In high-performing organizations, speed and efficiency are non-negotiable, especially for marketing teams tasked with delivering on ambitious growth targets. Yet, time and again, marketing departments find themselves slowed by bottlenecks that stem from dependencies or unwelcome influence by other teams. These inter-team dependencies not only delay campaigns but also create frustration and inefficiencies that ripple across the organization.
One common example? Video projects stalled by dependencies. Video production often involves multiple teams, including creative, legal, and production vendors. A frequent issue is waiting on the product team to provide the correct screens or assets needed for the video. These delays disrupt the production timeline, leading to missed opportunities for timely campaigns.
The Impact: A survey by Wyzowl found that 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, but 37% cite long production times as a barrier. Delays in video production reduce the effectiveness of campaigns that require visual storytelling to resonate with audiences.
The Solution: Instead of waiting for the product team to deliver the screens, empower the video production team to create or mock up the required assets themselves. This proactive approach ensures timelines stay intact and campaigns launch as planned.
Unfortunately, this issue is far from isolated. Let’s explore other bottlenecks rooted in inter-team dependencies that marketing teams frequently face—and why identifying and resolving them is essential for marketing leaders.
1. Product Team Delaying Web Updates
The Challenge: In some organizations, marketing depends on other teams to maintain or update the website. These teams, understandably focused on competing priorities like development sprints or feature launches, often deprioritize marketing requests, causing delays and frustration. This reliance on product teams makes marketing heavily dependent on external timelines.
The Impact: Delayed website updates can stall campaigns, diminish marketing’s agility, and create friction between departments. For example, a Gartner report found that 56% of marketing leaders experience campaign delays directly tied to dependencies on other teams, such as web development, leading to missed revenue opportunities and reduced customer engagement.
The Solution: Build a specialized team within the marketing department to oversee digital updates and website management. This agile group ensures updates are implemented quickly and marketing campaigns stay on schedule, eliminating dependency on external teams.
2. Creative Teams Overwhelmed by Repetitive Tasks
The Challenge: Creative teams often spend the majority of their time on repetitive production tasks—resizing assets, updating templates, or creating variations—leaving little bandwidth for strategic projects. This inter-team dependency on creatives for low-value tasks reduces their capacity to focus on high-impact work.
The Impact: According to Wrike, 60% of in-house creative teams report spending more time on low-value tasks than high-impact creative work. WorkflowMax adds that bottlenecks in asset production can delay campaigns by up to 40%.
The Solution: By handling high-volume, repetitive creative work, specialized teams can free up in-house creatives to focus on big-picture strategies and innovative projects, removing the dependency on creatives for production tasks.
3. Marketing at the Mercy of IT Teams
The Challenge: Marketing teams often depend on IT or development teams to implement or update marketing technology, such as integrating AI-powered agents into workflows or ensuring CRM systems are optimized for lead tracking. These requests frequently get deprioritized, leaving marketing unable to pivot or optimize quickly when opportunities arise.
The Impact: A study by McKinsey shows that delays in MarTech implementation can reduce marketing efficiency by up to 25%, particularly when rapid adjustments are required for campaigns. This dependency on IT creates a bottleneck that slows marketing agility.
The Solution: By offering expertise in managing and integrating marketing tools, specialized teams reduce dependency on IT teams, empowering marketers to take control of their tech stack.
4. Sales Enablement Responsibility
The Challenge: Sales teams are often responsible for updating case studies, pitch decks, and customer-facing assets. But with their focus on closing deals, these updates are rarely prioritized. Marketing’s dependency on sales to deliver these materials causes delays that impact both teams.
The Impact: This bottleneck results in outdated or inconsistent materials, which can hurt both sales and brand perception. In fact, Forrester reports that 77% of B2B marketers say misaligned or outdated sales enablement content negatively impacts customer experiences.
The Solution: Designed templates and scalable creative output ensure that sales teams have updated, on-brand materials at their fingertips without pulling them away from their primary focus, removing this dependency.
5. Ad Hoc Leadership Priorities
The Challenge: Leadership teams drop ad hoc projects on marketing, pulling resources away from planned campaigns and strategies. This inter-team dependency forces marketing to constantly shift priorities.
The Impact: These ad hoc demands can cause planned campaigns to lose focus or miss deadlines entirely. A survey by Harvard Business Review found that 65% of marketers experience significant delays due to shifting leadership priorities, often leading to wasted resources and reduced ROI on campaigns. Such disruptions not only slow execution but also erode morale and team confidence.
The Solution: Create a specialized team within marketing to handle leadership’s ad hoc requests. This focused group ensures planned campaigns remain on track while accommodating additional priorities without derailing the broader strategy.
Cutting the Cord for Good
When marketing departments are stuck waiting on other teams to update websites, creative teams to deliver assets, or IT to implement tools—or worse, are forced to take on work that isn’t their responsibility—their impact is diminished. These delays don’t just slow marketing down—they create a ripple effect, reducing ROI, frustrating stakeholders, and eroding trust in the department’s ability to execute effectively.
The solution is clear: identify these points of friction, fix them, and help teams move faster. Specialized teams take ownership of critical tasks, from web updates to creative production, ensuring no bottleneck slows your progress. By leveraging scalable creative output, workflow optimization, and a deep understanding of marketing processes, these teams position themselves as the ultimate change agents for fast-moving organizations.
The results speak for themselves: faster time-to-market, more consistent branding, and teams that feel empowered to focus on what they do best—delivering impact.
Ready to stop waiting and start delivering? Let’s talk.
