How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing: The CoSchedule Buyer’s Guide

Marketing departments are busy places. Everyone has too much to do, and not enough time. Plus, there are always competing deadlines to meet, metrics to monitor, and channels to manage. None of this makes keeping teams organized any easier. In fact, sometimes, it feels downright impossible. Naturally, most marketers rely on a variety of tools to keep things under control. From planning to execution to measurement, there’s a tool or ten for everything. They’re supposed to make life easier. They’re supposed to make marketing management feel, well, manageable. Except they don’t. Not as well as you’d like, at least. Everything feels scattered, and your disjointed workflows don’t seem to work at all. So, what gives? In an ironic twist, your tools could actually be killing your marketing team’s productivity. Fortunately, this problem has a name, and you can fix it.

What Is Makeshift Marketing (And How Does It Hold You Back)?

Marketers often do marketing with non-marketing tools. Like spreadsheets. Too many spreadsheets. For everything. Or, they choose single-solution tools that do one thing … but don’t integrate with other software. This is what we call makeshift marketing, and it’s no way to work. What makes this approach so painful?

• It makes developing efficient workflows impossible. Switching between multiple tools that don’t sync with each other leads to a lot of tab-switching.
• It necessitates a lot of inefficient hacks and workarounds. Tedious copy-and-paste processes aren’t fun, and they leave too much room for error.
• It makes collaboration feel like a trip to the dentist. Clunky tools lead to clunky processes that lead to dreading going into the office.

Fortunately, there’s a better solution out there: CoSchedule.

What Is CoSchedule?

CoSchedule is the industry-leading marketing suite that brings all your content, social, asset management, email, and marketing project management tools together on one unified platform. It’s mission control for your marketing team, making it easy to plan and execute your entire marketing strategy. In short, it’s the all-in-one answer to makeshift marketing.

Who Is CoSchedule For?

Anyone in marketing who needs to get organized. That includes …

Professional Marketing Teams

Keeping in-house teams focused and collaborating effectively isn’t easy. With CoSchedule, managing everything from small projects to full-fledged multi-channel campaigns isn’t only possible, but it might actually be fun.

Marketing Agencies

Instead of managing multiple clients with multiple tools, get all your clients into CoSchedule. You can finally stop trying to manage tons of different platforms and get everyone on the same page.

Small Businesses

SMBs have enough things to worry about, without worrying about keeping marketing organized. Our marketing calendar keeps things together so business owners and small business marketers can spend their limited resources doing work that matters.

Solopreneuers

When you’re a solo marketer, you’re responsible for everything that needs to get done. Fortunately, there’s one tool built to keep your life in order, so you can focus on building your business.

Universities

When managing marketing campaigns and communications across multiple departments, there’s a lot that can do wrong. That’s why top schools like American University and the University of Georgia depend on CoSchedule to keep everything organized in one place.

Why Use CoSchedule?

Most marketing teams use a wide array of tools to get work done:

• Editorial calendars to plan pieces and content themes in advance.
• Google Calendar to manage meetings and events.
• Social media management platforms to wrangle multiple networks.
• Email platforms to schedule and deliver newsletters.
• Spreadsheets to build reports.
• More spreadsheets to track project progress.
• Yet another spreadsheet to store future marketing ideas.
• … too … many … spreadsheets. You have nightmares about endless color-coded columns.
• Analytics platforms to prove your work is driving results.
• Communication apps to keep inner-office chatter out of your inbox.
• Numerous publishing and execution tools for different types of content.
• Note-taking apps for storing memos and documentation.
• Project management tools to keep creative teams organized.

If that sounds like a lot of software, this list is only scratching the surface. Here’s a visualization of the martech landscape from back in 2011: Of course, the marketing industry has matured since then. The number of tools we have to choose from has grown accordingly. Here’s a similar visualization from 2017: That is an overwhelming number of tools and services to choose from. If looking at this makes you feel like popping an aspirin, you’re not alone. But, the market has grown because marketer’s needs have grown. We have more options for more specialized solutions than ever. In theory, this should make life easier, right? The answer is a resounding “kind of.” Marketers are still left using tools that weren’t made with marketers in mind. To make matters worse, purpose-built marketing solutions often don’t integrate with one another, either. This means:

• Marketing tool stacks are disconnected. When tools can’t talk to each other, keeping things organized gets difficult.
• Inefficient tools lead to inefficient work. For marketers, time is money, and time wasted due to tools that don’t scale is unacceptable.
• Managing projects and campaigns across multiple tools increases odds for errors. Copying and pasting content out of a static calendar into a CMS? Tracking progress between a spreadsheet and two team management apps? The more manual effort required to move data, the more opportunities exist for things to go wrong.

Referring back to the marketing tool map above, it all leads to one question: Do you really need (at least) one tool from each of those product categories? With so much work to do and software to manage, marketing teams need one version of truth to guide them. Something that can consolidate the tools they use most day-to-day. A platform that’s actually built for marketers. One that can replace copy-and-paste processes and end the tyranny of countless spreadsheets. That platform is CoSchedule.

How Can CoSchedule Help Beat Makeshift Marketing?

CoSchedule is built to empower teams to push past makeshift marketing for good. Let’s take a deep dive into some key areas where streamlining marketing workflows with CoSchedule makes more sense than doing things the old-school way.

One Place to Start Every Project

With a makeshift marketing approach, projects live in several different tools. That makes it tough to know where to look, for what, and when. With CoSchedule as your team’s go-to marketing hub, you have one place to start planning every project and campaign.

