Necessary Tools and Tech for Marketing Orchestration

Summary

Tools and technology can get overwhelming. There's a lot of options out there. Let's take a look at two main systems you should have in your tech stack to be successful with Marketing Orchestration.

By Brenna Lofquist, Senior Marketing Consultant / Client Services Operations at Heinz Marketing

At Heinz Marketing we break down Marketing Orchestration into four areas.

• Collaboration & Communication
• Roles & Process
• Project Management Tools
• Strategic Alignment & Planning

We use these areas to assess clients, build our recommendations, and then implement. Today we’re going to focus on Project Management Tools but we’re going to go a little further than just PM tools.

You cannot have a successful Marketing Orchestration strategy without a few key pieces of technology. What are those you might ask? Well lets get into it!

Setting the foundation

We all know there is almost an unlimited number of tools and technology now a days – it’s overwhelming. You don’t need every tool in your arsenal to be successful when it comes to Marketing Orchestration. There will be tools your organization can benefit from but I always recommend starting simple and building over time.

When thinking about what technology you need, you really want to focus on what’s going to enable your teams to communicate and work efficiently and effectively. This is a very simple way of thinking about it however, if break it out more, everything will boil down to the same goal.

Things to think about

When reviewing your strategy to determine which tools and tech you need, there’s likely a handful of ways to go about this. We’re going to use the four areas I mentioned earlier in the post; Collaboration & Communication, Roles & Process, Project Management Tools, and Strategic Alignment & Planning.

• Collaboration & Communication
  • I cannot stress how important collaboration and communication is. Marketing Orchestration usually involves multiple teams and individuals, juggling different campaigns, cross-functional collaboration, and more. Teams and individuals must be able to communicate with each other via a central system. Whatever system you chose should allow for seamless communication and collaboration.
• Roles & Process
  • This area is important because it defines who does what and when. It also defines the actual marketing orchestration strategy process and flow. The technology needs to support the ability to clearly define who is responsible at what stage and what for. The steps of the process must be clearly mapped out. The ideal state allows teams to be agile and to iterate the process to meet objectives.
• Project Management Tools
  • Aside from a project management tool itself, it’s important to create templates and frameworks for efficiency. All teams must be operating from the same PM tool and must be used consistently for maximum benefit. This allows for accountability, effective adoption and training, and accurate reporting and management of the process.
• Strategic Alignment & Planning
  • Strategic planning can be done manually, via Excel (or similar) or with a campaign management platform. Either way, the technology must support it. If you’re going the manual route, the other technology being used should be able to carry the Excel throughout the process. Or the values should be imported or inputted into the system. If you’re using a campaign management platform (or something similar), then you’ll need to ensure the different systems and technology are integrated properly. This allows the data to flow from system to system and remain present and consistent throughout.

Now lets move on to discuss what tools and tech you should be considering!

Tools and Tech

There’s really not a whole lot that you need for Marketing Orchestration, at least to get started. We’re going to focus on two tools; Project Management and Campaign Management. In my experience these two tools have been core to Marketing Orchestration. Bonus points if you find a platform that does both (and if you know of one, I’d love to hear).

Project Management

This is probably one of the most important tools. I would definitely consider it foundational when it comes to Marketing Orchestration. Depending on the size of the organization, you can have one Project Manager owning numerous projects. Projects can range from different business units, types of campaigns, etc. The list goes on. That’s why it’s super important to use a Project Management platform that allows for collaboration and communication.

Other necessities or things to look for:

Keep in mind the criteria for technology will vary by company. Use the following points as a guide.

• Templates/frameworks: Defined ahead of time and then entered into the system, this allows for teams to operate from the processes to maintain consistency. You can (and should) define roles and responsibilities directly in the templates
• Issue tracking: Marketing Orchestration isn’t a one and done type thing. It’s going to take time to iterate and optimize. That’s where issue tracking comes into play. This could be considered a “want” and not a “need”. You can easily do this manually via Excel however, there’s more room for errors in most cases. Track issues that arise and develop a process in which to handle these. This allows teams/individuals to log their own feedback throughout the process.
• Document management: Marketing Orchestration is used for campaign development and execution so you know there are going to be lots of review happening from design to copy and lots more. Document management allows for everything to live in one place. It’s a bonus if you’re able to edit the docs within the platform, without having to export and re-upload.
• Time tracking: This is optional, although highly recommended. The more data you have in terms of how long tasks take to accomplish, the better. For some organizations this will be new and take time to implement. This will allow better forecasting and help to prioritize projects.

A few tools to check out: Workfront, Monday.com, Trello, Smartsheet, Asana, Airtable

Campaign Management

The second foundational tool necessary for Marketing Orchestration. This one might depend on the size of your organization however, in my experience you can find a platform for your needs. We have worked with clients that have 10+ business units, each running a handful of campaigns at one time. They will need a different tool than a smaller company with one business unit running multiple campaigns at once. Always make sure to do your research!

Things to look for:

• Predict performance: You want a platform that can take data, including past campaign performance, and help you to predict future performance. This is important to properly allocate budget and resources. You need a campaign management system that can pull data from different sources and bring it all together in one place.
• Budgeting: An accurate view of budgets is super important! Without visibility into accurate budgets, companies can easily overspend without even knowing it. You want to make sure you’re allocating more budget to performing campaigns and reducing budget for underperforming campaigns.
• Campaign briefs: This can take many forms however, having a system that can be the single source of truth for campaign briefs/strategies is ideal. As I mentioned above, this might be uploading an Excel or plugging values directly into the platform. Either way, teams needs a central location for campaign briefs so they can easily be referenced and everything consistent.
• Integrations: Since this system tracks different channels, you need the ability to integrate each platform. The campaign management platform should be your single source of truth and needs access to all necessary information. This might depend on how these platforms gather information but I would imagine this should be standard.

A few tools to check out: Uptempo.io, Planful, Iterable,

In summary

These tools should get you started whether you’re just starting your Marketing Orchestration journey or you’re looking to improve it. As I mentioned, always make sure to do your research and make sure the platform works for your organization and it’s goals.

Still new to Marketing Orchestration or looking for more information? Check out other blogs on the topic.

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