Time is our most precious resource. It’s the one thing you can’t get back once it’s gone. With that said, building efficiencies into the marketing and design process is essential as more organizations have to do more in less time.

So, let’s review a few of the most common problems when time constraints impact marketing campaigns and how to prepare for them.

Problem: Quick Turnarounds

Some opportunities, requests, and even demands force you and your team to put everything else aside and focus on only that one thing. These last-minute projects can be defined as those that have to be completed by a hard deadline that’s shorter than the standard delivery timeframe.

Projects like:

• – Producing print ads for a publication that needs it by the end of the week
• – Designing and printing sales slicks that must be designed and printed for a trade show within 48 hours
• – Making edits to graphs for a presentation taking place in 30 minutes

In some cases, rush projects are unavoidable. However, hurrying the design of your creative assets can compromise their quality because of its compressed schedule. It also limits the time allotted to produce something innovative.

For some businesses, it’s an acceptable sacrifice. But others, not so much.

Solution: Streamline your workflow
Having an agile process already in place makes it easier for your team to shift its focus and resources. From a design perspective, having approved design templates gives you a solution that can shave hours off of creating something from scratch.

When you work with a design agency, they’ll have a process to handle normal projects and address sudden requests.

Problem: Delayed Feedback

Tight timelines condense projects, affecting the number of eyes on them and, in some cases, increasing the likelihood of delays. These setbacks can happen for several reasons, ranging from internal politics to indecisiveness, and ultimately, they put a lot of pressure on schedules without any wiggle room.

For designers, delays often mean balancing working within the existing timeframe while providing the same level of creativity and quality expected from them. In some cases, this means having fewer opportunities to iterate on the design to improve it.

When there isn’t enough time to enhance the design, it can limit its effectiveness.

Solution: Get everyone in the same “room”
When delays occur, they can derail the progress of the entire project. But you can fix this by getting everyone in the same “room” to give and receive feedback in real-time.

First, it removes the back-and-forth that comes with email. Second, getting the decision-makers, creatives, and other critical team members together makes it easier to get a progress report, plan your next steps, and identify what is or isn’t feasible moving forward.

Problem: Choosing to design reactively instead of proactively

Jumping straight into designing campaigns without a sound marketing plan means the result isn’t based on long-term goals or strategy. Instead, it’s reactive, potentially sabotaging the design from the beginning.

When the approach is to create assets based on “we have to do this because [X date] is coming up” (reactive) instead of “we’re doing this because it solves/serves [X] purpose (proactive), then you’re setting yourself up for the campaign to not to go as far as it could if there was a pre-established plan.

Solution: Embrace strategic, proactive planning
Before asking your designer to create a deliverable for you, it’s important to map out your marketing plan and strategy. We’ve discussed the reasons why this is so necessary here. Creating this guide first streamlines your entire design process because there is a rationale for the assets created.

Managing your design schedule under tight deadlines

Doing your job is harder when you’re constantly under pressure to produce, and as time constraints grow, it’s easier for things to fall through the cracks.

Brand and graphic designers give you another set of tools to meet the limitations and challenges you face in marketing your business. Their expertise is your secret weapon in helping you meet those tight deadlines because they act as partners.

When you have a creative team behind you who takes some of the weight off your back, you can be more efficient with your time and increase your overall productivity.