• Visualize your entire marketing strategy. With Custom Content Types, mapping out every piece of content you’re working on it simple.
• See every project and campaign on one calendar. CoSchedule becomes your marketing team’s single version of truth to see what’s ahead.
• Stop switching tabs between multiple apps. Eliminate confusion over which projects live in which app. Bring them all home into one cohesive marketing hub.

One Place to Manage Every Workflow

From planning to execution, managing marketing workflows isn’t easy. There are plenty of ways things can go wrong. Odds are, you’ve experienced a lot of them yourself. Part of the problem stems from tools that aren’t built to support smart marketing workflows at all. That’s why CoSchedule is designed to organize every phase of your marketing processes.

• Communicate. With Discussion Threads, you can keep all communication attached to every project and piece of content. No more missing messages or email threads.
• Collaborate. Pass comments, exchange files, and manage version control.
• Create. With key integrations, you can execute everything in one place.

Content: One Unified Editorial Calendar.

CoSchedule enables teams to manage every project on one calendar. This gives everyone full visibility into all your marketing efforts. No more missed deadlines or last-minute surprises. It’s also easy to drag and drop entries from one day to another. Plus, with our WordPress integration, you can schedule blog posts to publish automatically. Write content in Word, Google Docs, or the built-in text editor, and you can even convert your docs directly into WordPress posts, or convert and download them as HTML (to be imported into another CMS).

Social Media Marketing: Schedule. Publish. Measure.

Bringing your content and social media calendars together yields several benefits:

• Manage all your content in one place. Create content and schedule social promotion, together. Curate content from anywhere on the web with our Chrome extension.
• Stop switching between multiple platforms. You need to know what’s publishing, and when, regardless of the medium or channel. Instead of managing content in one place and scheduling social posts in another, bringing both under one roof makes it easier to get the full picture on your publishing schedule.
• Save time automating scheduling and reporting. Use ReQueue to reshare top performing posts. Use Best Time Scheduling to post at optimal times without manual effort. Use deep social analytics to measure performance and produce visually appealing reports.
• Stay on top of all your social media conversations with Social Conversations Inbox. Reply, message and engage directly from your CoSchedule account.

Instead of using multiple tools, manually building posting schedules and reports, you can save tons of time automating everything with a purpose-built platform. Plus, with our mobile app, you can easily manage social scheduling no matter where you are.

Marketing Project Management: Stop Herding Cats. Get More Done.

Creative professionals are hired because they’re good at what they do. Sometimes, they’re not the best at getting organized, though. In fact, it’s not unusual to see a writer or designer with a desk that looks like this: What looks like chaos, is actually a sign of a genius at work (or, at least, that’s what they’ll say). ? Now, this isn’t to say marketers are inherently disorganized. Far from it. But, even the most coordinated amongst us need tools to keep our work days, weeks, and months straight. Marketing project managers know this. And, if you’ve ever tried managing multiple teams or clients in numerous toolsets (a common headache for agencies and enterprises, in particular), you know the pain is real. Instead, CoSchedule is made to make corralling creatives and marketers easier. Here’s how we do it:

• Organize complex campaigns with Marketing Campaigns. Keep every piece of every campaign organized on one visual timeline.
• Use Task Templates to build project checklists. Maintain consistent workflows with these reusable checklists.
• Measure productivity with Team Performance Reports. See who’s crushing it, who’s falling behind, and adjust workloads accordingly.

Plus, with our Zapier integration, you can easily sync popular project management tools including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Wrike with your CoSchedule calendar.

Email Marketing: Schedule Newsletters With Your Favorite Email Service Provider.

Email marketing drives 4,000% ROI. With Email Marketing from CoSchedule, you can:

• Seamlessly integrate with your *favorite* email marketing platform. You already have a kick-a$$ email platform you know and love, so why give it up? With Email Marketing, you can easily connect your preferred email platform to CoSchedule with just a couple clicks.
• Write click-worthy email subject lines…every time. With Email Marketing, you can use CoSchedule’s *exclusive* Email Subject Line Tester to optimize and perfect every subject line to drive more opens, more clicks, and more conversions.
• Get full visibility into your ENTIRE marketing strategy. Say “buh-bye” to disjointed marketing content (and constantly jumping from screen to screen). With Email Marketing, it’s easy to see how your email campaigns relate to the rest of your marketing strategy and quickly make adjustments if necessary.

And when it’s this easy to manage + optimize your already-powerful email marketing strategy… …imagine how much more ROI you can drive with everything in one place. ? CoSchedule currently integrates with MailChimp, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, and Campaign Monitor.

Pricing Plans to Fit Your Business

No matter what type of business you’re in, there’s a CoSchedule plan for you. The best part? You can tailor the features to fit your needs. You can purchase the entire marketing suite or any combination of the organizers for a bespoke plan that's made for you.

A Better Future Awaits …

Our marketing teams manage everything with CoSchedule. The results speak for themselves:

• Over one million website visitors per month.
• More than 800,000 email subscribers.
• 80,000+ social media followers.
• Recognition as the fastest-growing startup in North Dakota (ya, you betcha).

In addition, we offer tons of resources to help you level up your marketing skills:

• CoSchedule Academy: Dynamic, on-demand courses, content, and more for kick @$$ marketing teams.
• CoSchedule Power User Guide: Onboard your team and use CoSchedule to its full potential with this in-depth guide.
• CoSchedule Helpdesk: No matter what you want to do with CoSchedule, we can help you get it done.

Forget the frustration of makeshift marketing and move toward the marketing platform built for you. Work with less stress, save more time, and produce better results, the CoSchedule way.