Let’s get reflective: 5 tips for holding a successful marketing retrospective
Let’s get reflective: 5 tips for holding a successful marketing retrospective
When it comes to marketing and advertising campaign management, people often focus on the planning, execution, and reporting, but they fail to evaluate the overall effort. Here’s a primer on what a project retrospective is, the goal, why it’s important, and how you can successfully employ a retrospective on your next marketing or advertising project.
What is the goal of conducting a retrospective?
The goal is to learn from successes as well as breakdowns in the process in order to improve future projects in terms of teamwork, productivity, and results. A project retrospective should happen within a week or two after the end of the project so that it’s fresh in the minds of participants.
Why is a marketing retrospective important?
A project retrospective is important because it’s critical for teams to identify areas for improvement and optimization and recognize the causal factors so that future plans can be altered, as needed. Taking time to hold a project retrospective can ultimately save marketing teams time and money.
What strategies are recommended for conducting a successful marketing retrospective?
There are several strategies for conducting successful project retrospectives. Marketing and advertising are team efforts. Big projects and campaigns often involve input from executive teams, product managers, and operations as well as the creative team of copywriters, designers, media planners, and developers. Following the completion of any sizable marketing project, it’s useful to survey the team involved to identify what went well, what could have gone better, and key takeaways for future projects.
1. Start your marketing retrospective by gathering first impressions
Before conducting a retrospective meeting, survey the team in advance. Have the team rank the overall project according to a list of criteria that was defined up front as measures for success. Using a Likert scale, this type of scoring provides common ground to start from. Where do you have agreement, and where are the areas for discussion? Criteria may include:
- Performance against planned schedule
- Adherence to scope
- Performance against quality standards
- Resource management
- Project management
- Content development
- Design
- Web development
- Communication
- Team cooperation
Then dig deeper. To understand the scores, ask questions to uncover issues that were encountered, how they were handled, and, most importantly, how similar issues could be better addressed in the future.
Tip: to survey teams virtually, consider using a real-time poll site like PollEverywhere.
2. Assess the team players
To address the roles and responsibilities on the team, ask each person to weigh in on their own role by asking the following questions:
- Did you understand your responsibilities?
- Did you feel like you had the resources, information and support you needed to get your tasks done?
- Do you feel that your role or responsibilities should be different in future projects? If yes, how?
3. Get a gauge on communication
Communication can make or break a marketing project with lots of players and stakeholders involved. To gauge the effectiveness of meetings, calls, emails or other communication tools you employed, ask:
- Was communication within team handled efficiently and effectively?
- What was the biggest challenge from a communication perspective?
- How can we improve communication with future projects?
4. Evaluate creative
The creative is where the rubber meets the road on marketing projects. Content needs to be produced, elements need to be designed and production has to make it all come to life. Rate it by asking:
- Are you proud of the work the team produced? If yes, what makes it great? If no, what’s wrong or missing?
- What additional input could have aided creative development?
- How can we improve creative quality with future projects?
5. End your marketing retrospective on a high note
Finally, ask people to identify what went right.
- What was the most gratifying or professionally satisfying part of the project for you?
- What were your key accomplishments and contributions to the project? List them in order of importance.
- If you could give one piece of advice to a future project team, what would it be?
As part of your marketing retrospective, in a team meeting, establish the discussion guideline that people should be self-critical, rather than critical of others, so that participants focus on constructive feedback. Then share the survey findings with the team, starting with areas of agreement, then diving into areas that require conversation. And be sure to finish off with clear key takeaways to inform future projects, categorizing them in terms of roles and responsibilities; project management, process and communication; and creative considerations.
Want more campaign management tips?
Read how to successfully manage creative projects and campaigns.
Branding 101
Branding 101
Branding is a critical part of business. If you need a basic primer on how to brand your company or organization, read this ultimate guide to branding that addresses key questions such as:
- What is a brand strategy and why does a company need one?
- How should a company go about developing a brand strategy?
- How do you approach developing the visual elements of a brand?
What is a brand?
A brand is the way your company or organization is perceived by internal and external audiences. It starts with your visual identity, but it’s important to recognize that a brand is more than a name and a logo: it’s the overall experience and impression your customers, employees, partners, and other audiences have with your organization. A company or organization should have a cohesive brand, where all of the different touchpoints your audiences have with your brand are consistent. This is the promise of a great brand experience.
