8 Simple Tips For Effective Marketing Project Management

A lot of people mistake marketing project management for regular project management, but that’s not correct. There’s a fine line between both these disciplines. 

In general, project management involves planning, organizing, collaborating, implementing, and timely completion of certain tasks and goals for a campaign with minimum possible errors. On the other hand, marketing project management is a comprehensive management and development of a marketing campaign. Marketing project management involves providing guidelines to team members that help them have a clear idea of work how they are supposed to perform assigned work correctly and efficiently. 

What Is Marketing Project Management?

Marketing project management is a broader process as compared to traditional project management. Marketing project management is a comprehensive management and development of a marketing campaign wherein instructions are provided to team members so they can perform the campaign tasks with minimal errors and maximum efficiency, just like it is in any project. However, the metrics, the planning strategies and the speed at which things need to be implemented changes, which makes marketing project management all the more challenging. 

Elements That Separate Marketing Project Management From Regular Project Management 

Teams need to bring together different parts and processes to achieve successful marketing project management. Even though the essence of both project management and marketing project management is quite similar, two elements separate the two. 

These elements are – Research and Data. 

Research – Marketing project management tasks embrace the research part. The research could be done before the project starts, or it could be part of the project management plan. 

Data – Data is a crucial component of every marketing project. Data is accumulated to accredit that project has achieved its goals and to reaffirm that ROI of the marketing initiatives. 

If your marketing project management is missing one or both of these elements then it’s not a marketing project in all likelihood. 

Now that you know what marketing project management is, let us now move on to discuss how this process can help companies to increase productivity and cut down on wastage of time, money, and resources. 

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The Benefits of Marketing Project Management To Businesses Are As Follows: 

a) Revamped Project Overview

Successful marketing campaigns adhere to the following different phases:

• Initiation- Project initiation is the first phase in the project lifecycle. This phase emcompasses all the steps that are essential to be taken to get the project approved. During this phase, the companies figure out why they are undertaking the project and how it will benefit them. This phase is further divided into following stages: 
  • Project charter is created- Project charter, or Project Initiation Document (PID) outlines the project’s purpose and requirements.The project charter lays a solid foundation for defining project decisions to make sure they’re in sync with the organizational goals and objectives.
  • Project scope is defined- Defining project scope means you determine the project goals, constraints, deliverables, budget, and schedule. You also identify required resources to execute your plan. 
  • Project objectives are identified- Identifying project objectives will help your team stay on track because they know exactly what they’re working towards. Project objectives must be specific, measurable, and must meet quality, time, and budget constraints.
  • Right stakeholders are involved- Successful project managers involve the right stakeholders (who have the most influence in your project) in the initial phase of the project. 
  • Expectations are set- Setting clear expectations of project goals, deliverables, timelines, required resources, and budgets is the key to the success of your project. Creating a contingency plan for risks and potential hiccups will help keep all parties on the same page.
• Planning- The planning phase sets the roadmap for your team to follow to deliver the intended project outcome. The good thing is that you can get all the help you need for planning your projects efficiently. For instance, you can use a tool like ProofHub, and its various inbuilt features (Gantt charts, workflows and more) to: 
  • Create project tasks lists, setting task dependencies, and visualize tasks in a timeline view
  • Create your own timeline and have a visual representation of all tasks within your project and how they are interdependent on each other  
  • Make notes of available resources to keep your project on time, on budget
  • Make accurate cost estimates to forecast both the budget and the resources 
  • Assess potential risks, evaluate, and prioritize them, based on the severity of their impact and their possibility to occur
• Execution- In this phase, deliverables are developed and completed. This is where all the plans are executed. It is important to maintain open communication during this phase for smooth operations. Depending on your project, regularly scheduling different types of meetings can be helpful throughout the course of your project.
• Performance Monitoring and Controlling- The project manager must supervise project execution regularly. Again, technology can prove to be the best friend for managers here. By using time-tracking in software like ProofHub, you can keep an accurate track of how much time is being spent on assigned tasks, and whether some tasks are taking longer than usual. Kanban boards help you visualize work moving through multiple stages. Besides tracking time and task progress, project monitoring and controlling also includes: 
  • Identifying and mitigating risks early
  • Track key performance indicators
  • Manage documentation
  • Know status
  • Control scope creep
• Project Closure- The project closure phase represents the completed project. Project managers hold a “project retrospect” meeting to evaluate accomplishments and identify what went wrong. They need to complete a final project budget and a project report, and store all project documents in a single, centralized location for future reference.  

