Admation Blog

The Dilemma and The Fix Series - Part 3:

The Dilemma
Jenny is a marketing manager who oversees a team of ten people, four of whom make up the creative team. Most days she feels like she’s managing 50 people with so many marketing projects on the go and never knowing who’s doing what. Her project resource spreadsheet desperately needs updating, but for now she’s winging it by delegating tasks verbally. Now her boss needs a progress update for budgeting purposes and she’s got two team members off with the flu. The pressure is 0n. Jenny is on her fourth coffee for the morning and currently googling ‘career counsellors’.

Running a profitable advertising agency relies on a number of critical factors: great leadership, results-driven marketing, a strong client base and talent who deliver on brilliant ideas. The way you manage creative projects and resources is often overlooked in the bigger picture. Still, they remain vital to your bottom line.

“Optimizing the utilization rate (the percentage of time spent on billable work) of your employees, essentially creating more productive and efficient team members, will have a major impact on your profits -- especially if you do mostly project-based work.” Hubspot

Let’s take a look at project management and resource management to understand how important they are to running a proficient and, therefore, profitable ad agency.

Effective resource management is not just about checking off project tasks and meeting deadlines. It’s also about creating the right space for your team to be at their creative best. How else are you going to achieve that WOW factor in your marketing campaigns? In reality, though, how often are marketers hitting the mark?

If industry reports are anything to go by, nearly 60% of inhouse creative teams are crying poor in terms of resources. This means employees are overworked, overwrought and, it’d be fair to say, not on their best game. Marketing project management software with integrated resource management is changing the way marketers work. With an inbuilt resource planner, task timers and an overview of work in progress, marketers now have greater transparency over their resources than ever before.

Managing your ad agency's freelance creative resources can play an integral part in growing your business and providing it with a competitive edge. That is, of course, if you utilise them in the right way.

Here are some tips to make sure your advertising agency gets the most out of its creative resources and freelancers.