So, our team landed a major marketing campaign for a high-profile client. We’ve been dreaming about this for months, but suddenly, our graphic designer is out sick, client requests are piling up, and deadlines are just around the corner.
ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!
Before we know it, the launch is just a couple of days away and we’re stuck with thoughts, regrets, and anxiety, wondering … HOW IN THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT HE$L DID WE END UP IN THIS SITUATION?!
Running a digital agency is no small task. When it comes to being a marketing project manager, juggling the infinite moving parts is no joke either. Mastering the art of marketing project management can be REALLY daunting and overwhelming, especially if we don’t have the right knowledge to conquer the obstacles that come our way.
Fret not, because in this article, we’ll guide you in how to navigate the basics of project management from the marketing perspective and offer insights on how you can effectively streamline your workflow. Together, we'll transform the chaos into a well-oiled engine with the best practices and tools of the trade, making our team ready to impress clients and boost our profitability.
Let’s begin!
What Is Marketing Project Management?
According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), when we look at the front and center of all creative advertisements and product placements, we only see the geniuses of the marketing team. We seldom notice what happens behind the scenes — the brilliant minds that initiate, plan, and execute these projects, putting together deliverables on time, under budget, and within scope. That is marketing project management!
Who is a marketing project manager?
The marketing project manager is the person responsible for bringing together the teams needed to plan, execute, monitor, and control marketing-related activities and campaigns. Marketing project managers oversee the entire project from beginning to end. They could be externally hired for a once-off event or work internally.
The marketing manager's role is vital to our team because of the expertise they bring to the table. With years of experience under their belt in a relevant field, often accompanying a Bachelor’s degree, a marketing project manager offers consistent professional services to make our marketing projects as flawless as possible.
Is having a certification required for excellent project management?
Although technical skills can earn a project marketing manager important certifications and distinctions, soft skills are also critical for fostering a great reputation in the marketing industry. We must be sure to check on their time management skills, task management, and organizational skills so we’ll know they can effectively create a campaign according to our needs. Evaluating their leadership skills, project management skills, and time management skills also helps us consider if they can execute and work with people well and efficiently.
Importance of marketing project management
For digital agencies, marketing project management is an essential aspect of continuous client satisfaction and company growth. It's crucial in ensuring the efficiency of operations and overall productivity. When the marketing project manager efficiently plans, executes, and monitors the projects for our marketing campaigns, our team members will know their roles and responsibilities. This, in turn, fosters better communication and collaboration.
Marketing project management also enables our agencies to grow and scale. With a structured marketing project management framework, our agency is equipped to handle the increasing complexity, growing number of projects, and larger work volume without sacrificing the quality of our operations.
Challenges of unstructured project management
Without a structured approach, marketing project managers in digital agencies face various challenges, including:
- Scope creep - A project scope creep can lead to over or underutilization of sources, uncontrolled changes, and additions to the project scope. This leads to projects running over the schedule, causing delays and dissatisfaction among clients and stakeholders.
- Communication breakdowns - When we can't make communication a two-way street, confusion and misunderstanding arise among the people involved. There is a constant need for rework from the team slowing down the project's progress. The lack of updates to the stakeholders could also result in their losing confidence in the project as a whole.
- Inconsistent quality - Undefined processes and control measures can lead to client dissatisfaction and potential business losses. Without structured project management, marketing project managers face a lack of monitoring and control, resulting in low-quality production output and other deliverables.
- Poor resource management - Budget and human resource constraints due to financial overruns and micromanagement can create a negative and costly impact on the project's execution. Poorly managed resources, both human and material, can lead to an unbalanced workload, team burnout, and project stalls due to a lack of monetary inputs for critical costs and other expenses.
Clients may feel neglected, team members may feel lost, and last-minute fixes may not turn out to be the solutions we'd hoped for. These challenges may damage client satisfaction, team morale, and stakeholder relationships, which affect an agency’s reputation and profitability.
Fundamentals of Marketing Project Management
Do we really have to take everything on every time we have a marketing project coming up?
IT’S A LOT. We totally get it. But by knowing the basics, we can make a template of what makes marketing project management work, then build our way from there instead of starting from scratch all the time. Cool, right? Here are the key components of effective project management in a marketing context:
Purpose
Having a clear purpose for why we're doing the project will help stakeholders understand our perspective and inform everybody of the motivation behind all the effort and work we're putting into the project.
Is it for brand awareness? To expand our reach? To build a client base? Or maybe to widen our online presence?
Once a common goal has been specified, it reduces confusion and overlaps, creates transparency in resource allocation, delivers projects on time, and stays within the project scope.
