and work backwards. To understand the individual task timelines, start asking questions to the responsible stakeholders. These questions apply to every component task, and will help you determine how to stack up your tasks into a complete timeline.

1.     How long does the task take to complete?

2.     What has to be completed before you can start this task (dependency)?

3.     What external resources do you need to accomplish this task?

4.     Where does your finished task product go when you are complete?

5.     How will you transmit the completed work product?

A few tips you will want to apply here: start building your timelines in number of days, not pinned to calendar dates. You will want those tasks in both number of days (which reflects backlog) and number of hours (which represents the actual work effort required). These will come in handy in the future when you want to see how long it took to actually complete each task compared to the estimated time. Understanding these will help you better estimate in the future, and may help prioritize those backlogs!

Responsibilities
Everyone assumes they know who is responsible for what, but on those occasions where there is ambiguity around task responsibility, it is a recipe for disaster. Put a name or department name on every single task on your timeline. Make sure the responsible party or department head is aware of that responsibility. In addition, responsible parties need to understand any downstream dependencies, so the effects of on-time delivery are completely understood. The time to discuss responsibility is prior to beginning the project, not when tasks are due.

Specifications and Standards

This is another area where assumptions can quickly run a project off the rails. Make sure every responsible party understands what his or her deliverable is. In most cases, there should be standards or specifications for the deliverable. Those standards can be very simple, such as:

Email copy will be delivered in a Word document of no more than 200 words in length. All copy will be free of errors, grammatically correct and all external references must be validated. A double line feed will indicate paragraph breaks. Any links from within the copy will be highlighted by blue text and underlined. All link URLs must be fully qualified. All copy must be approved by legal prior to submission. Include the words “FINAL COPY” in the header of the document in 24 pt. RED font.

This single paragraph leaves little to the imagination about what final, submitted copy needs to look like.

Kickoff Meeting
While nobody wants to attend yet another meeting, project kickoff meetings will prove to be one of the most valuable meetings you will have on your calendar. As you have more of these, they will become very efficient and stakeholders will come more and more prepared to answer your questions and establish timelines. To make these meetings effective, you need to properly prepare, which will include some level of project breakdown. Otherwise, you won’t know which stakeholders to invite, and nothing stalls a kickoff meeting like, “Where’s Sally? She has to provide the copy for the Purple Chrome Widgets emails.” You should also include your project sponsor at this meeting. If a critical obstacle is encountered in this meeting, the sponsor needs to be aware and, if possible, provide direction on potential solutions. Your kickoff meeting agenda will vary, but here’s a good start.

1.     Project definition, stated objectives and success metrics

2.     Committed deadlines (this project deploys when?)

3.     Defined component parts (12 email nurture program with program logic)

4.     Stakeholder weigh-in on the five timeline questions.

5.     Timeline conflict resolution

6.     Commitments from stakeholders (everyone leaves committed to the timeline)

While this blog is not intended to be a comprehensive thesis on project management, or how to implement project management in your demand center organization, I hope it give you a good start in that direction. There are a number of great PM resources available online, such as:

www.projectmanagement.com

www.pmi.org

www.projectsatwork.com

Don’t let your lack of project management certification of experience inhibit you from instituting basic project management in your demand center organization. Even basic management will reduce inconsistency, improve timeliness and reduce errors. Any of these improvements will likely reduce the #1 complaint!

Notes:

Consistently ask the five timeline questions when building a project plan.

Make sure everyone understands who is responsible for what.

Specifications and standards reduce errors and improve timely delivery.

Project kickoff meetings will save you time and headache!

Now that you’ve got your project management ducks in a row, and are executing those campaigns efficiently and effectively, you know the next question is coming. How did my campaign do? Do at what? Opens? Clicks? Dancing the jig? The time to understand reporting and metrics requirements is before the Campaign is designed. Not after the data is collected and is missing the three critical metrics you needed to measure. This leads to Demand Gen FAIL number 8: Ex Post Facto Reporting!