Marketing teams are under constant pressure to do more with less—faster campaigns, smarter targeting, and tighter reporting. If you’re tired of babysitting repetitive tasks or stitching together half-baked tools, this guide is for you. We’ll get hands-on with workflow automation in Vidu, a platform that promises to help marketing teams ditch the busywork and focus on what actually moves the needle.
Let’s be honest: most workflow tools sound great until you try to actually use them. You end up with a tangle of triggers, zillions of notifications, and the nagging feeling you’re automating stuff nobody cares about. Here, we’ll cut through the noise—no fluff, no “best practices” with no real-world value. Just a step-by-step on how to make Vidu actually useful for marketing teams, whether you’re a team of two or twenty.
Step 1: Get Clear on What You Actually Need to Automate
Before you even open Vidu, pause. Automation only helps if it’s killing real pain. Ask your team:
- What tasks are eating up our time every week?
- Where do handoffs get messy or things fall through the cracks?
- What do we keep forgetting, or what keeps getting dropped?
Common marketing workflow headaches: - New leads sitting in someone’s inbox, unassigned - Content drafts stuck waiting for approvals - Social posts going out late because of missed deadlines - Reporting that takes hours (and three tools) to pull together
Pro tip: Have a brutally honest team chat. If nobody’s actually annoyed by a task, don’t automate it just because you can.
Step 2: Map Out Your Ideal Workflow (on Paper)
Don’t skip this. Before you click anything in Vidu, sketch your process on paper or a whiteboard:
- What kicks things off? (A new lead? New blog draft? Campaign launch?)
- What steps happen, and in what order?
- Who does what? Where do approvals or reviews happen?
- Where does information need to move between tools (e.g., CRM, Slack, email)?
You’re not looking for perfection—just clarity. The more specific you get, the easier it’ll be to build (and fix) your automation later.
What to skip: Don’t try to automate every step at once. Start with the most painful or repetitive part.
Step 3: Set Up Your Vidu Workspace
Now, log into Vidu and set up your workspace if you haven’t already. Here’s what’s worth doing up front:
- Create a dedicated workspace or project for your marketing team. Keeps things organized.
- Invite your team—but don’t add everyone right away. Start with just the folks who’ll help build and test.
- Connect your tools. Vidu plays well with your email, Slack, CRMs, Google Drive, and a bunch of other stuff—but only connect what you’ll actually use.
Reality check: Integrating every app you own sounds cool but just creates more places for things to break. Stick to the basics.
Step 4: Build Your First Automation
Let’s get specific. Say you want to automate new lead assignments from a web form. Here’s how to do it in Vidu:
- Choose a Trigger
- In Vidu, start a new workflow.
- Pick your trigger—e.g., “New form entry in Website Form.”
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Set any filters (e.g., only leads from certain campaigns).
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Add Steps (Actions)
- Assign the lead to a team member (round-robin is handy if you have a sales/marketing split).
- Send an internal Slack or email notification.
- Create a task in your project management tool (Asana, Trello, etc.).
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Add a delay, if needed (sometimes instant notifications just annoy people).
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Set Conditions
- Example: If lead source is “Webinar,” assign to Sarah; if “Demo request,” assign to Tom.
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Vidu’s condition builder is decent, but don’t overcomplicate it. If you need nested, multi-step logic, keep it readable.
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Test It—For Real
- Run through several real test cases. Use real data, not “Test Testerson” as the contact.
- Make sure people get notified—and that they actually notice the notifications.
- Check that tasks are landing in the right place, with the right info.
Pro tip: If you’re not sure if a step is working, temporarily add yourself to every notification. You’ll spot gaps fast.
Step 5: Customize for Your Team’s Reality
Now you’ve got a basic workflow, but most marketing teams need a few tweaks:
- Approval steps: Need a manager to sign off before campaigns go live? Add an approval gate—Vidu supports simple approve/reject flows, but don’t expect complex branching.
- Multiple channels: Trigger different follow-ups based on lead source or type. Just don’t go wild—every path you add is one more thing to debug later.
- Reporting: Vidu can spit out basic workflow logs, but if you want detailed analytics, plan to export data to Excel or Google Sheets.
What doesn’t work well: - Super-complex, multi-stage approvals (with lots of exceptions) can get messy fast. Keep it simple, or expect headaches. - Over-notifying—if everyone gets pinged for everything, people will start ignoring Vidu.
Step 6: Roll Out Gradually (and Watch What Breaks)
Don’t unleash your new automation on the whole team at once. Instead:
- Start with a small group—maybe just two or three people.
- Watch what happens for a week. Where do things get stuck? Do notifications get lost?
- Fix obvious bugs and bottlenecks before scaling up.
What to ignore: Don’t obsess over edge cases (that one weird client, or a project you only do once a year). Focus on what happens every week.
Step 7: Iterate and Improve (Without Making It a Second Job)
Every workflow breaks down eventually—someone leaves, a tool changes, or you realize you’re automating a pointless step. Here’s how to keep things sane:
- Check in with your team after a month. What’s working? What’s just noise?
- Trim steps that nobody uses.
- Update assignments as people come and go.
Pro tip: Set a quarterly calendar reminder to review your automations. If you haven’t touched it in six months, odds are you’re missing something.
What Actually Works (and What to Avoid)
Here’s the honest rundown:
What works: - Clear, simple automations for repetitive tasks (lead assignment, status updates, deadline reminders) - Automating handoffs between people and tools - One or two key notifications per workflow—not ten
What usually doesn’t: - Automating “thinking” tasks (strategy, content approvals with lots of back-and-forth) - Overcomplicated branching logic—keep it readable, or you’ll hate yourself later - Trying to force every process into automation—some stuff is just easier by hand
Keep It Simple and Iterate
Workflow automation in Vidu can save your marketing team serious time—but only if you keep it focused on real problems. Start small, test with real people, and don’t be afraid to cut steps that don’t add value. You’re not building a Rube Goldberg machine; you just want to make your day less annoying.
Remember: Simple wins. Automate what matters, ignore the rest, and tweak as you go. You’ll end up with a workflow that works for your team—without the headaches.