Adaptable workflow and timeline
Having a good sales workflow points the direction for a lost marketing department member. It also refreshes them on their roles and responsibilities, who is in charge of what, who is already handling the task, and who will approve what. All this ensures everyone stays on track with their tasks.
Deadlines and milestones are also set according to the project schedule so appropriate buffers can be made to allow the team to be more flexible and dynamic when taking on market changes and setbacks.
Risk management plans
Identifying potential threats early on in the marketing project management process is important to establishing contingency plans and mitigating issues that could impact the project's success in the long run. Marketing involves a proactive approach to dealing with evolving market conditions, unexpected budget cuts, and even technology failures. A robust risk management plan helps us prepare for issues and quickly address them while minimizing disruptions in the customer journey.
Client relationship strategies
One of the things that makes marketing project management unique is its laser focus on building and strengthening client relationships. Another fundamental aspect is marketing strategies that enhance the customer experience, which can take different forms:
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
Knowing what kind of strategy or combination of two or more to implement depends on the type of audience we already have, the goals and objectives of our marketing unit, and its alignment with the overall goals of the digital agency.
Marketing analytics and KPIs
Using marketing analytics and key performance indicators to track the performance of the marketing project is key to understanding its success. Relevant metrics like ROI, engagement rates, and conversion rates measure if our marketing efforts meet client and stakeholder expectations, and if we've met the purpose we set earlier.
Data-driven decisions based on these marketing metrics and reports can also contribute to improving marketing strategies, addressing client needs, and providing insights that can help optimize future marketing projects.
Key Strategies and Marketing Project Management Software
With the right project management tools for agencies, we can enhance the efficient delivery of our marketing, advertising, and creative projects.
Here are a few tips on integrating traditional project management methodologies with modern digital tools:
Leverage digital tools for planning and scheduling
The use of traditional project management can be tedious when it comes to creating plans and schedules for our marketing projects. Older tools like Gantt charts can be upgraded to digital tools like Asana, Trello, and Microsoft Project. These tools can easily create interactive, real-time Gantt charts, and combine them with other visual elements like project timelines, milestones, and team features to bring everyone up to date with the project’s progress.
Enhance communication with collaboration platforms
Typical project management coordination includes face-to-face meetings, where everybody is required to attend, regardless of the location. Today, collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom offer accessibility to instant messaging, video conferencing, and collaborative dashboards to everyone involved in the project. These digital tools help keep the team connected, solve concerns quickly, and offer readily available information for easy jump-in for digital agency employees.
Use dashboards for monitoring and reporting
Before the dawn of online dashboards, traditional project management involved regular status reports physically printed, piled, and thrown away after being updated. Modern digital tools today like ClickUp, Trello, and Wrike provide real-time insights into the project status, task completion, and resource allocation. These dashboards make tracking KPIs, controlling budget and other resources, and checking in on team members having difficulty with their assigned tasks easier.
Implement automation and robust documentation
Task assignments and stakeholder requests can be a pain in the a$$ when manually done and recorded. Imagine finishing the submission of a folder for authorization when a rushing team member approaches you with changes communicated earlier in the morning. *Silently cries while manually encoding everything again.*
With Asana, Zapier, and Notion, we won’t be suppressing sad sobs anymore. Marketing workflow automation ensures that tasks are assigned based on predefined rules, notifications for changes are sent automatically, reminders and updates are integrated easily to reduce manual effort, minimize human errors … and crying tears of joy instead!
Implementing a Project Management Framework
Marketing project management has defined phases from initiating the project to celebrating a successful one.
Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up a project management framework suited for digital marketing projects:
1. Start with defined marketing goals and objectives
Setting transparent goals can boost team cohesion and set stakeholder and client expectations.
Are we doing a website upgrade to drive more traffic? Is it increased social media engagement? Or higher conversion rates?
Let's make sure it’s in a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound) format that is clear for everyone. It helps us create a transparent baseline to evaluate and measure if the project has been a success.
2. Assemble (or work with) the team
Assembling our dream team requires combining the right mix of skills and capabilities.
When considering a potential team member, we must also consider their availability. If they're working on other projects, even if they are well-equipped with experience and expertise, their time to contribute to our marketing project may be limited and cause time management concerns in the long run.
At times, the marketing team has already been assembled for us and we may not have the luxury of choosing our team members. We just have to work with what we have and manage what we can control such as implementing reliable communication channels that can be easily accessed and work well for everyone.
3. Create a realistic marketing project plan
Like having SMART goals, having SMART project plans will make our future self thank us. We can think of it as a roadmap or GPS that outlines where we should go and determines the sequence of how to arrive at our destination in the most efficient, flawless way possible. It will also help us identify and include risk management plans for potential issues, roadblocks, and bottlenecks.
