Microsoft Project 2013 – communicate and manage better

The current version of Microsoft’s Project software (2013) has really improve marketers ability to manage even better projects, campaigns, NPD, events and launches. With great new pre formated reports, communication and stakeholder engagement has never been more available and as we all know, keeping people informed and motivated is critical to project success.

While on the surface Microsoft Project 2013 (MS Project) can look like a complex piece of software, you need to make conscious decisions about how you are going to use it and then stick with that plan –  you can base this on your stakeholder needs and use the software as a tool to help deliver on those. Its true, you can let the software bog you down, but if you have a goal on want you want out of it, and focus on that, it’ll be a great asset for you.

Reporting with MS Project

Reporting with Microsoft Project

For marketers, the software really only needs 4 things to work for you – that list of jobs to be completed, your estimated duration of each of those jobs, your best ideas on how the project needs to flow or the precedence of tasks, and finally who (individuals or teams) is doing each task. With this, you then have a project schedule, important start and finish dates, duration and if you have costs for your resources, a cashflow budget for your project also.

Then you can do some of your own work on the look and feel of the project – milestones, add in some notes on Goals, Scope and Assumptions and the strategic alignment of the project with the businesses needs. You then have a portfolio of reports to build your presentations and communications with, that will get sign off, win over sponsors, motivate your team and other stakeholders and generally make you look like someone who is completely on top of the projects they are responsible for.

There is a lot of tracking and reporting options for when the project is underway, but often in the fast paced marketing environment where you are running multiple, short term projects, its the proposal and baseline plan that is used to run the project.

While it sounds pretty nerdy, we are big fans of MS Project 2013 for Marketing Projects and can help though our facilitated sessions around 1 of your actual, upcoming projects or through our Project Reporting & Communicating 1 day course or the 2 day Project Management Skills for Marketers session.

Book Securely at Eventbrite for all our courses (booking fees included)

 

Short Courses to move you forward

Marketers making good decisions

Marketers making good decisions

Its a massively fast moving world with stuff changing everyday, what was hot yesterday is now so “2000 and late”. The courses we are offering in 2015 are not about whats hot or whats not and they are not lists of 10 things to do tomorrow or even one word the best describes a concept !

Our courses will give you a set of underpinning skills and confidence to improve your decision making when confronted with new opportunities that inevitably bang on your door or inbox. Our models and core understandings give you a strategic tool box to focus on your targeted customers and stakeholders while keeping a strong focus on what outcomes your organisation needs. Once you are strong on that, you can get to work on the right communications, distribution decisions, value offers and customer journeys.

Yes, do some specialist courses then or out source to experts in these fast moving spaces but keep and eye on what you are doing and why its going to work for you !

Our first Sydney and Melbourne courses are on soon  – check these links for details or for all our courses click here – 2015 courses for smarter marketers 

Book Sydney

Book Melbourne

Smarter Decisions – marketing skills can help

People talk about marketing from a communication POV but there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes.

smart thinkingMarketing can help making smarter decisions through the conscious alignment of what the organisation needs and an understanding of which stakeholders (customers) can best help deliver on those.

People with a marketing orientation (they can be anywhere in your organisation) are on top of what challenges face the Org and are very aware of who their important stakeholders are and what’s affecting them, today.

The smarter decision comes from being proactive, empowered and understanding what fits and what’s on the fringes. When you demonstrate this in your actions, touch-points inside and outside the organisation, you build trust, gain credibility and are far more efficient. Those fringe offers, opportunities and proposals don’t take up all of your precious time. Yes, as part of your ongoing environmental scanning, you’ll have an eye out for new things, but your knowledge of the Org and your customers/stakeholders will keep you progressive, innovative and value adding.

Marketing Short Courses in 2015 for Marketers

In 2015 we’ve got a series of F2F interactive courses happening in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane  – see our training page for the the full list of 7 marketing short courses and 29 dates across the year, the first one is in Sydney 30-31 of March.

New courses include ROI & Budgets for Marketers, #MarComms101 looking at all communications options from analogue to digital and paid, earned and owned and critically, the integration of these, Project Reporting and Communication, Market Orientation plus Marketing for Smarter Decisions. Our regular strategic planning sessions and project courses including learning how to use Microsoft Project for your campaigns, events and NPD on on as well.

Here’s a short video intro – enjoy and let me know if you have any questions. Secure booking is via the calender on the right of this screen or direct to our events page on   http://www.eventbrite.com.au/o/liberated-vision-amashman-7935550716

I’ll look forward to seeing you in a course and please share this with colleagues who you think might be interested too !

Marketing – not just for the department of !

Non Marketers Contributing to Marketing

Non Marketers Contributing to Marketing

We’ve just finished a conference key note for around 130 non marketers talking about marketing, and while we’ve done a number of sessions like this over the past few years I’m always excited at the feedback we get. While if you work in marketing, its your daily thing but for non marketers to have an insight into what actually happens behind the scenes to drive the front end comms and new products/services is a bit of an eye opener and even reassuring for them.

