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5 Project Management Tips for Marketing Teams

Project man­age­ment plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in com­pa­nies that make prod­ucts or pro­vide ser­vices in var­i­ous fields. Mar­ket­ing is no excep­tion. Here, project man­age­ment pro­vides mar­ket­ing teams with struc­tured plan­ning, project sta­tus mon­i­tor­ing and their time­ly com­ple­tion. To get the most out of the approach, we advise you to use use­ful tips. Here are some of them.

Why is good project man­age­ment impor­tant for mar­ket­ing teams?

To under­stand the impor­tance of project man­age­ment for mar­ket­ing teams, it is worth out­lin­ing the fea­tures of such teams:
  • Cre­ativ­i­ty. Mar­ket­ing is often impos­si­ble with­out this com­po­nent. For exam­ple, the idea of​a mar­ket­ing project such as the devel­op­ment of a new brand or adver­tis­ing cam­paign is some­thing that can­not be imple­ment­ed with­out cre­ativ­i­ty and non-stan­dard views on ordi­nary things.
  • Focus on cus­tomer needs. Mar­ket­ing projects should ulti­mate­ly meet the needs of both the cus­tomer and the tar­get audi­ence. There­fore, it is extreme­ly impor­tant to focus on under­stand­ing their needs and pref­er­ences. In this way, it will be pos­si­ble to guar­an­tee that the final prod­uct or ser­vice meets the cus­tomers’ needs.
  • Time lim­its. Mar­ket­ing projects often have spe­cif­ic dead­lines. Here it should be clear that from the begin­ning they are estab­lished tak­ing into account mar­ket con­di­tions. There­fore, unex­pect­ed delays in the work process can lead to untime­ly release of the prod­uct, mak­ing it use­less. And a prod­uct that was not time­ly adjust­ed to mar­ket demands may not be rel­e­vant. There­fore, project man­age­ment in mar­ket­ing must be flex­i­ble enough to accom­mo­date all these changes, while ensur­ing time­ly prod­uct availability.
  • Coop­er­a­tion with oth­er depart­ments. Mar­ket­ing projects often involve close inter­ac­tion with oth­er spe­cial­ists: design­ers, copy­writ­ers, ana­lysts, etc. Accord­ing­ly, project man­age­ment should facil­i­tate effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion between teams with dif­fer­ent specializations.
  • Impor­tant indi­ca­tors. Mar­ket­ing projects should be mea­sur­able and have clear indi­ca­tors of progress and success. 


With this in mind, let’s move on to what project man­age­ment gives mar­ket­ing teams.

First of all, it allows decom­po­si­tion, divid­ing com­plex projects into man­age­able tasks. After that you can dis­trib­ute respon­si­bil­i­ties among team mem­bers, ensur­ing that every­one works in the same space and can ade­quate­ly assess the state of affairs. Project man­age­ment tools for mar­ket­ing agen­cies can help with this. They allow mar­keters to track progress, set dead­lines, and iden­ti­fy poten­tial lim­i­ta­tions before they become problems.

Also, good project man­age­ment facil­i­tates com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion between team mem­bers (or teams) and cus­tomers, ensur­ing that every­one has the infor­ma­tion he needs to do his part of the job. Here, of course, you can’t do with­out inter­nal knowl­edge bases, task track­ers inte­grat­ed with mes­sen­gers, Gantt charts, etc.

Anoth­er advan­tage of project man­age­ment is a struc­tured approach to man­age­ment as a whole.

Project man­age­ment makes mar­ket­ing project man­age­ment process­es more pre­dictable, helps teams record dig­i­tal per­for­mance indi­ca­tors, increase effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, while reduc­ing the risk of burnout and staff turnover.
In addi­tion, effec­tive project man­age­ment allows mar­ket­ing teams to quick­ly adapt to chang­ing cir­cum­stances and mar­ket con­di­tions, ensur­ing their competitiveness.



Final­ly, project man­age­ment becomes the foun­da­tion for con­tin­u­ous growth, allow­ing teams to learn from their suc­cess­es and fail­ures, improv­ing process­es over time.

Now it is clear what project man­age­ment for mar­ket­ing teams is aimed at. So let’s move on to tips that will help you get the best pos­si­ble result.

