Every creative agency faces challenges when launching and delivering client projects. For instance, you might need help aligning your team on a new client project. Or, you may hit a wall when attempting to hit a client's deadline after a sudden scope change. No matter the situation, these bumps in the road often lead to delays, miscommunications, and unmet client expectations.
And if you’re not careful, they can sink your profitability and threaten your agency’s reputation. Creative agency workflow helps you avoid these pitfalls by streamlining how you execute client work. This guide explores the ins and outs of creative agency workflow, its importance for marketing agency operations, and how you can optimize your workflow to improve performance and profitability.
What Is The Creative Process Workflow
Creative workflow management refers to how a team or organization oversees developing creative assets, from idea generation to design approval to project launch. The best creative workflows are an ordered, repeatable sequence of tasks.
Creative workflow management is a part of overall creative operations, which refers to how a company manages the internal creative process. Creative agencies must have strong workflows and processes to meet their clients’ quality, budget, and timeline expectations. The same goes for internal creative teams that produce creative assets for their organization.
The Phases of Creative Workflow
There are four phases in all creative workflows: defining goals, generating and developing ideas, reviewing and obtaining approval, launching projects, and monitoring success. Establishing a repeatable workflow will streamline your process, eliminating the need to reinvent the wheel each time.
Key Components of A Creative Agency Workflow
Understanding Creative Agency Workflows: The Basics
Creative agency workflows outline the processes for producing creative projects from start to finish. A creative agency workflow is a systematic approach that guides projects from concept to delivery. Managing the entire process for each content piece outlines steps to ensure efficiency and optimal results.
Although the workflow stages might vary depending on the type of project, the process usually includes the following phases: definition and planning, creation and development, review and approval, and launch and evaluation. Whether advertising, design, digital content, or another creative field, an effective workflow provides consistency throughout the creative agencies’ processes.
The Definition and Planning Phase: Get Everyone on the Same Page
During this initial phase, you meet with the client to understand their requirements, define goals, roles, and responsibilities; and determine project scope. Learn more about managing project scope.
Engage With the Client
Understand their needs, goals, target audience, brand voice, and any specific preferences. This initial step creates the foundation for the project and ensures the creative direction aligns with the client’s vision.
Write the Creative Brief
This document serves as a roadmap for the project, summarizing key information gathered from the client. The brief serves as a reference point throughout the creative process. Use a creative brief template to ensure you include all the key elements of your design.
Assign Roles and Responsibilities
Identify the team members involved in the project based on their expertise and assign specific tasks and responsibilities. This step increases the workflow’s efficiency, sets clear accountability, and helps optimize resource utilization.
Set Project Milestones
Establishing key milestones throughout the project timeline helps you track progress, manage deadlines, and keep the project on schedule. These milestones serve as checkpoints and help your agency complete the deliverables within the agreed timeframe.
The Creation and Development Phase: The Fun Part
Once you set the project scope, it’s time to enter the creation phase, where you develop ideas that your team will turn into deliverables.
Research
Gather information and data relevant to the project goals and target audience. This could include market research, competitor analysis, user research, or industry trends. Conducting thorough research ensures the creative work is based on a solid understanding of the subject matter.
Brainstorm
This collaborative exercise brings together team members to generate ideas and concepts. This exploration step allows for diverse perspectives and helps spark innovative solutions. If your team is feeling blocked, try one of these brainstorming activities.
Develop the Concept
Take the time to refine ideas and turn them into tangible concepts that can be further developed. This stage involves iterating on initial ideas, adding details, and aligning the concepts with the project objectives.
Design
Create the visual elements of the project, such as layouts, color schemes, typography, and imagery. The design should be visually appealing, functional, and consistent with the brand identity and the creative brief.
Create drafts
Based on the concept and design, you produce the first drafts of your product deliverables in this step. Before these drafts are ready to be shared with the client, they must undergo an internal review for feedback. Based on team critiques, validate that the drafts align with the project’s objectives, refine the ideas and designs, and select the best ones to present to the client.
The Review and Approval Phase: Almost There
This phase occurs right before launching the content. The creative work is complete and ready to go through client review cycles to guarantee alignment. Once complete, the creative team will make any adjustments to refine the final product.