By implementing state of the art marketing project management practices, marketing managers can  keep an eye on all the aspects of a project and their team. Not only this, they can bring all team members on the same page to coordinate effectively to achieve a common project goal. The best part is that they can get the help of technology to do all this. For instance, Further, they can use an award-winning team collaboration and project management software like ProofHub to easily plan their projects, collaborate with team members, and get their projects delivered on time. 

b) Improved Team Communication 

Communication is an irreplaceable aspect of marketing project management. Open communication between all parties involved in a project is the key to success and transparency. Thanks to advanced technology, we now have all modes (voice-only, video conferencing, texting, emails, phone calls, chat) of communication to connect with other team members. When you practice marketing project management, intra-team communication becomes easily accessible and reviewable to everyone for future reference.

This is again where a modern project management software like ProofHub can prove to be a blessing for teams. Using the Group Chat feature of ProofHub, you can have quick one-on-one and group chats with teams and clients, attach files, share documents, use emojis, and turn conversations faster and smarter. 

Here’s how an internal communication tool works to simplify communcation: 

• Use chat to send direct messages and get quick replies, ask questions, and get answers instantly while working
• Use emojis to use less words and express more 
• Receive chat notifications for new messages on both desktop or mobile, and reply to them on the go
• Know when someone has seen your messages and when they were last active on chat
• Get access to chat history and easily find information shared in the past 

c) Increased Productivity And Better results  

Most importantly, by practicing marketing project management, businesses can eventually streamline their processes, and simplifying the way their teams function. As a combined result of all this, they can eventually get more productive teams and end up garnering better results.   

Here’s how ProofHub can help you achieve increased productivity without compromising the quality of your team’s work.

ProofHub Gives Managers Ultimate Control Over Teams And Projects 

Project managers need to stay in control of both projects and teams, and ProofHub gives them the right tools to do it. Here’s how project managers enjoy greater control without taking stress. 

• Say goodbye to confusion and unorganization with ProofHub; it shows you a clear agenda for the day. You know what you are supposed to do at work, every morning.
  You can create your to-do lists, set recurring tasks and events, set automatic reminders, plan tasks and schedule, and other work for the day with the help of task management software and scheduling calendar

• Kanban boards in ProofHub let you create your workflow with clearly defined stages. Teams have a clear understanding of how they need to proceed with their work 
• A Gantt chart software makes it easy for project managers to easily plan projects, modify schedules, and visualize tasks in a timeline view. You get a clear picture of everything and take better decisions to avoid bottlenecks, manage resources efficiently and do a lot more.
• ProofHub helps project managers and teams stay productive and accountable by providing an accurate record of how, where, and how much time they are spending on tasks. They can better manage your time and deliver projects within deadlines. 
• ProofHub streamlines the feedback sharing process by letting teams clear feedback on files through an online proofing tool. Collaborate on designs and documents in real time, use markup tools to annotate files, review and add comments to share feedback at one place.
• ProofHub mobile app  gives you flexibility to manage projects, teams, and clients from any place. You can manage teams, make decisions, approve work even when you are on the go. 
• ProofHub helps in making internal communication within an organization more quicker with individual or group chats and discussions 
• Minimal learning curve means all team members do not have to invest a lot of effort in learning to use the tool. It’s so easy-to-use that in no time your teams will find it integrated within their DNA. 
• ProofHub provides you with authority to grant and restrict access levels to people who you want things to show or hide. With custom roles, private task lists, and IP restriction, things are always under your control

8 Tried And Tested Tips For Easier, Effective Marketing Project Management 

Though marketing project management undoubtedly benefits businesses in more ways than one, most marketing managers prefer to dedicate most of their time on marketing rather than managing day-to-day management aspects. 

However, things are quite different in the real world. Marketing projects can be done through various forms, like publishing blog posts to global product releases and collateral production. Marketing project managers have to handle them all effectively to yield desired results. They even need to use the latest team collaboration and marketing project management tools to organize and streamline things. 

This article lists some proven tips that can help you get the job done without getting overwhelmed by core management activities. 

1. Monitoring Work And Performance 

These days, marketing has become a numbers game. Every organization’s marketing efforts are measured in numbers. Therefore, it becomes vital to associate marketing work with monitoring performances, when and where possible. Revenue and brand awareness are direct results of various brand interactions. The results of marketing campaigns are sometimes visible whereas at other times these are not. You should be able to improve your marketing campaigns when you can evaluate the leads and revenue that your strategy generates. Hence focus on evaluating your marketing efforts. There are a number of tools that can help you in this regard. 

