How to make the most out of review periods

Have you ever had questions about how a project review works but never knew who to ask?

At Podymos, we try to make everything as simple and straightforward as possible, so we’ve written this document to help you get the most out of your review periods and keep your project costs under total control.

What is a review period?

A review period starts when an internally approved document is sent for your approval.

This document has already undergone a series of internal reviews and quality controls, including validation of references and review of artwork and copy, amongst other things.

If any updates are required by your team, the review periods allow you to provide feedback and revisions before approving the final document or project.

Most documents only need 2 review rounds, as the first should be 95% correct. We put a lot of effort into reaching this level of quality so that the input required from you and your team is minimised.

Best practices

Use software to add clarity

To get the most out of your review periods, a great tip is to provide all feedback to us in a clear and concisely way.

There are many ways to do this, such as adding comments to a PDF (Adobe), PPT (PowerPoint), word document or marking up videos in Vimeo’s review pane. These are all great options, as the comments are linked to an exact location in the document and typed out, adding clarity to each point.

Doing it this way also means that we have all the comments in one place, which will help to track which team member wants which change, making it easier for our team to follow up for further clarification.

Be as clear as possible when sending feedback

Your feedback is extremely important to us.

We want to deliver a final project that exceeds your expectations and that we’re proud of, and we also want to understand how you like things. Once we have a feeling for your likes and dislikes, we usually find that review periods run much more smoothly.

There are a few things you can do to improve the efficiency of sending feedback and therefore, the efficiency of projects as a whole.

Ensure your comments are easy to understand

Whichever platform is chosen, it’s great to also ask yourself if someone with little project knowledge could understand the changes being requested. Although all of those involved with the project will know it extremely well, thinking about it in these terms helps with ensuring clarity.

If the answer is ‘yes’, that’s perfect, as errors will be minimised and review periods shortened.

If the answer is ‘not sure’ or ‘no’, adding more detail to each comment will help.

In this situation, spending a few minutes clarifying each comment can save significant time by preventing revisions needing to be redone due to a misunderstanding.

Send comments from one person, if possible

At Podymos, we’ve found that receiving feedback from one member of your team, rather than from multiple different people, can really help to streamline projects.

This is because it ensures your internal team has resolved all conflicting comments. This prevents us from sending you back incorrect revisions that haven’t been agreed by the whole team.

Understand the ‘Points of No Return’ in a project

It’s good to get multiple eyes on a project, however, it can significantly increase the duration and cost of the project if that happens at the wrong time.

This is most relevant in complex projects with multiple stages, such as rebrands, websites and animations. But why is this?

Think of a project like a house. The first thing to be laid are the foundations, then the flooring, followed by the walls, roof, windows and finally the internal fixture and fittings. If it’s deemed necessary to remodel the foundations once the walls are in place it’s likely the entire building will need to be rebuilt.

This is similar to how marketing projects work, however, our team will tell you about each of these points at the beginning of any project to ensure that all the correct sign off are received before moving on.

Always keep us in the loop

Whatever project we’re working on, be sure to always keep us in the loop of relevant changes within your company. For example, let us know if there are any internal branding changes or if your team has decided to update your lexicon or introduce a new reference.

We keep our own records which contain your brand colours and assets and all your clinical references, so if you’ve updated any of these it’s super important, we know so we start integrating it immediately into the work we do.

We may also recommend pausing projects depending on the internal changes, to better streamline the project.

Working with Podymos

Do you want to communicate more effectively with HCPs and patients? Do you want to be able to deliver high-quality marketing campaigns as part of your larger multichannel marketing strategy? You’ve come to the right place.

Podymos is a healthcare marketing agency, specialising in downstream Medical Device marketing.

We’re more expensive than non-specialised agencies and freelance teams because we only work in the Medical Device space so we have specialist knowledge and experience that other agencies may not be able to offer you.

If you want high-quality, compliant campaigns that help achieve your business goals, we’d love to hear from you. Simply leave us your contact details below and we’ll get back to you very soon for a no-obligation chat.