Progress Over Perfection: Thoughts on Effective Marketing Process Documentation

If you’re scaling your Marketing Dept, someone should own the strategy for process documentation. – Creating a new process? Document it. Need to train on an old process? Document it.

Repeated tasks like creating a campaign in Salesforce or importing a list from an event into Marketo should be documented. Having a documented process makes it easier to delegate tasks and train employees. This is crucial for key stakeholders in Demand Gen or Digital Marketing to ensure their teams are well-versed in proper procedures. When everyone follows the same process, your “marketing engine” runs more smoothly, resulting in cleaner, more accurate reporting.

Starting to document your processes from scratch might sound overwhelming, but if you go with the mindset of “progress over perfection,” it takes the pressure off.

Remember you are creating technical documentation, it doesn’t have to look pretty so long as it’s understandable.

Here are some ways you can make creating process documentation easier:

1. Create a Centralized Folder: Start by creating a dedicated folder in Google Drive (or your preferred platform) where all documentation is stored. This ensures easy access and organization. And it’s searchable.
2. Record Explanations: When explaining a new process to someone, record it on Zoom or Teams. You’ll have a video recording of the process, and the captions/transcriptions can serve as your initial documentation. With a bit of AI-powered cleanup, you're 80% of the way there.
3. Live Documentation: Alternatively, you could have another employee watch you go through the process live. Their questions and feedback can help fill in the gaps, making your initial documentation even stronger. Record that session and you’ll again have a training video and script you can clean up with AI.
4. Documentation for Major Integrations: For your key martech system integrations (Marketo, Salesforce, Hubspot, etc.) aim for solid documentation/diagrams—enough that someone else could manage 80% of your operations if you were promoted, left the company, if the company was acquired, or you wanted to change systems.

The reality is, there's no end to the things that will need to be built (if your company is growing), so don’t waste too much time on perfect documentation. The goal is that someone can figure out the process, and you can move on to building more. Progress over perfection!

If you need some guidance on getting your Marketing processes documented, let’s chat! I’m here to help you streamline your marketing operations and set up the foundation.

Thanks for reading!