In the distant past, marketing teams would run entire campaigns with their only organizational tools being a filing cabinet and an overworked secretary.
Today, things are radically different — even small marketing teams rely on complex stacks of tools, technologies, and platforms designed to manage and optimize every aspect of marketing — and the organizational methods of the past are woefully inadequate.
If you want to stay on top of this plethora of marketing resources and actually make the most of your tools, you need marketing resource management. In this article, we’ll show you what MRM is, why it’s so useful, and how to put it to work in your own organization.
What is MRM?
MRM is a category of tools and platforms built for the specific purpose of helping you manage and organize your various marketing resources.
Now, you may be asking, what does “resource” mean in this context? It’s a good question and a good place to start. Here’s a quick (but not exhaustive) breakdown of some marketing resources:
- Software tools like your CRM, email service provider, SEO tools, and design platforms
- Hardware like computers and storage
- Your budget and financial resources
- Media and files like photos, educational resources, and copy archives
- Important data, for example on your customers, finances, and past campaigns
- The processes and operations that keep your business running
As you can see, today’s marketing companies rely on a ton of different resources to keep the lights on and do their jobs effectively. MRM helps you manage this arsenal of tools so you can save time while getting more out of your resources.
Are people resources too?
One thing to keep in mind with MRM is that the people in your organization are also resources. In fact, they’re the most important resource of all. The way you manage your teams resources will have a huge impact on how well they perform their jobs and maximize their potential.
The right MRM tools can help you communicate more easily with your people, manage scheduling and payroll, hire new talent, and much more.
What functions does MRM provide?
Now that we’ve looked at what MRM is, it’s time to break down a few of the key functions it provides within the marketing process.
- Provide a central point to store marketing assets like content, images, and case studies from past projects
- Help marketing teams track key metrics and key performance indicators to monitor the progress of projects and find areas for improvement
- Manage scheduling, optimize workflows, and make it easier to organize and track the progress of various projects and activities
Why is MRM important?
MRM isn’t just a fancy buzzword to sell you yet another tech subscription you don’t really need. It solves lots of persistent everyday problems that marketers face and delivers real, tangible benefits.
Let’s take a look at a few of the main reasons for adopting MRM in your business.
More efficient use of resources
MRM is all about helping you get more out of the resources you have available. When you use multiple tools, platforms, and approaches, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll miss out on some of the features and benefits they offer
MRM tools help you make the most of your existing resources, so you can squeeze more out of them and get your money’s worth. MRMs often use techniques like automation to save you time, leaving your teams free to focus on their human work.
Become more informed
Today’s marketers have access to incredibly powerful tools for tracking, monitoring, and analyzing their activities and performance in all kinds of different areas. Unfortunately, many teams are too busy to take advantage of these tools and end up missing out on key insights that could help them drive the business forward.
The right MRM software can help you tap into more insights from your performance and operations, and adopt a more data-driven approach to your marketing.
Bring teams together
As companies and marketing teams get bigger and more dependent on technology, a common problem they run into is a lack of cohesion and the formation of siloes. Segmenting the company in this way makes it easier to manage a big, complex entity, but it also makes it harder for teams to collaborate and causes disconnect and inefficiency.
MRM tools can help here by making it much easier for teams to stay in regular communication and share important information between themselves. These tools can create shared platforms for teams to connect and collaborate without friction or confusion, which helps projects run more smoothly and productively.
Better budget management
Budget is a constant concern for marketing teams, and MRM tools can help you stay on top of costs and avoid going beyond what you can afford. They do this by providing clear and detailed insights into all your spending activity, making it easy to quickly pinpoint the exact areas where you’re going over budget and make the right adjustments.
Better project management
Managing marketing projects is rarely a simple or stress-free task. You need to stay on top of multiple moving parts, manage lots of different people, and juggle various different goals and objectives at once.
MRM helps bring together all your planning software, collaboration dashboards, communication platforms, and scheduling tools to make marketing project management less of a headache and more effective.
Key tips for approaching MRM
How do you start putting MRM tools to work in your organization? At first, it can be tough to know where to begin — there are so many different MRM tools out there with endless shiny features and supposedly life-changing benefits. How do you know which tools are right for you, and how to implement them?
Find out where you are now
The best place (and in fact, the only place) to start with MRM is where you are right now. This means your first step should be an assessment of the current state of your marketing. This should include, but not be limited to:
- Your key processes
- All the tools and resources you’re currently using
- Your budget
- Your main goals
- Your most pressing challenges
Your main objective here is to drill down into the main areas where you can start getting tangible benefits from MRM right away. This way you can start to implement MRM in a way that gives you the biggest possible impact.
