Best practice for structuring multi-channel marketing projects
I'm a fairly new Wrike user and I'm trying to come up with the best way to structure some of our project blueprints so that they meet all of our different business needs. I've tried a few different approaches and I'm looking for better suggestions.
Business Requirements
- Multiple deliverables per project, e.g. web content, email, social posts
- Deliverables typically have different assignees at different stages of their lifecycle, e.g. design, publication
- Some deliverables may get published to different channels, e.g. press release posted to website and delivered over a wire service
- Need to be able to display all or some deliverable/channels in a calendar, e.g. executive wants a calendar with all touchpoints and also focus on just one channel at a time, doesn't want to see all tasks
- Want to avoid proliferation of tasks to the extent possible to avoid overwhelming users—we typically do one or more such projects a week
Structures I've Tried
- Task for each deliverable, with sub-tasks for steps that have different assignees. Custom field for channel. Calendar filtered on the custom field. Challenges: (1) Dates on deliverable-level tasks don't roll up on their own, so they don't show up on the calendar without a touch. (2) Redundant tasks if a piece of content is delivered via multiple channels.
- Task for each deliverable, with sub-tasks for steps that have different assignees. Folder for channel. Calendar filtered on the channel folder. Challenges: (1) Dates on deliverable-level tasks don't roll up on their own, so they don't show up on the calendar without a touch. (2) Lots of folder-tagging after the project has been created.
- A task for each production stage, with custom fields set on the sub-tasks in the publication task. Calendar filtered on the custom field. Challenges: (1) Basic organization is less intuitive, more cluttered for users. (2) Redundant tasks if a piece of content is delivered via multiple channels.
None of these approaches feels right. There must be someone in the community who has faced a similar issue. I'd love to hear suggestions. Thanks.
New project for the full "project"
Projects for each deliverable (that way each 'deliverable' has a beginning and end that can be tracked)
Tasks (with unique workflows) for each step in the process. E.g. Copy, Design, Layout, etc. Workflows are used for the review process for each step where needed. Unique tasks for each distribution channel under the same deliverable (E.g. website blog, PR Newswire, etc.).
Milestones for the deliverable "publish" date. This serves as the deliverable calendar that is needed. Create a smart calendar that shows only milestones - share with stakeholder.
Voila.