Tip #1. Define clear goals and objectives

Above we said that dig­i­tal indi­ca­tors are of great impor­tance in mar­ket­ing projects. In order for them to cor­rect­ly reflect the project sta­tus and be updat­ed in a time­ly man­ner, work goals must be set. Their com­plete exe­cu­tion will mean that every­thing is 100% done.

To make the work eas­i­er, and the final goal not too dis­tant and unat­tain­able, a list of tasks is com­piled that brings the team clos­er to the final result. Accord­ing­ly, work on each task is also record­ed. The team is real­ly moti­vat­ed by vis­i­ble results.



For exam­ple, the entire project is divid­ed into five main stages. Each stage has three inter­me­di­ate stages. When the team sees that it has com­plet­ed the first of the main stages and has already done a third of the sec­ond one, peo­ple under­stand that they are mov­ing for­ward. When mile­stones are also tied to cal­en­dars and bud­gets, it’s even eas­i­er for both the team and the cus­tomer to mea­sure performance.

But one more point is impor­tant here: absolute­ly all par­tic­i­pants in the process must know the goals and objec­tives. Ide­al­ly, when they are agreed via com­mon dis­cus­sion. That is, the team is not just informed of goals and dead­lines for imple­men­ta­tion, but also dis­cuss­es how real­is­tic they are. Even in the case when deci­sions about the terms and scope of work are made by top man­agers and team lead­ers, it is nec­es­sary to inform each employ­ee as clear­ly and detailed as possible.

It is also impor­tant to make sure that every­one under­stands what needs to be done and when. Here we move on to the next impor­tant point. Local goals must be aligned with the over­all strat­e­gy. This is impor­tant for the fol­low­ing reasons:
  1. High­er suc­cess rates. This study found that com­pa­nies with no align­ment prob­lems were 72% more prof­itable than their competitors. 
  2. Clear work with pri­or­i­ties. When employ­ees know the strate­gic goals of the project, it is eas­i­er for them to under­stand which inter­me­di­ate goals and objec­tives have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on their achieve­ment. Accord­ing­ly, such work has a high­er priority.
  3. Under­stand­ing one’s own con­tri­bu­tion to the over­all result. This is impor­tant because a per­son who feels self-impor­tant usu­al­ly per­forms bet­ter. To feel this impor­tance, one should not guess, but know what the val­ue of a par­tic­u­lar work is.
So, don’t for­get to com­mu­ni­cate goals and objec­tives to the team and to each indi­vid­ual. Yes, it may seem like it’s tak­ing too much time, but it’s bet­ter to com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion, hear the ques­tions, and answer them before doing the tasks. In the end, this will give a bet­ter result than cor­rect­ing mis­takes made due to lack of information.

Tip #2. Cre­ate a detailed mar­ket­ing plan for the project

The impor­tance of plan­ning is dif­fi­cult to over­es­ti­mate, because it affects lit­er­al­ly all sub­se­quent process­es. There­fore, the more detailed your plan is, the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty that it will be com­plet­ed on time and real­ly well.



If the plan is only in a gen­er­al­ized form, there is a risk that impor­tant details have been over­looked, and this will emerge only with dead­lines approaching.

To make your plan­ning more effec­tive, please con­sid­er the fol­low­ing steps:
  1. Involve not only team lead­ers in plan­ning, but also oth­er employ­ees. We men­tioned this above. Dis­cus­sions become espe­cial­ly impor­tant when the project involves coop­er­a­tion between dif­fer­ent depart­ments. Some­times the opin­ions of dif­fer­ent spe­cial­ists allow for a more accu­rate time estimate.
  2. Assess the risks and find ways to man­age them. Here, again, it’s a good idea to involve rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all rel­e­vant depart­ments in the plan­ning to see as many poten­tial prob­lems as possible.
  3. Hold a gen­er­al meet­ing with the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the cus­tomer and con­trac­tors. This will make sure that every­one has the same under­stand­ing of the goals and the future progress of the work.
  4. Use the best project man­age­ment sys­tems. They will allow you to have all you need for coor­di­nat­ed and pro­duc­tive work in one space.
  5. Be ready to change. Even if the plan seems per­fect to you, you should not stick to it at all costs. It is bet­ter to make changes, if required, for exam­ple, by the mar­ket situation. 