Gather Client Feedback
Share your work with the client and collect their thoughts and suggestions on the work in progress. This step allows you to identify areas for improvement, ensure alignment with expectations, and make adjustments to refine the design.
Go Through Revision Cycles
This iterative process involves incorporating client feedback and refining the design or specific deliverables. Establishing clear revision cycles is key to helping manage expectations and maintain an efficient workflow. Define the number of revision rounds and specify turnaround times. Make the necessary adjustments until you obtain the final sign-off.
Develop Final Assets
This step involves any additional production after the initial client approval. It might include creating marketing materials, preparing files for printing, or developing website elements. The client must review and approve the final assets before launch, so schedule enough time for this step.
The Launch and Evaluation Phase: Time to Shine
Having secured client approvals, you must prepare the content for publication and move to the final step: launching it and measuring its success using the parameters set during the definition and planning phase.
Launch
This stage marks the release of the completed project. Launching the content could involve publishing a new website, launching social media campaigns, or distributing printed materials, among other activities.
Evaluate the Project
This final step involves assessing the project’s success against initial goals and objectives. Evaluation might include analyzing performance metrics, identifying areas for improvement, and sharing insights with the client.
Try Orchestra for Free to Grow Your Productized Service Today
Launch your productized service effortlessly with Orchestra's all-in-one growth toolkit. Designed for creatives ready to scale, Orchestra provides a branded, white-labeled client portal, task management, and real-time analytics, with no coding needed, just your Stripe account.
Whether you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra streamlines your workflow, letting you collaborate with clients seamlessly while maintaining a private workspace with your team. Add integrations like Slack and webhooks to customize your setup and deliver a branded experience. Enhance your service with a platform built to grow alongside you. Try Orchestra for free and expand your productized service today!
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Importance of Having a Smooth Workflow for Creative Agencies
Gain a Deeper Understanding of Business Processes
Creative agency workflows provide vital insights into organizational processes. By achieving a favorable outcome, agencies can create an efficient workflow to help them understand how the data flows through their business. This gives regular insights into how the various elements of the agency impact decision-making and work. With workflow automation, business can map their processes to get a clear and concise top-level view of their operations.
Identify and Eliminate Redundancies
Redundant tasks can cripple creative agency processes. Daily, an agency deals with many unnecessary and redundant tasks that can waste time and resources. Detecting and eliminating these redundant tasks is crucial for any creative agency that wants to succeed. After yielding insights about the processes during the workflow, one can analyze all the activities and eliminate the redundant and unnecessary ones.
Reduce Micromanagement
Micromanagement is a big no-no in any agency. When managers don’t trust their employees to do their jobs, it creates a toxic work environment that diminishes performance and increases turnover. When the workflow process is correctly mapped, managers will automatically invest less time micromanaging their employees. Reduced micromanaging will result in increased productivity and improved manager-employee relationships.
Clearly Define Responsibilities to Help Employees Succeed
Creative agencies thrive on teamwork. To achieve success, an organization must motivate and encourage its employees in all the best ways possible. The best way to do so is by giving them full responsibility for the task they are working on. Clearly defined workflow processes help to establish who is responsible for what and give employees the autonomy they need to excel.
Increases Accountability Across the Board
Reduced micromanagement automatically increases accountability. With a laid-out and efficient workflow, the whole team can see what is happening and what must be done. Every employee knows about the tasks that are to be completed, what their responsibilities are, and what the deadline is for completing those specified tasks. Managers will also spend less time micromanaging their employees and more time on tasks with a higher significance.
Enhance Workplace Communication
Poor communication at the workplace can be a deal-breaker. It is the most common problem in the workplace, but it needs to be appropriately addressed. Goals can be easily misinterpreted due to a lack of communication that might affect productivity, quality of work, and morale of the employees. Communication is critical to ensure that all the employees are on the same page and all the tasks are completed within their specified deadlines.
Foster Knowledge Sharing
Transparency is the key to quality output. Sharing knowledge and information plays a crucial role in the successful working of an organization. Finding workflow automation software with features that will help business users collaborate easily is essential. Holding information by employees with higher positions is a common practice, which can jeopardize the execution of strategies and the smooth running of the organization. In Workflow Automation Software, the information should be appropriately collated and shared with those who require it.