How is branding different from marketing?
Branding is a sub-set of marketing and it is how you shape or define who you are as a company whereas marketing is how you promote your company, product, or services to your audience. Advertising is a form of marketing and includes traditional TV, radio, print, and outdoor as well as digital advertising, including digital display, native advertising, streaming, OTT, and programmatic advertising.
Why is brand important?
To put it another way, what is the promise of a successful brand? We need to start with the end in mind – there are three keys to a great brand:
- Differentiation – uniqueness helps differentiate your brand from the competition and delight customers, increasing brand loyalty.
- Growth – your brand, including its name, should be flexible enough to adapt to your growth goals.
- Increased loyalties – by delivering an exceptional product or service in a consistently branded way, you will increase loyalties among the people you serve.
Your digital footprint is critical in helping customers discovering your brand. Google ranks websites based on their expertise (professionally written content), authority (expertise on the subjects), and trustworthiness (links to and from trusted websites).
What is a brand strategy?
A brand strategy is a long-term plan that sets your goals, audiences, and approach for how, what, where, when, and who your brand interacts with as well as how to measure success. It’s important to identify any areas for improvement. Think through each of your departments and how they are representing your brand. Where do they excel? Where do they fall short? And how can you address these operationally? A brand strategy needs to start within and it’s critical that you go through internal brand workshops and ensure your employees are representing your brand at every turn.
When should you revisit your branding strategy?
Your brand strategy must be revisited when your organizational strategy shifts or pivots. For example, revisit your strategy when experiencing or planning:
- Acquisitions or mergers
- New products or services
- New target audience(s)
- Competition – either new competitors entering the market, or existing competitors taking an aggressive action to attract your customers
- Strategic mindshift, such as a shift in the way you sell your products
- Low awareness, perceptions, or customer satisfaction
As you revisit your brand strategy, it’s important to determine what’s relevant and what’s not – and whether your current visual identity aligns supports the brand strategy.
What is branding architecture?
Brand architecture is a framework from which a company engages its customers and builds awareness. It helps set the foundation for your brand positioning, value propositions, brand story. It can also dictate how a company presents itself visually. Brand architecture is a way to show how everything relates to each other.
There are several brand architecture models. Here are the two most popular models; however, often companies find themselves in need of a hybrid approach.
Branded house
With a branded house model or “one brand” strategy, there is a tight connection with products or services – often carrying forward the company name with a descriptive sub-brand name or extension.
How companies execute on a branded house architectural model can be different. FedEx is perhaps one of the purest examples of a Branded House with its sub-brands sharing the FedEx name with a lock-up of a descriptive product/service name below in smaller text. In contrast, Microsoft moved to a Branded House model several years ago for its main brands such as Windows and Office, but also owns stand-alone brands such as Xbox, yet it still carries the Microsoft logo on communications and packaging.
Pros: With a branded house, you can increase brand awareness because consumers come to recognize the parent brand while the sub-brands feed off the reputation of the parent brand. It is also the most cost-effective and resource-efficient approach.
Cons: Any negative event associated with the company or an individual product can be attributed to the umbrella brand.
House of brands
A house of brands (sometimes referred to as an endorsed brand model) in many respects is the opposite of the branded house model in that the parent company owns and markets its products and services under separate, standalone brand names.
Two of the most common examples are Procter & Gamble (P&F) and Unilever, whose portfolios of products span across home and personal care brands as well as food and beverage. Think Pampers, Charmin, Gillette, Old Spice, Crest, and Pepto-Bismal (P&G) or Ben & Jerry’s, Lipton, Hellman’s, Dove, and Q-Tips (Unilever). While these companies have more recently promoted their connection with the parent brand, each product retains its own branding and familiarity.
Pros: With a house of brands model, the main benefit is the ability to reach a broader demographic through brands that are targeted to specific target audiences.
Cons: A house of brands model is inherently more difficult and expensive to manage, and it dilutes the parent brand.