2. Keep your marketing data centralized, and secure 

Most marketing teams operate on multiple shared drives, Dropbox, and Google Drive accounts. Rather, they should be storing all marketing assets in a centralized location and use a digital asset management system for this purpose. Also known as DAM software, these storage systems can help teams work swiftly by quickly finding the files they need. Improved and efficient systems can even:

• Tag images automatically
• Convert images and videos files into different formats
• Manage different versions 

Marketing professionals in some of the world’s largest companies are looking forward to storing and organizing all digital assets in a single platform to prevent content duplication. Integrated marketing operations software can offer useful features like the brand and creative project management. 

“Get a central place to share all your files, documents and more. Switch to ProofHub!”

3. Assess Your Resources Before Starting The Project 

Before you get started with your marketing project, it’s important to understand how you’ll be able to achieve your objectives. You’ll have to take into consideration crucial factors such as talent, tools, and budget into account. If you do not have adequate resources then how will you be able to execute your projects? Cutting down on the best projects just because you don’t have the required resources can prove to be a big mistake. It’s ideal for marketing project managers to plan optimal project management requirements first and then consider the available resources to make your project a reality. Include names of all those who’ll be a part of the project, the tools you’d need to do it, and the anticipated budget. 

4. Schedule Your Projects 

Your project schedule dictates what tasks need to be done when, by whom, with their start and end dates. You can make a good project schedule by asking yourself 5 W’s that are: 

• Who (will do it?)
• What (resources are required to make it happen?)
• Where (which teams in which departments will be involved to make it happen?)
• When (what is the timeline for projects and tasks)
• Why (what is the main goal of the project?)

Creating and managing a good project schedule takes calculation, strategy, time, and collaboration. Always review the timeline with your team members and stakeholders at each milestone. Determine and manage your task dependencies to minimize risk and ensure each task can be completed successfully with minimum roadblocks. 

5. Keep Stakeholders Informed 

As much as 50% of marketing takes place outside the marketing department in many businesses. Sales representatives have the responsibility to convert leads into sales, and engineers are tasked to design products to satisfy the customers’ requirements. Support representatives create and build brand loyalty. As a consequence, marketers cannot perform their jobs without a comprehensive collaboration throughout the company. Promote and smoothen collaboration with marketing stakeholders by publishing marketing plans and results at regular intervals. It’s essential to build buy-in up front to motivate stakeholders to work with the marketing department to produce better results. 

6. Global Idea Backlog 

Innovation is requisite to great marketing, but you can’t hurry creativity. Just because you need a unique, progressive campaign idea doesn’t guarantee that you will have it. On the other hand, regular marketing ideas routinely fall by the wayside due to the reason that on any given day most marketing managers usually have more work to do than what they’re capable of. 

It’s always a good idea to keep a global backlog of marketing ideas, so that you keep track of the good ideas, and always working on the best ideas. Additionally, you can foster the creative power of your entire organization by motivating people outside of the marketing domain to give to the marketing idea backlog. A well-described product strategy is a way to realize your vision. You can complement the backlog with a roadmap to sketch an all-inclusive way you want to take your product on. 

7. Use Agile Methodology For Lofty Marketing Throughput 

Agile methodology is one of the latest marketing management approaches that is increasingly used by businesses across the globe for breaking projects into several stages and involving consistent collaboration with stakeholders as well as continuous improvement and iteration at every stage. 

When applied correctly, agile methodology can dramatically increase marketing output, cut down project delays, and enable continuous improvement. Agile marketing is a powerful tool, but it has to be used properly or else your agile team will constantly get bogged down in delays and bottlenecks. 

8. Lay Down Process Stages To Observe High Volume Processes 

The higher volume of marketing projects leads to marketing project management becoming the marketing process management. Whether it’s content creation, creative services, media production or online campaign execution, all of these scale into continuous & regular marketing process workflows as the marketing department propagates. 

After standardizing the handoffs and deliverables for these workflows, it is not necessary to track every individual task. Define clear process stages and monitor the flow of work by stage instead of tasks. Stage management allows you to detect bottlenecks, develop performance benchmarks, and balance workloads. 

Conclusion 

Are you ready to become an effective and result-oriented marketing project manager? I’m sure you are. You have to leverage the latest technologies to survive in today’s ultra-competitive market scenario. Use ProofHub to simplify even the most complex projects and improve team collaboration through 30 powerful features in one centralized location. Get started with a FREE trial, and then upgrade to a more powerful Ultimate Control plan priced reasonably at just $89 per month, billed annually.