How to manage marketing requests from the rest of the business

If you're the one person who does marketing, requests come from everywhere: "can you make a flyer for Saturday?", "the hours on the website are wrong", "we need a post about the sale." Half arrive without a deadline, most without a brief.

1. One request form

Ask for three things:

• What do you need?: social post, flyer, email, website update or other
• Publish by
• Brief (required): who it's for, the message and any details

The required brief is the point. "Make a flyer" becomes "a flyer for the Saturday adoption event, 10 to 2, for families, with the store address."

2. Review the brief first

Requests start in Review brief: ask questions and agree on the plan before you start designing.

3. Draft, then approve

Making has two steps:

1. Draft: create the first version.
2. Approval: the requester approves it.

Approval as its own step means "I never said it was OK" stops happening.

4. Publish

Published means it's live. Attach the final file to the ticket so next year's flyer starts from this one.

5. Work in deadline order

Sort by Publish by and work from the top. The board shows what's waiting on you and what's waiting on approval.

Bigger campaigns

A store opening or a seasonal campaign with many pieces is a project, not a request. Plan it on a Gantt chart and use this stack for the one-off asks.

Using the template

The free marketing request form template sets up the form with a required brief and the review, draft, approval and published steps. If requests reach you by email today, read stop using your inbox as a to-do list.