Improve the Quality of Products and Services
An ideal situation for an organization is when the product is working perfectly, and the customers are content with the product. It is crucial for the business that its products and services keep on improving after every workflow process. Improvement requires consistency, and the organization can achieve great heights through consistency.
Break Down Silos
In an organization where traditional approaches are being followed, there are higher chances that one department might not share or hide some data and information with other departments, hindering the organization’s smooth running. To achieve customer satisfaction, one must have all the information present, which is possible only when departments cooperate and work together in harmony. Therefore, information should be meticulously documented and shared on a common platform for everyone's consumption.
Quantify Performance
Monitoring and measuring performances at regular intervals is essential, as it helps detect faults and correct them on time. Measuring performances can give exact information about the correctness of the process. It also points out the flaws that need to be improved. Some workflow tools, such as business process management (bpm), can also record and monitor a company’s performance and results.
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15 Tips for Efficient Creative Agency Workflow
1. Use Orchestra: The Creative's Best Friend
Launching your productized service doesn’t have to be challenging. With Orchestra’s all-in-one growth toolkit, you can get started effortlessly. Designed for creatives ready to scale, Orchestra provides a branded, white-labeled client portal, task management, and real-time analytics, with no coding needed—just your Stripe account.
Whether you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra streamlines your workflow, letting you collaborate with clients seamlessly while maintaining a private workspace with your team. Add integrations like Slack and webhooks to customize your setup and deliver a branded experience. Enhance your service with a platform built to grow alongside you. Try Orchestra for free to develop your productized service today.
2. Start From The Customer: Get Feedback from Existing Clients
If you already have ten customers, and they support your current business operations, you've done something right. Refrain from discounting their contribution, even in times of tiresome slogging. They might look old school, but contact forms still work for high-ticket creative agencies. Instead, close doors for new clients until you figure out what doesn't work with current customers. This will help your growth trajectory. If you've been working with customers for a while, they'll have opinions on your work.
Ask Them
What's the primary reason you decided to go with our creative agency? What parts of the service provided have met or exceeded your expectations? What's one thing you'd like us to improve in the service provided? Even just these three questions will take you far. They'll tell you what the customer values the most, why they chose you against the competition, and where you need to focus on providing a better service for existing and new customers.
Asking the right questions to customers post-sale leads to important feedback. Knowing this stuff is the equivalent of striking gold for a creative agency. And I know it's hard to do; you're exposing yourself to judgment. But the truth is, your agency isn't you. Emotion only plays a role if you let it, and I have some good news. Customers like to see the services they use improve! They might not share it explicitly, but they will lend a hand if they can be part of the process.
3. Include All The Relevant People: Get Input From Everyone Involved
You must involve everyone contributing to the process to create detailed, accurate documentation. If you leave everyone out, you could take advantage of an important step or lack vital context about workflow operations. Get everyone in the same room, or allocate a virtual space for this, and get everyone’s input. Let’s say you have a team that consists of an account manager (or digital marketing manager).
They are the client’s primary point of contact, own the main project milestones, and oversee all internal work as the project manager. This person will have an overview of all the work being done, but for specific assets, they get contributions from your UX/UI designer, SEO manager, and social media manager. Suppose you attempt to document the workflow without involving the UX/UI designer, SEO manager, and social media manager. In that case, you may miss key insights into the process when creating certain assets.
4. Write a Creative Brief: Document Project Details Before Work Starts
Once you have gathered all the necessary information about the pending project, you should document it. This document is a creative brief and officially settles the project’s summary, scope, objectives, deadlines, budget, expected deliverables, and conditions to be met. In addition, the creative brief addresses the team members who will be executing the project. A well-documented creative brief not only keeps everyone on your team on the same page but it provides clarity and transparency for your client.
5. Assign Team Roles and Clarify Responsibilities: Get Everyone Ready for What’s About to Happen
Prepare your team for what’s about to happen. Not only in terms of what each of them needs to produce but how and when. The success of each creative process depends on how much everyone understands their roles and responsibilities from the beginning. Even when your team members may know their role by default (you probably have managers, graphic designers, copywriters, marketers, SEO specialists, etc.), it’s still essential to outline everyone’s level of involvement and specific tasks within the frames of this current project.
