The Stakeholders in Your Campaign: There Are Many, All With an Opinion
Stijn Wessels
Different people are involved in every step of your digital marketing campaign. Creating, planning, reviewing, legal checks, publishing, the director wants to add his two cents, and after your campaign has finished, the content needs to be archived. Let’s be honest that doesn’t always work well.
As the number of channels grows along with your digital marketing organization, the number of people you have to deal with also grows. Be it an email campaign, a personalization campaign, a social campaign, or an omnichannel campaign; you can never let rip and quickly create and launch a few excellent content items.
Of course, you would love to do that sometimes, but you also need those other stakeholders. After all, everyone has their own specialty in a larger marketing organization. A social media manager knows how Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and maybe the forum all mesh together and understands how campaigns on these various channels can reinforce each other. And a channel owner can ensure that the email campaign matches the strategy of the email channel and can also perfectly match content, templates, social posts, and accompanying visual material.
Longer-term content projects
And that still isn’t all. In longer-term projects—where for instance, the moment at which digital content goes live is linked to expensive radio and TV commercials—the message and content must be tracked closely. It’s no different for propositions that an organization offers over a longer period.
And then you also have organizations that have to comply with strict internal and external rules for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps your organization is a listed company and/or a financial organization. Maybe you work for a telecom company where you can cluster services when required, or perhaps you work for a non-profit that needs to deliver complex budget reports.
Organizations like these have legal departments to check whether the advertising meets legal requirements. This involves things like the mandatory statement ‘borrowing money costs money’ in advertising for mortgages and other loans or ‘read the financial information leaflet’ for advertising that promotes investments.
Large organizations have compliance departments that ensure that all statements and messages comply with the defined quality standards, reporting requirements, and procurement terms. And then, of course, you also have the corporate marketing or communication departments, which check whether messages and/or content meet the brand guidelines.
Dividing up your stakeholders
Is this a familiar situation for you? Do you have so many stakeholders, too? And is your publication process so complicated (or takes so long)? Then it may be helpful to assign your stakeholders to categories and determine in which phase you need their feedback or approval.
Amazing content
To cut a long story short: sometimes there are dozens of people who have to express an opinion on the undoubtedly amazing content you have created. Suppose you work in an organization like this. In that case, it’s vital that you structure the necessary processes correctly and that the stakeholders don’t get in each other’s way—and above all, not in your way either.
