No project goes perfectly smoothly all the time. So it’s better to be prepared for issues beforehand and plan accordingly. Use this basic model for any major project.

Outline a timeline of your project or campaign.
Identify at least 5 points where things could go wrong.
Determine what problems may arise and place them on the timeline.
Brainstorm ways to deal with each problem.
Prepare to address them before you even start development.

So for example, let’s say you’re developing a new web banner campaign.

1. Purchase media
Bump: Budget gets cut, but revenue goal remains the same.
Potential solution: Be more selective in the websites you’re advertising on. Optimize days/times you run. Get your analytics ready to be prepared to pull any underperforming sites.

2. Concept creative
Bump: Marketing Director hates the initial concept.
Potential solution: Identify multiple strategies and develop separate concepts for each. This will increase your chances what one will get through.

3. Produce banners
Bump: File limits restrict executing as originally concepted.
Potential solution: Make sure a developer is a part of the concept development from the beginning and do some quick MVP tests to see what’s possible.

4. Launch campaign
Bump: Not all of the banner units are ready to traffic.
Potential solution: Have evergreen backup banners that aren’t tied to timed promotions always ready to launch. At the very least, you can use them as the control options to see how much more effective the campaign banners are.

5. Measure results
Bump: Banners are underperforming.
Potential solution: When designing the creative, develop A-B comparison strategies to test different elements (e.g. headline, image, call to action, animation).