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An effective marketing process: what it means in practice

Everything can always be done more simply. The more efficient your company’s marketing process is, the more it will benefit your business. Less costs, more revenue and a smoother day-to-day life. Find out how Aste optimises both your own and your customers’ marketing processes.
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Kaksivärinen yksinkertainen tussipiirros, jossa henkilö istuu tietokoneella kiireisen näköisenä, ja ympärillä on vauhtimittari, tiimalasi ja ruudulliset liput.

Why is an effective marketing process important?

Time is money. The simpler you can make things, the more productive your business will be. Plus a smooth everyday life is certainly something everyone enjoys.

That’s why at Aste we want to optimise both our own and our customers’ processes to make things as straightforward as possible – and therefore efficient.

An example of this simplicity in our company is the product manager model: all employees are product managers, and they form self-directed, cross-functional teams. Each person is responsible for their own work for the customer, without unnecessary middlemen and management layers.

“It’s easy for the customer to know who to contact immediately, and at the same time, familiar customers learn about the strengths of the different product managers themselves,” says Saara Kullström-Koljonen, Product Manager at Aste.

Learn more: Aste’s unique product manager business model – 5 benefits

Efficiency ≠ fast

Understandably, in today’s capitalist world, efficiency and optimising productivity also have a slightly nasty ring to them. There is a general feeling that large, publicly traded companies are trying to maximise profits by making workers work harder and faster.

We believe that efficiency doesn’t have to be taken away from anyone. Efficiency comes from finding unnecessary work in marketing processes that can be eliminated or replaced by automation.

Learn more: Trust and cooperation make Aste Helsinki one of the best places to work in Finland

Creatively effective, effectively creative

In addition to content production, the Aste’ employees do a lot of creative design work for marketing and media clients. Brand images, advertising campaigns, magazine layout redesigns, design of educational materials and websites from design to coding.

In such creative work, efficiency can still not be speed, because creative work takes time. Then you have to find other ways to optimise the process. One of these ways is Aste’s multi-channel approach and multi-professional teams.

Time is saved by having the same people managing the process from start to finish, and the house has experts from programmers to designers. This allows us to think about how things will work in practice as early as the design stage. We can also draw on the experience of other clients.

Our product managers take pride in their work and are meticulous about its quality. The end result must not suffer because the work is done efficiently.

“Efficiency does not mean rushing, but for us it means working more rationally and smoothly,” says Saara Kullström-Koljonen.

“It’s great to see that customers trust our expertise in developing and streamlining processes.”

Below you will find concrete examples of what it means in practice at Aste.

Learn more: Get your message seen and heard across multiple channels in a cost-effective way – Here’s how

Examples of effective marketing processes

Here are some examples of the concrete things we do as a marketing partner to make the process between us and our client as smooth as possible.

1. Effective cooperation with the customer

At the heart of lean marketing is the streamlining of communication. All the people you need are in the same place at the same time, so that information can be shared in one place. No middlemen, no unnecessary meetings, no email chains of dozens of people.

At Aste, each author is a product manager responsible for his or her own projects. This means that the client can always contact the contractor directly, which makes it easy to clarify matters.

Product managers form multidisciplinary teams around partners’ needs, so the right experts can be found quickly for different jobs.

2. Effective communication between teams

The teams of product managers are self-directed. This means that each team can easily adapt its own operating model to suit their needs and, for example, their workload. In addition to regular meetings, colleagues stay in close contact with each other on Slack throughout the day.

The aim is to share work within teams as flexibly as possible. Of course, product managers have specific skills or responsibilities, but it is important to us that knowledge is never held by just one person. We share knowledge both within teams and between teams, so that the right person can always be found as quickly as possible to meet partners’ needs.

3. Multi-channel expertise from design to implementation

Aste has recognised that diverse expertise and multidisciplinary teams are one of the factors that make everyday life run more smoothly. When a project is in the same hands from planning to implementation, time is saved for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the design can be done in a way that takes into account the already existing content versioning for all the necessary channels. Secondly, there is no need for unnecessary briefing, as the same elements are involved from the start.

4. Optimising process management and MRM systems

You can always do things more simply – and technology often makes it possible. Today, there are millions of different technology solutions that can help you optimise the workflow of your marketing projects, from assignment to data processing to commenting on finished content. The greatest benefit is gained when systems are tailored to meet your specific needs.

Aste specialises in using technology to streamline everyday life. Our experts help you find new innovations and provide technical support when new systems are introduced. For example, we are involved in the development and maintenance of customers’ MRM systems.

At its simplest, optimisation can also be an attitude and a mindset. It means being able to say out loud in everyday life even the smallest things that are perhaps done in an overly complicated way. It is not worth being satisfied with a simple “this is the way it has always been done” approach, but to dig for solutions with an open mind. Sometimes a small stream can turn into a big river.

5. Using artificial intelligence as a tool

In addition to the workflow, it is important to think about each individual step through the process. What is it about what you are doing today that could be automated or for which an AI tool could be found?

At Aste, for example, AI in image processing is already a given, reducing the time spent on manual work. Text to speech tools have been used to create faster marketing content more cost-effectively.

Aste’s core competences also include various integrations built between systems, utilising automation and artificial intelligence. This has been used, for example, to achieve efficiency in the production of large-scale advertising catalogues.

Learn more: AI for creative work: how we use AI tools

6. A culture of experimentation and the fast cycle of content production

Testing and constant iteration of measures is one of the cornerstones of agile marketing. Proposing and experimenting with something new takes a little effort, but it can bring a whole new level of insight. At Aste, bold experimentation and innovation is seen as a very important part of continuous improvement.

To keep the threshold for experimentation as low as possible, the cycle of making must be fast enough. Something can be tried today and in two weeks you can see if it works. After that, the measure is refined towards the most productive outcome.

Of course, there is no point in testing for testing’s sake. It takes a marketing professional’s eye to see which ones are worth investing in and which ones will work with a little updating.

Learn more: A culture of experimentation – Why is it important and how can it be nurtured?

Text: Maija Vaara, Aste Helsinki

Contact us

Interested in discussing more or expanding our cooperation? All contact details can be found on the Contact Us page.

Sales and customer relations Tuomas Miettinen 040 546 1131 LinkedIn

Experts

Maija Vaara
Saara Kullström-Koljonen
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