This will put your team on the right track and help you manage the creative process more efficiently. Ensure every task is assigned to a specific person and that person understands their role. This will leave no room for wondering who is responsible for what and when. Ensuring this will help your team avoid confusion, eliminate the risk of repetition or missing tasks, and ultimately, optimize time and money. Everyone will know what is expected from each at any point in the project’s progress.
6. Expect Problems: Prepare for the Inevitable Project Hiccups
Every project is going to have problems come up at some point. Take advantage of your team's collective intelligence to anticipate and prevent project fires before they start. The more organized and prepared you are, the more likely you’ll be able to handle whatever curveball comes your way without seriously derailing the job and optimizing your creative agency workflow.
7. Create a Simple Visual Representation: Map Out Your Creative Process
Gather all the steps mentioned before and put them on a visual map, in chronological order, from left to right. You can do this on a wall with post-its, on a whiteboard, or in a digital tool like PowerPoint or Canva. Next, write down how much time is spent on each specific task. Differentiate between the active work on the task and the average time spent waiting for input from someone in the team. For example, the time it takes to receive client feedback or the average time a task spends in someone’s backlog before they get to it. If you don’t have this info, consider taking some time to gather the information.
Accuracy is the most critical factor here. It’s not always easy to remember exactly how much time something takes or how long the wait is before certain things happen. Sometimes, it’s as easy as spending 20 minutes going through emails or Slack messages to see how long certain exchanges take. But that’s not always possible. If necessary, pause the exercise for a week or two and let your team repeat the workflow. This time, have everyone track everything and note how long it takes.
8. Charge The Right Prices: Understand How Pricing Affects Your Workflow
It might sound counterintuitive, but the most crucial step in establishing a sound creative agency workflow isn't the project milestones or the detailed briefs. It's charging the correct prices. The process, both pre-and post-purchase, is anchored in the price. Above $2k / month is a good starting point for your creative agency pricing. (Source: Flowspark) So, if you price things right, the process is shaped accordingly. Signing long-term contracts that aren't profitable (or very low margin) and allowing scope creep to permeate profitable engagements, keeping prices the same for too long. First, it's easy to sign contracts early on that get your foot in the door but eventually leave you with a dry mouth. You're contractually obligated to deliver, but you know you're not getting any substantial benefit from it.
This is a killer for agencies and the primary reason you run out of time (and money). A "contract" isn't just a written document; it can be a verbal agreement or a monthly retainer. Generally, you want agreements to run only for a while. And you want to refrain from working on verbal contracts and write things down. Second, if an engagement is profitable, you must keep it that way. Customers will ask you for favors or additional services occasionally. Make it clear that a contract amendment will be needed from the get-go. If they say yes, you've got yourself more business at the price you set.
If they say no, you're not eating into your profits. Either way, you will retain the customer. Third, and importantly, you need to increase your prices over time. As a more established creative agency, charging the same as you were in the first few months doesn't make sense. It puts precious resources back into the agency. It alleviates the workload on your team, enabling higher quality. New customers will be okay with it, and existing ones will adapt to new contract terms.
9. Define Project Milestones, KPIs, and Revision Phases: Set Clear Goals and Expectations
Defining the project milestones refers to expected measurable results at a specifically established time. And while this is creative work, it is still vital to demonstrate and apply measurable metrics about the progress at each point. This could be the creation of a specific number of design versions, prototypes, amount of content, or something else that is relevant.
Besides measuring the process’s progress, it’s even more important to establish KPIs for the creative work itself.
Key performance indicators are planned value, actual cost, earned value, cost variance, and ROI. Such indicators must also be included in your creative agency pitch deck. While the actual reviews and approvals happen at later stages, aligning your team and your client on how often we will send off work for reviews, feedback, and approval is essential. Would it be at each milestone or even more often? This is another factor to ensure that everyone knows what is expected from them, when, and to whom they are accountable for showing their progress for feedback.
It could be the manager or the end client themselves. Each change should be documented, as well, in case you have to refer later on and determine who’s responsible for what. In this train of thought, the wiser thing to do is opt for frequent reviews so you have adequate time for timely reactions and readjustments while still working on this particular step.