Reasons you should update your visual identity
Your visual identity or brand look and feel encompasses your name, logo, colors, fonts, imagery, and graphics. It is expressed in your website and other marketing communications from collateral and business papers to presentations as well as advertising. You should consider updating your visual identity if:
- Your brand strategy indicates a need based on the examples above
- It’s out of date – your brand look and feel is dated
- It’s difficult to execute
Often, companies seek to do a brand refresh versus a brand overhaul to retain some equity in their brand look and feel. This can also be a more cost-effective option.
Naming as part of branding: to rename or not to rename?
It’s a big commitment to rename a business or product – because changing the name can be quite costly and you may have equity in your current name. Some of the most common reasons businesses change their name are that the name:
- no longer reflects their business or product
- is difficult to say so people turn it into an acronym
- is not unique and causes confusion
- has trademark issues
If you do choose to rename, be sure to identify naming criteria such as trademark and domain availability, cultural relevance, as well as creative likes and dislikes.
How to tackle a rebrand
Your brand strategy should be rooted in research. From this research and agreement on the brand architecture, you should identify naming criteria (if naming is required) and creative likes/dislikes. Once all parties are in agreement on that criteria, you can explore naming and tagline options. It’s in this phase that you should evaluate the names and tagline options against the criteria outlined as well as test the options with your customers. Once you have approval on the name and tagline, you can explore and finalize logo options. Then, it’s a matter of determining what’s involved in terms of implementation and launch.
Companies often find it helpful to work with an external branding partner to tackle a rebrand, name a product, service, or business, and create a logo and identity.
Need a branding partner?
Organizations often know where they want to go, but don’t know how – or don’t have the bandwidth– to get there. GA Creative takes our clients’ businesses to the next level by building brand awareness and generating leads—all to meet and exceed growth goals. GA helps clients cultivate strategic brand solutions that resonate, drive awareness, and inspire action. Our branding work has helped clients in healthcare, technology, professional services, and nonprofit sectors to foster greater brand awareness, enhance perceptions, drive sales leads, and enable successful fundraising efforts.
We also help drive brand campaigns that help clients grow by outsmarting, not outspending, the competition. GA tells brand stories in ways that work harder by understanding the audience, unifying the message and amplifying the brand in a digital-first world.
Clients value working with GA because of our ability to bring new ideas forward, creativity that shines through in concepts and capacity to drive initiatives forward.
If you need help with branding your company or organization, reach out today!
The importance of employer branding
The importance of employer branding for companies large and small
Besides being among the most notable brands in the world, what do Apple, Google and Microsoft have in common? They prioritize employer branding because they know it’s how to hire and retain exceptional talent—and ultimately reach consumers with an authentic, credible message of trust. But what is employer branding? And how can you develop and measure an effective employer branding strategy? Following is a look at what employer branding is and how GA Creative can help.
What is employer branding?
Employer branding is establishing and maintaining a positive reputation for your company’s brand among internal stakeholders including current and potential employees, leadership, volunteers and others who might be personally invested in the success of the company. Important for both small and large companies, it’s about how your company is perceived as an employer. Is yours a great place to work? A place that fosters innovation, comradery, personal growth, and community? Is yours a workplace that prioritizes diversity? Are employees proud to come to work every day? These are all factors that contribute to a positive employer brand. The management of that brand is employer branding.
What’s the difference between employer branding and organizational branding?
Employer branding is a subset of organizational branding, focused on building and keeping a positive culture among current and past employees to help retain talent, recruit stronger candidates, and reduce the time and cost to fill open positions. Organizational branding focuses on building and keeping a positive reputation externally among current and potential customers, stockholders, boards of directors, press, competitors, and others. Customers want to feel good about supporting your brand with their dollars—and employees want to feel good about supporting your employer brand with their dedication. Your brand and your employer brand work hand in hand.
What is an employer branding strategy?
An employer branding strategy is the way in which you approach building a positive reputation as an employer. Just like a brand strategy, it should be rooted in data and spelled out in an employer branding plan with objectives, strategies, target audiences, tactics, timeline, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Often times through this process, organizations will find operational areas of improvement. Launch and measure your employer brand campaign just like you would a typical brand campaign targeting customers. Afterward, analyze results and hold a project retrospective to discuss how you can improve upon results next time.
How do I measure my strategy?
Before kicking off an employer branding campaign, compile data pertaining to current and potential employees to use as benchmarks, then evaluate campaign results against these benchmarks monthly and at the end of the campaign. Following are types of data relevant to current and potential employees.