Give your teams everything they need
If you want to get the most out of MRM, you need to make sure your team members have everything they need to start using the tools in their everyday work. This means you have to educate your team members on all the tools they’ll be using and how to maximize the benefits.
Hold training sessions and meetings to explain how to use MRM tools, and encourage questions and feedback. It’s a gradual learning process — your team members won’t all come away from one training with everything they need to know, you’ll need to help and guide them over time via ongoing communication.
Work closely with IT
Even though MRM exists for the benefit of marketing teams, it’s also a highly technical area that can require a lot of support from your IT specialists. Make sure your IT department is aware of the tools you’ll be using and how you’ll be implementing them. This way, they can help you get the most out of your MRM efforts, avoid mistakes and delays, and handle security.
Treat MRM as an ongoing process
Marketing resource management isn’t just something you install once and then never have to think about again. It’s a continuously evolving process — the tools you use and how you use them will almost certainly change over time according to your needs and the things you learn from using MRM.
It’s a good idea to schedule regular reviews where you can take a look at how well your MRM tools are performing and how they’re helping you achieve your goals. This is your opportunity to drop tools you don’t need, replace them with new ones, and change how you use existing tools.
Choosing the right MRM tools
By this point, you’ve probably realized that an awful lot of your success with MRM hinges on the specific tools you use and how you use them. Every business has its own unique set of marketing needs and challenges, and its own unique combination of marketing resources, so MRM looks different for everyone.
There are tons of excellent MRM tools out there, solving a whole host of different problems. Some are mind-blowingly good, while others are more hype than substance. Let’s take a look at some telltale signs of a good MRM tool.
What makes a good MRM tool?
Although the ideal MRM stack will vary depending on your specific needs and circumstances, there are still some universal green flags to look out for.
- They reduce your workload. MRM tools should not give you more work to do, they should simplify and streamline your marketing so you get more out of your resources while spending less time managing them. The best MRM tools are easy to use, intuitive, and can be easily adopted by all your team members.
- They focus on people, too. Marketing resources aren’t limited to data assets and software tools. The best MRM tools recognize that your people are your most valuable resource and come with features to help you manage and organize your teams.
- Solid reporting. The right MRM tools can help you track your various marketing resources much more accurately, which helps you identify areas for improvement and make changes to squeeze more value out of your marketing stack.
- They should grow with you. As your company and marketing team grow, the tools and resources you use will change and adapt too. You should choose an MRM platform that will grow alongside you and support your marketing infrastructure even when it’s much bigger and more complex.
The best MRM tools
So what are the best MRM tools out there? Marketers are spoiled for choice here, and you could spend days scrolling through fantastic options. To keep things simple, we’ve put together a short list of some of the best MRM tools.
1. Forecast
Forecast is an AI-powered resource management tool that focuses specifically on your human resources. It’s designed to help you keep projects on track, boost profitability, and tap into valuable insights to help you get more from your people.
It’s built for teams of more than 15 and integrates with a wide range of tools and platforms. Pricing depends on your contract length and number of users.
2. ClickUp
ClickUp is one of the most well-known productivity and resource management platforms out there. It comes with a ton of features to help you collaborate with other team members, plan projects, and stay on top of the resources you use. It’s suitable for teams of all sizes and comes with a range of affordable pricing plans.
3. SproutLoud
SproutLoud is a great choice for businesses who want a simple, user-friendly marketing resource management tool. This AI-enhanced platform is designed to help companies manage digital assets, create and share content, and comply with relevant marketing regulations — among countless other use cases. Its goal is to help marketers improve engagement and get concrete results from their work. SproutLoud is an excellent choice for both major organizations and smaller businesses.
5. Wrike
Wrike’s work management platform makes it easier to collaborate and manage your marketing activities in a more simple, productive way. It helps marketing teams streamline workflows, bring new people on board, and scale with ease. Wrike is also highly customizable and can be adapted to your specific infrastructure and style. It has a range of pricing options for businesses of different sizes and demands.
5. monday.com
monday.com’s marketing resource management service is designed to help you reach your goals faster and manage creative projects from start to finish. The tool emphasizes a holistic approach, allowing you to easily see how your marketing activities impact each other and the organziation as a whole. monday.com has a free plan and multiple pricing tiers depending on your needs.
Work with Forecast
Forecast is designed to help marketers manage their teams and boost their productivity and efficiency in all areas. The platform’s AI-fueled features have helped deliver impressive results to our users — like a 43% increase in billable time and a 50% reduction in administrative time.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Forecast works, and taking your own marketing resource management to the next level, schedule a demo with us.