We must remember to include milestones and divide sub-tasks into manageable chunks for our team to avoid burnout and excessive workload. Having a realistic marketing project plan with divided time and tasks in the schedule allows a buffer for unexpected hiccups, which can be more costly for marketing projects.
4. Monitor progress
Once we've completed the project plan, we can't just leave and let the project work itself out on its own — although that would be awesome if it could. But it can't, so as digital agency owners and project managers, we have to live in reality and keep tabs on how things are going.
Using digital tools is a great start to taking a step back and managing the project, remotely conducting status meetings with stakeholders, checking with the team to ensure accountability, and helping the project move forward.
5. Keep clients in the loop
Because our marketing goals should always involve our clients, providing regular updates on the progress, as well as major changes, helps keep them informed of how things are going. Keeping clients in the loop gives them an idea of what we're dealing with, and what efforts we're making to ensure issues are resolved and changes are still aligned with the brand.
You'll also need to strike a balance regarding the volume and type of updates you'll share with clients. Oversharing private and sensitive information or too vague or too little data can lead to further client confusion.
Also, we should remember which channel they want the information disseminated on to avoid overwhelming them with updates from all online platforms.
6. Gather feedback from stakeholders
Setting up review processes after milestones with team members is vital to collecting feedback and catching any mistakes along the way.
Remember the goals and objectives we set earlier? We should review and reflect on what areas we need to improve, what went well, and what our team members and clients think. This helps foster a cohesive culture visible from the beginning to the end of the project.
7. Celebrate our win
Acknowledge everyone’s hard work and a job well done. A successful project is a combined effort that makes everything run smoothly, clients are happier, and the bottom line is higher. Celebrating our win at the end of the project boosts morale and sets a positive tone for future marketing projects.
Want to See Real-world Applications?
The question is:
Does this work?
Yes it does, and here are some real-world examples that prove successfully implemented marketing project management systems do exist:
- SNKRS App: NIKE
NIKE's marketing project shifted its focus to using digitized solutions to keep its production more efficient, implementing tech on its 6,000-footwear materials. By keeping customers engaged and in the loop with its NIKE+ loyalty program, the SNKRS app recorded a 100% increase in sales.
- Digital Showroom: AUDI
From being an analog industry, AUDI embraced digital transformation with its online showroom, AUDI City. It lets users view the current display of cars like a traditional showroom and gives access to an entire catalog of cars, host forums, and regular exhibitions complete with interactive car configuration and customizations.
- Retail Transformation: Amazon
Online shopping has never been the same with the revolutionized way Amazon caters to every individual’s shopping desires — all with the power of data. The use of artificial intelligence in analytics helps the company understand customers, personalize recommendations, and curate suggestions before customers themselves can even think of them.
Implementing creative brand strategies is a long process – a huge investment that needs all-out planning and 100 percent attention to the tiniest detail. Whether the marketing project is on customer relationship management, service and automation launches, or digital sales initiatives, according to PMI, it takes an in-sync choreography of every relevant department within the organization to work — this is where project management fits perfectly.
Ready to Take Marketing Coordination to New Heights?
At the heart of our digital agency is the marketing side, which, like our other operations, needs constant guidance and oversight to grow.
Here are the things we’ve learned in our quest to master marketing project management:
- The marketing project manager ensures that the team members are completing their tasks, processes are running smoothly, and marketing strategies are aligned with the business goals every step of the way.
- Scope creep, communication breakdowns, poor resource management, and inconsistent or low-quality deliverables can result in unstructured marketing project management.
- The basic components of effective marketing project management include a specific purpose, an adaptable workflow and timeline, risk management plans, client relationship strategies, and relevant marketing KPIs at the very least. These can still be tailored according to our digital agency’s marketing needs.
- By using marketing software and project management tools, we can automate our workflow to manage our tasks more efficiently, and take better care of our team, stakeholders, and clients.
- Implementing a marketing project management framework helps us manage our marketing campaigns more easily, like a roadmap that leads us directly to our destination without potholes, speedbumps, or detours.
Remember that mastering marketing project management doesn’t happen overnight. Start small with a single project, implement a few new tools and techniques, and see how they work for your team. Gradually, you can build a robust framework that can handle more complex projects, collect necessary feedback to improve, and take every setback as a learning opportunity. By taking these baby steps, you'll grow your agency's marketing processes, delivering consistent high-quality results for your clients.
Want to know more about how you can improve your marketing project management strategies? Check out our Project Management checklist. Contact us for a FREE SESSION and we'll help you optimize your marketing and project management processes today!
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