Overview

Companies are becoming more and more fast paced when it comes to marketing. Needing to create more content, share more content and market more content is top of mind for most marketing teams. What gets lost during this process is how it will all work and how your sales and customer success teams will use this data.

That is where process mapping should take precedent for marketing operation teams especially. Having an effective and well thought out process mapping document or other collateral can help provide insight to your teams where this data is coming from and how they can use it effectively to help continue providing positive business results. Don’t have any process mapping in place at your current role? No worries, this blog will help you start thinking about how to effectively build out process mapping.

What is process mapping?

Process mapping is a document or visual aid that represents the various steps and activities involved in executing marketing strategies and campaigns. It helps to streamline and optimize marketing processes by providing a clear understanding of how tasks are performed, who is responsible for each task, and how different tasks are interconnected. There are many ways to create process mapping through popular applications such as Miro, Microsoft Visio, LucidChart or even more common applications such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

Using a visual tool helps provide a more visually appealing presentation but not necessarily required if you are just starting out. In the end, what you want to create is a document that clearly and accurately describes all of the activities and steps that take place to execute your team’s marketing strategy and activities.

Why should companies do process mapping?

The biggest benefit that process mapping provides is eliminating any uncertainty or lack of knowledge on how different applications, processes and teams work during a campaign or activity. This can be in multiple areas such as how leads flow from your MAP to CRM, how an email campaign is built, reviewed and sent out or how registrations for events work as common examples. Process mapping helps eliminate that confusion by walking through all of the steps and teams involved (as well as application processes) in an easy to digest way that helps clear up any confusion. Some common issues teams run into without process mapping is not understanding integrations, lack of standardization, change management as well as time and resource constraints. A well mapped out process mapping document will help provide that context to all teams involved to help provide a holistic view of how marketing activities get out the door as well as how the process helps non-marketing teams such as sales, partnerships and customer service/success.

When should a company do process mapping?

A company should do process mapping early on or as soon as possible. The reason is it can provide a solid baseline around what currently exists, what areas need improvement as well as what areas are missing as well. Having a mapped out process can help expose both the strengths and weaknesses of your current processes and give you a head start on where improvements should be made and help provide a roadmap towards that.

How should a company do process mapping?

As mentioned before, there are many popular applications that you can use to create a visual representation of your process mapping such as LucidChart, Microsoft Visio, Miro and many others. These can provide visual representations of all the steps involved in your activities and processes. Having some written documentation as well can help outline some of the processes that might not fit well in a visual diagram. An example of that use case would be documenting how to create and send an email out of your MAP.

Who should do process mapping at your company?

While this should be owned by marketing and marketing operations, this process should include teams that also benefit from the value and information your marketing team is providing. Having your sales teams, customer teams and other stakeholders involved can help make sure you are including items that they are unsure of. Getting that feedback and insight will help you provide a document that will not only help your teams but all those involved in your activities, events, programs, etc.

Conclusion

Having a process mapping document created is a great first step but not the end of the exercise. As mentioned before, highlighting any shortcomings should be focused on next to help shore up those areas and create more scalable and efficient processes for your team. Also, as changes arise, continue to use this document to highlight these as well as reference it to help ensure all areas of your processes will not have any major impacts with these changes. Making it a constantly evolving doc will ensure that you stay on top of all the processes and technology that is being used in your marketing activities.