This is a regular series where Oodle experts answer your marketing questions. To submit your own question, email questions@oodle.io.

Oodle Partner Mark Hughes: This is a marketer who is trying to plan ahead and make sure things are on track, and it sounds like they may have gotten behind. So, Ryan, what’s your advice from a production end? 

Oodle Partner Ryan Hughes: No. 1 is to have a tool. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet if you have a small team, but have someplace where you’re planning those projects out in detail and at least blocking them into certain schedules. 

Make sure you’re having conversations with people: “Hey, I don’t know exactly what this is going to look like, but here’s your part in this project, and here’s when we anticipate that happening.” 

If you leave someone’s schedule open – even if you have stuff planned for them to work on – other people will fill it with their own priorities. 

So, No. 1 is having that tool. No. 2 is actually using it. It’s actually putting projects in there far enough out and saying, “Hey, we don’t have to think about this for two months, three months, six months, but we know it’s coming.” 

Mark: And that tool and that document need governance. It needs to be a living, breathing thing that your team interacts with and understands, and someone needs to be the keeper of that. You need someone whose responsibility it is to keep it on track and ensure everything is working appropriately. 

‘Oodle Answers’ is a regular series where Oodle experts answer your marketing questions. To submit your own question, email questions@oodle.io.