Before you rush off to start building your new interactive content experience, it’s smart to consider the different roles and tasks you’ll need to account for to create your content.
The answer to “who’s in charge?”, the project manager is there to guide the process, weigh opinions and feedback, coordinate between team members and bring the project from concept to completion. They are on point to make sure it gets done, and gets done right.
In addition to helping brainstorm, plan and enforce brand consistency, a marketing manager’s primary role may be taking the reins on promoting your new content once it’s built.
A subject-matter expert in creating and distributing content, the content marketer brings important insights to the planning and promotion of content—especially when it comes to assessing your current assets or determining the best approach to reach your customers in the right stage of the buyer’s journey.
There’s no replacement for a great wordsmith. Your messaging and communications need to be clear—which is exactly where a talented writer will shine. If you are re-purposing content, the copywriter will simply be editing existing content, slicing it up to work in its new form.
If you’re not building on a platform or you don’t have the tech savvy or time to build it on your own, you’re going to need a developer who can bring your experience to life.
Your user experience needs to be beautiful, easy and intuitive—which is exactly what a good web designer can help you accomplish.
If you’re not measuring, you’ll never know what’s happening, the outcomes and results. A web analyst is helpful in setting KPIs, evaluating data and measuring your impact.
The chart below lays out the different phases of the project where the various roles ought to be involved. As you’ll see, some roles span multiple stages, while others only come in as they’re needed.
In an ideal world—one where specialized people work for free and big teams are easy to build—you’d have different people handling all of the above roles. But that’s just not realistic or practical for most businesses—and thankfully, that’s OK! With the right platform, small teams wearing multiple hats can be just as effective.
The marketing manager also serves as the project manager, leading the project from start to finish and coordinating the other team members. If they’ve got the talent, they can also fill in on the content marketing and copywriting end of things, and they’re also a part of the ongoing measurement.
The web designer works with the marketing manager to map out the interactive wireframe, put together the creative elements and build out the content on the platform. With the right platform (like ion interactive’s!), you may even be able to skip the designer if you are in a resource of budget crunch.
The web analyst (or stats person) uses past data to help brainstorm ideas and define KPIs, then takes ownership of measurement once the content is built.
Interactive content doesn’t need to be intimidating! Contracted help can be brought in to help with areas of weakness, or in the case of ion interactive, you could use our professional services to manage your program on your behalf—from strategy to concept to launch.
No matter how big or small your team, make sure that you’ve assigned ownership of the different parts of the process before you begin to keep things on track and avoid surprises as you’re moving things out the door.
By now, you’re ready to launch! In the next chapter, we’ll be taking a look at one of the biggest challenges for modern marketers—measurement.