The Importance of Timelines

Timelines, as any good ad agency in Denver will tell you, are important in any kind of business agreement. They keep everyone’s expectations the same and set clear rules for how any work relationship operates. For example, your business needs advertising work done by the end of the month. If you don’t make this expectation clear to your agency or contracted worker, they won’t necessarily deliver when you need them to. Any kind of contractor doing a job for your company wants you to be happy. All marketing agencies want to not only do what you have asked of them, they want to make an impression on you. They want to impress you so that you’ll think of them for further work and projects. In order for them to give you what you want, they have to work on the same timeline as you. Businesses partnering with each other for any mutual benefit have to be working on the same schedule to keep expectations in line and to keep each other on the same page—organized and ready to make all of their actions fit in perfectly with their objectives.

Setting and keeping deadlines is an excellent way to ensure you are getting the help you need when you need it, they can also help motivate equal partners to move on their end of the bargain by a certain time so that their efforts are in concert with yours. But deadlines are only the end of the process. The beauty of setting and keeping timelines is that you can get ongoing information on projects as they’re being completed. Smart deadlines are full of checkpoints, when the parties responsible for a certain project can report on their process. This allows all parties to reset expectations and tailor a plan that will complete the project on time when the plans change.

For most projects, deals, or agreements, there’s no need to set ultra-detailed timelines that cause unnecessary reporting work. Still, setting timelines with checkpoints is an excellent way to organize work and clearly detail the expectations of all parties. Marketing agencies always give their clients at least a basic timeline of when and how they expect to complete their work. This way, the clients know when to expect the project to be done, and at least have a basic understanding of how the agency plans on completing the project on time.

Not setting timelines creates different expectations for all parties involved. Whenever people in relationships have different expectations, conflict is almost always the result. By creating a comprehensive timeline and sticking to it, your business builds trust with everyone you deal with, and avoids unnecessary conflicts in the future. In many ways, timelines are as important as the contracts drawn up between all kinds of business partners. No ad agency would go into a deal with a client without clearly defined terms. Think of timelines as the finer details of those terms.

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