10. Review The Workflow Process For Potential Improvements: Make It Even Better Over Time
Time to evaluate where you waste time money, or potentially introduce errors. Many things can go wrong, from unnecessary handovers to copy-pasting from one tool to another. Encourage everyone to contribute with ideas, highlight what they’ve noticed, and frame the conversation in a no-blame way. This time, there’s value in highlighting problems, and everyone will benefit from an improved process.
Answer Questions Such As
Are there any redundant steps we could eliminate? Where do errors happen most often? What can we do to prevent that? What’s taking the most time? Are there any handovers that could be eliminated?
Tip
Test-run the new process for a few tasks and make any further necessary adjustments.
11. Implement Quality Control & Sign-Offs: Ensure Consistent Deliverables
I had my tiny creative agency at one point. Once I reached the 15-customer mark, I realized I had a significant quality control issue ahead of me. I simply couldn't keep up with demand anymore, and what I charged wasn't enough to make up for an additional step in the process; going back to step 3, I charged more over time. Quality was decreasing, and I couldn't do much about it. At first, you might feel this is optional, but you know the quality of your team's work.
You've seen it firsthand. But that's always the case, and only until demand is manageable. It ensures the quality of your deliveries will consistently match client expectations without ever going up, down, or sideways. Having a dedicated QA person means having a "guardian" of customer satisfaction, something the creative team doesn't have time to think about. It forces you to charge healthy agency pricing.
Most agencies undersell, thinking they'll change things eventually. But they underestimate what it means to re-model while handling current clients… Imagine building a plane while it's flying! Plus, once a standard quality control process is in place, you can always scale it up and down as needed. Quality is rock-solid on one service front? Re-allocate QA to a less mature service (but keep an account manager vigilant).
12. Communicate Your Workflow: Document the Process
Create a final document presenting the process. It’s useful for everyone on the team to review occasionally, but it comes especially handy when onboarding a new team member. If tools are involved in your process, you could also create a step-by-step instruction manual on completing specific tasks within that tool. Clients and external stakeholders will also appreciate an easy-to-follow documented workflow. Remove any strictly internal steps and create a dedicated version that clarifies the process from an external point of view.
13. Create Templates: Streamline Repeat Tasks
Why start from scratch on every project, especially if you do the same thing repeatedly? Instead, create templates to save you time and effort now and in the future and optimize your creative agency workflow. For example, if you create a lot of blog content for clients in a specific format, create a template to save time, and your team can fill in the gaps.
14. Research and Analyze the Competitive Market of Your Client’s Business Niche: Get a Lay of the Land
Before heading off to brainstorm and develop fundamental ideas, take aside enough time to research the competition of your client’s product or services. This will help you understand how your solution will stand out from what other people in the business are doing. Involve your team members in the process, too.
Let each one research the task from their perspective and devise a plan to create a working and effective solution to put your client’s brand in the best possible light. The research phase is the time to identify and evaluate potential risks and obstacles in the upcoming creative process. Make sure to devise a plan to solve and overcome such eventual problems.
15. Develop the Product and Adapt to Changes: Stay Flexible to Client Needs
Naturally, the product's actual development happens after brainstorming. At this point, you have ideas that your team will work on. While it’s essential to keep your clients involved and updated during the process, it is also important not to overwhelm them with too many versions and prototypes of the final product. Clients tend to need clarification if presented with more than three concepts. A good practice while developing the design or other creative projects is to track the time it takes to complete tasks. Analyzing the time spent on budget and workload will help you develop tactics to improve your creative workflow.
Try Orchestra for Free to Grow Your Productized Service Today
Orchestra is designed for creatives ready to scale. Whether you’re a designer, developer, or copywriter, Orchestra streamlines your workflow, letting you collaborate with clients seamlessly while maintaining a private workspace with your team. Delivering a branded experience helps you elevate your service and impress your customers.
Customize Your Client Experience with Orchestra
Orchestra's white-labeled client portal helps you create a customized client experience. You can add your logo and brand colors to the portal to make it your own. Then, as you onboard clients and get to work, they’ll communicate with you through this portal instead of your email. This helps you streamline your creative agency’s workflow to impress clients with your organized service delivery approach. Try Orchestra for free and develop your productized service today!
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