Hurdle 3
Organizational accountability
Everyone needs to be on board with integrated campaigns. Developing campaigns in isolation or executed without taking every discipline into account will not be successful. Working as a group, each department is essentially accountable for the output of entire marketing programs. This mentality will create an environment in which team members can speak up about potential integration points. Teams will start to think strategically about their portions of a project in context of the greater whole. Facilitating this strategic leadership will help give teams a sense of ownership over entire campaigns -- not just their specialty -- and lessen the barriers between departments and partners.
For example, analytics is one key discipline that can elevate entire marketing executions if it is integrated at the outset of campaign planning. It can prove the validity of executed strategies, and it is the backbone of any well-optimized campaign. If analytics is left out of the loop until the end of a project development cycle, data collection could be incomplete or fragmented. When analytics is brought to the strategy table during a campaign's development, analytics professionals can highlight tracking opportunities to incorporate analytics along the way, which expedites the implementation process and provides a more complete tracking picture.
Establishing cooperative strategy planning might take a while, but charge ahead and point out areas that can be improved when all groups are developing campaigns as a united front. Assure teams that this does not mean that creative integrity will be sacrificed or media plans need to be approved by every department. It does, however, mean that campaigns will be most successful when experts have insight into the entire campaign roadmap at once. If media planners know what social media is up to, they can incorporate relevant keyword strategies. If creative and SEO professionals have insight into an email promotion, they can also plan accordingly.