While our sessions are always fast paced and motivating, the knowledge shared, understanding gained can only help the organisation and the marketers as they recruit and retain clients, because more people are onboard for what needs to be done.

Certainly when you empower the PEOPLE part of your marketing mix, its a distinct bonus as employee advocates are highly trusted sources of information, also processes permitting, you might find more problems are solved for customers and opportunities realised for customers and stakeholders at the point of contact. This makes your brand really sing to all those inside and outside of the organisation.

A business/organisation with empowered, marketing orientated people can cope with changing conditions and customer demands far better than those who haven’t invested in this internal opportunity.

You need to expose more of your people to marketing ideals and this can start by the marketing department doing more internal presentations and launches and being open to feedback and buy-in from across the organisation.

Andrews Awesome Marketing Intervention ?

If you are looking for us on www.facebook.com You’ll find us @ Andrews Awesome Marketing Intervention in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Why ? I reckon marketing is an intervention – stop check, learn a few things and change behaviors – all for good ! I Hope you’ll find our 1 and 2 day courses fun, informative, relevant and interactive, plus you’ll meet some other nice, like minded people !

Checkins and Likes appreciated !

Andrews Awesome Marketing Intervention

Employee Advocacy and Marketing

There’s lots of chat about employee advocacy which is great for marketers as it elevates the recognition that people are massively important in the marketing mix. Certainly while you and your team might be fantastic at all aspects of the marketing mix, if you are let down by the people internal to the business or your distribution touch points, all your good work can unravel !

Marketers need to work across the organisation motivating and getting all types of staff up to speed with the customer and marketing challenges, some might call this internal marketing but its even more as you look to empower your people to live the brand and be excited about being ambassadors for it. Its going to require conscious effort and marketers need to be working with HR or those responsible for bring new people in (and moving people out) to ensure you’ve got people who can add value not just administer processes !

To imaging how good this could be for your organisation, you need only think back to inter departmental breakdowns, poor communications inside the business or in a retail sense how a waiter or waitress may have taken the positive edge of your last coffee, date, or special occasion !

Action – Do an audit of the people in your network who might have any kind of touch point with customers or critical stakeholders, start with more and improved communication, empower these people by demonstrating trust, train them where training is needed, listen to them for coal face feedback and then work on getting more like them !

Do something about the first step today.

 

Employee Advocacy and Social Opportunity

 

Getting Smarter in 2015

The new training and facilitation calender will be out shortly, our specialist face to face short courses are the quickest way to help you make smarter decisions in marketing. In every course we work hard to understand the particular issues facing those in the room and then provide context around applying marketing templates, theories and strategies around those circumstances.

Our courses are also geared to giving you a set of underpinning values which assist you making better decisions when confronted with a new customer problem, a new promotional opportunity or an internal business issue which marketing can have a positive impact on. At the end of the day we think we can connect the dots faster for you to be more productive and innovative sooner.

As with courses run through CSU (www.csu.edu.au ) and AMI (www.ami.org.au ) we are available pre and post course to consult on anything arising from the course material. In 2015 we’ll be offering a “Take Out” pdf or slideshow that you can take back to your workplace and run the team through material discussed so your best intentions can live out in your organisation !

This we’ll be training in Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane at a minimum and if you’ve got a custom job we’ll come to you or if you have a group from an association or particular business interest we can customise a fun interactive and informative workshop just for you in your space !

Thanks Andrew

Mobile-technology


Marketing is a cool concept to me – its impacted my work and personal ideas and I find it a great platform to discuss, develop and solve issues at many levels. Certainly if your organisation is marketing orientated or centric you organisation/ business has the best change of really firing as everyone and diverse stakeholders work together to achieve so much more than a bunch of individuals !

Yes its all about the customer / stakeholder but its also about realising your goals and finding the right customers or stakeholders that will allow you to do that – hence the chronic problem of anyone using the words mass and marketing in the same sentence, hence to lack of applicability of mass media unless very carefully targeted and hence the danger of short term focus around transactions rather than relationships and journeys and brand story etc.

Marketing is an opportunity to get your people working together (way beyond the marketing department), learning about and understanding customers who you can really make a difference for, working with technology and creativity/innovation to differentiate, giving the organisation reason and momentum to perform and attracting great people to to complete the cycle. Motivated, happy people solve difficult problems, develop cool solutions and are quick learners – what you need in our current crazy fast moving environments.

My posts are going to be about different things I see as interesting and emerging in this space which includes Strategy, Communications and Project Management of Marketing type issues – campaigns, new product/service and events. They will also feature bits and pieces of theory that are great platforms for checking your direction and for testing options in a world that would rather you didn’t!

Thanks Andrew

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