Remember Creative

Every business wants to be profitable and the way to be truly profitable in a digital design and marketing agency is simple: make your customers profitable.

We don’t hold all the cards to a clients future but we can leave a lasting impression.

We want to deliver great results from every project we produce. And to that end we have 5 major areas that we focus on.

Set goals & expectations

Just as getting out of bed on the right side (which is, of course, the left side) is essential to having a good day, being proactive in the formative time of a digital product build will set you in good stead for the remainder of a project. First cab off the rank is goal setting: defining the scope of work and the expectations of and for all parties involved.

Communications & Relationships

Making everyone’s expectations known leads into the next step which may not get a great amount of press at the end of the day because it’s not a tangible result but open, honest, and comprehensive communication makes for smooth sailing which is part and parcel with building the relationships and trust with clients and vice versa is important. Trust will lessen frivolous communication and needless angst.

And above all remember to listen.

Processes & Timelines

The engine is running everyone is onboard we need to define when it all happens; the process will be tweaked for individual jobs but having a processes in place, will build the trust

Agility

Often roads have bumps in them, a wary project manager will be agile enough to unruffle their feathers and get on with the job at hand. Whether it is a power surge that loses hours of work; a client needing to change scope due to extenuating circumstances a great digital agency will adapt. Agility, whilst some may see as opposite of process if you are deviating, is actually at the very heart of process – a process should be rigid to guide you but flexible enough to encounter problems and handle them with ease.

Results & Assessment

But the project is over and the proof is in the pudding why is this section needed in an article about getting a great result. Well, following through on the goals we set early on shows that accountability is another part of getting a great result but we also want to reflect on the goals set and see where we succeeded, exceeded and fell behind (although when following the other four elements this last column should remain unmarked). Not only that, it is great to take stock at the end of what can sometimes be a long term project over many months or a small project that was in a constant state of flux – clients can sing praises and or air grievances (hopefully small or none at all) and we get to discuss how enjoyable the process was and that we would be more than ready to tackle the next project.

A project is a fluid environment and many of these elements go hand in hand – Agility can even mean changing the goals, an expectation shortcoming may need to be communicated honestly to the agency or the client (yes, it works both ways, e.g. a client might be late on delivering content or an agency might need an extra day tweaking the design to perfection) which could in turn change the timeline or even the final output but at the end of the day when we are shaking hands and putting our tools of the trade away – a great result is our main aim.

PS

This was written by a project manager. A project manager that doesn’t have a creative bone in their body, I’m sure that our developers, strategists, designers, copywriters etc. all think they have a little something to do with achieving a great result for the client. Well… they can write the next article and prove me wrong… I’d like to see them try…  except the copywriters I can’t compete with the wordsmiths.