Marketing project management is all about the tools, processes, and techniques that marketing professionals use to get more done. But knowing how to manage marketing projects also means addressing the unique needs of marketing teams.
Effective processes allow teams to manage marketing projects step by step through every campaign, event, and strategy implementation. You may even use the basic principles of project management already and not know it! Here are some marketing management tips you can apply today to perfect your process and improve your marketing project management skills instantly.
Why is project management important for marketing?
Project management is important for marketing because it helps managers organize, communicate, and carry out their vision across multiple teams and campaigns all at once.
To carry out complex campaigns and strategies, a marketing project manager will often require resource allocation tools, budgeting tools, proofing tools, and time tracking tools. These ensure teams are able to efficiently manage work, invoice and bill with ease, and eliminate never-ending client feedback loops.
Ideally, marketing project management tools should also create a central reference hub for teams, clients, and stakeholders.
Top tips for marketing project managers
Even if you’ve never had formal project management training, these tips should help you optimize your process and set teams up for success.
- Use Agile planning to remain flexible.
According to one survey, marketers who used Agile project management processes were 252% more likely to report project success. But Agile isn’t just for software development.
For your marketing project, try creating project phases (also known as units) for long term work like web copy development or Pinterest growth. Define two- to three-week periods, or “sprints”, for each phase then plan your tasks within this time frame to help prioritize the highest ROI channels. - Make assets easy to store and find.
Share documents, images, videos, graphics, and illustrations in one place. Make them easy to find and reference by adding file tags. - Draft and test workflows for recurring tasks.
Social media campaigns especially benefit from this tip. Once you find a posting schedule that works best for your audience and chosen platform, perfect your order of operations to align your content types and publishing days/times and maximize your growth potential. - Use a Kanban tool.
Kanban tools are highly visual and easy to understand at a glance. Use them for projects with straightforward steps and multiple collaborators. - Create SMART objectives.
SMART project objectives are clearly defined. Sharing them with your team will help them get on board with your vision or point out issues ahead of time. - Use a project management tool.
The only real way to manage complex and fluid marketing operations projects is to use a project management tool that centralizes all project information. Marketing is a field with a lot of moving parts and one simple miscommunication or lost detail could derail even the most experienced teams. Project management tools prevent and mitigate these types of issues before the project even begins. - Try a marketing plan template.
Marketing plan templates take the guesswork out of project management and save time on creating a process from scratch. Use one as-is or let it inspire your own personalized system. - Automate notifications.
Add task dependencies to key items so that when one step is finished, the person in charge of the next step is immediately notified. This helps get them started faster and keeps the communication flowing smoothly.
Marketing management tips for digital marketing managers
In addition to the tips listed above, digital marketing managers need to have a plan for big picture SEO project management, paid acquisition, and social media strategy.
A marketing project manager should also be wise about what digital marketing tools they want to use. There are lots of options on the market, but having lots of different internal and external collaborators working together can make all the apps you use harder to deal with. That’s the same reason why you should always use one marketing calendar for all tasks related to creating, approving, and scheduling content across your various blogs, social media accounts, and paid ads.
- Here are some of the ways digital marketing managers can use project management software:
- Plan and execute their content plans with team calendars
- Deliver centralized analytics reports to stakeholders
- Process and streamline the request intake process
- Integrate with tools like MediaValet to share digital assets
- Store and share campaign briefs and other project documents
- Use time tracking for a more accurate project billing process
Marketing is really complex. Simplifying it with project management tools will help streamline the success of your digital marketing campaigns regardless of your team size, resources, or project complexity.
Best project management tools for marketing
The best project management tools for marketing often feature a timeline creation tool, task management, and team collaboration through shared documents, messaging, and @ mentions.
They also offer templates or allow you to duplicate templates out of your most successful campaigns so you can replicate your strategy again in the future. They should also offer stakeholders insight into progress to save you time on status updates and build trust among your clientele.
How to manage marketing projects with Wrike
Wrike helps marketing managers break down large projects into actionable steps. Wondering how to manage a remote team? Wrike gives the entire team visibility into the process as it happens and monitors chosen KPIs.
Explore Wrike using a two-week free trial to see how you can run better campaigns and hit your target goals faster and easier than before.