- employee/manager satisfaction surveys
- internal-only social media data
- employee engagement
- employee referrals
- retention rates
- exit interviews
- Glassdoor reviews
For potential employees:
- time to hire
- cost per hire
- email opens
- number of fills versus opens
- applications
- external social media engagement
- jobs site traffic
- sign-ups to receive information about open roles
- job offer acceptance rates
In addition, there are a number of artificial intelligence tools that help employers gauge where they stand with current and potential employers, such as predictive analytics in the workplace and chatbots that use machine learning on jobs websites.
Who manages employer branding?
The size of the company or organization usually determines who manages the employer branding activities. Sometimes, they are managed by the human resources department; others, they’re driven by marketing. Most enterprise organizations have talent acquisition marketing teams focused on the care and keeping of the employer brand.
What does recruitment marketing have to do it?
Recruitment marketing is key to employer branding. Take time to craft the right messages that speak to what your employer brand really is, and how working with you is different than working for the competition. You might have better benefits and more competitive salaries—but don’t forget to tout the intangible benefits. Tap existing employees to tell the story of working at your company or organization. Make sure you have effective landing pages that capture leads so you can nurture them via email communication later, giving you more opportunities to build up the brand in their eyes so when they’re ready to make a career change, they’re more likely to think of your company or organization.
How is a positive employer brand good for retention?
Building and cultivating a positive employer brand is about having a culture of shared values: an all-for-one and one-for-all approach to the workplace. That positive approach can’t help but make an impact on current employees—and happy employees tend to stay put. In fact, a survey of 2,250 corporate recruiters by LinkedIn revealed that companies with stronger employer brands had 28 percent lower turnover rates than companies with weaker employer brands.
What are some examples of employer branding?
If no one knows about your great employer brand, it can’t help your company. That’s why companies are marketing their employer brands just like they would anything else, through email campaigns and events, through landing pages and video. Yet perhaps the best way companies can communicate about their employer brands is through social media. Savvy employer brand companies like Microsoft and Cisco are inviting employees tell their stories through social channels directly, letting potential hires in on what it’s really like to work at their organizations.
How can GA Creative help?
At GA, we’ve helped major companies and organizations with employer branding activities. For example, we work with Providence, the third largest health system in the United States, with recruitment marketing activities in support of their employer brand. Campaign strategies include digital and traditional media campaigns to target job seekers, jobseeker landing page strategy and design, email campaigns, content marketing, organic social media, and more. In addition, for a global software firm, we helped create a series of video testimonials of both recruitment managers as well as potential college hires to help share what its like to work at the organization.
Every company has its own unique employer brand story to tell and we are adept at helping you uncover and refine that story, and effectively communicate it to target audiences through activities that work within your time and budget constraints.
Contact us for help with your employer branding strategy.
AutonomouStuff collateral gets a design refresh
AutonomouStuff collateral gets a design refresh
AutonomouStuff provides solutions that enable autonomous vehicle development for customers worldwide. The team turned to GA Creative for a suite of collateral to support their marketing efforts. The goal was to create a contemporary, sophisticated look within the existing brand parameters and an easy-to-read layout that makes an impact.
Sales collateral matters
The design team at GA started with the most in-depth piece, a complete solutions brochure that provides information on all of the company’s offerings: products, services, software, platforms, and data intelligence. Knowing that a polished look and feel builds credibility, our design solution helps influence buying decisions.
Assisting the sales process
We designed the sales collateral to provide the most value by presenting data clearly enough that buyers can make sense of it even when a sales rep isn’t present. The at-a-glance flyer provides a more high-level overview of the company’s solutions and includes a cycle graphic to demonstrate the data intelligence solutions that stores and analyzes data gathered by autonomous research vehicles.
We also designed a flyer showcasing the Platform Actuation and Control Module (PACMod) 3.0 System that provides drive by-wire control of acceleration, braking, steering, shifting, and turn signals and can be installed into virtually any vehicle.
AutonomouStuff delivers the hardware, software, and engineering services enabling autonomy. And by having effective literature on hand at tradeshows, the AutonomouStuff team can simplify sales efforts and move conversations further along.