Tip #3. Pay max­i­mum atten­tion to communications

When the plan­ning is com­plete, one can hope that every­thing will be trans­par­ent and pre­dictable: every­one will just start doing the tasks assigned to him.

In fact, this does not always hap­pen. Very often, prob­lems appear because of dif­fi­cul­ties with com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Some­one did not under­stand where to look for infor­ma­tion, some­one for­got to answer the request, and some­one did not pro­vide time­ly access, for exam­ple, to the test serv­er. As a result, unre­solved issues accu­mu­late, some tasks are done at ran­dom, and some remain undone.

To avoid this, all inter­est­ed par­ties should com­mu­ni­cate: in writ­ing, in voice, in task man­agers, etc. There is no way to man­age dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing projects with­out it.


Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in a task in the Work­sec­tion project man­age­ment system
The opti­mal solu­tion would be using ser­vices for project man­age­ment, which pro­vide tools for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For example,
  1. com­ments on assignments;
  2. the pos­si­bil­i­ty to attach files of var­i­ous formats;
  3. inte­gra­tion with mail and/​or messengers;
  4. built-in chat.
When the team has all of the above or a large part of it, there will def­i­nite­ly be few­er prob­lems with com­mu­ni­ca­tion. To reduce them to a min­i­mum, you can write down the com­mu­ni­ca­tion reg­u­la­tions. For exam­ple, urgent ques­tions should be asked in the mes­sen­ger, and infor­ma­tion that does not require a quick response can be left in a com­ment to the task.

Tip #4. Con­stant­ly mon­i­tor the progress of the project

Even in your thoughts, you should not assume that the work can be done well with­out a clear under­stand­ing of the state of affairs at each spe­cif­ic moment.

Con­trol is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in large-scale projects involv­ing many peo­ple. Hav­ing over­looked a small thing, you can soon get a prob­lem, the elim­i­na­tion of which costs far too much. It is not about micro­man­age­ment, which harms projects and teams, but about time­ly control.

There­fore, it is worth using project man­age­ment tools for mar­ket­ing agen­cies, which offer con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing func­tions. For exam­ple, Gantt charts, Kan­ban boards, project dash­boards, etc.


Project Dash­board in the Worksection
This is real­ly con­ve­nient, because it allows the man­ag­er to see on one screen whether the project is mov­ing accord­ing to plan. In case of prob­lems, you can study the indi­ca­tors and fig­ure out what to do to lev­el the sit­u­a­tion. When there are sev­er­al projects (and this is wide­spread in mar­ket­ing teams), it is almost impos­si­ble to mon­i­tor the sta­tus quick­ly with­out such tools.

To make this advice work, it is worth telling all employ­ees that such soft­ware is use­ful for every­one and is not a tool of repres­sion at all.

On the con­trary, advanced ser­vices remind you in time about the tasks for which the dead­line is approach­ing, and can also show that a cer­tain employ­ee has, for exam­ple, a 40 hours work­load this week. So try­ing to give him an addi­tion­al amount of work is not advisable.

It may seem that it is pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor key indi­ca­tors in man­u­al mode. In fact, it is, but such things take a lot of time, so the deci­sion-mak­ing will not be prompt, and in mar­ket­ing, you often have to act quick­ly to have success.

Tip #5. Record every­thing you can

When answer­ing the ques­tion of how to become bet­ter in mar­ket­ing or in any oth­er field, it should be under­stood that the key to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of indi­vid­ual teams and the com­pa­ny as a whole is expe­ri­ence. At the same time, it should not be accu­mu­lat­ed in the heads of indi­vid­ual employ­ees, but in documents.

It is nec­es­sary to record both suc­cess­ful deci­sions and fail­ures. In the future, this infor­ma­tion will help to avoid mis­takes and allow begin­ners to solve tasks as effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble based on past experience.

These tips for man­ag­ing mar­ket­ing teams are sure to deliv­er results if they are inte­grat­ed into the life of your busi­ness. If you fol­low them sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and clear­ly, pos­i­tive changes in work will appear quite quick­ly. Over time, you will under­stand how to use each of the tips in the team­work, tak­ing into account the fea­tures of your busi­ness and the needs of your customers.

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