The Ultimate Guide to Marketing In Project Management

What Is Marketing in Project Management?

Marketing project management is a methodology that involves planning, managing, tracking, and delivering marketing projects. Throughout the project's lifecycle, marketing in project management is needed to keep marketing campaigns on schedule and stakeholders informed. In addition, it promotes teamwork, keeps projects on track, and assists the organization in meeting customer expectations.

What Is Marketing Project Management Software?

The main purpose of this software is to assist marketing departments in project planning and execution. It includes all the marketing department's project management integrations and tools to plan campaigns, manage creative digital assets, streamline workflows, and collaborate. In addition, the software has a wide range of features, including resource allocation, performance management, scope, cost and time tracking, workflow optimization, and more.

Need of Marketing Management Software

Marketing management software becomes essential for a diverse marketing team with numerous personalities, positions, and skill sets since it provides the flexibility team members require. Logical conclusions and hard numbers are crucial to the marketing analytics team. The software enables cross-functional teams to collaborate on a common goal: generating content and executing effective campaigns.

Coordination

Coordinating campaigns can be extremely difficult without a clear tool to track and manage schedules, deadlines, and more. The right marketing in project management tool should provide a comprehensive perspective of every task and output, allowing managers to understand when and where things go wrong.

Collaboration

Successfully integrated marketing initiatives require constant communication and collaboration. Therefore, good marketing software must facilitate collaboration by managing task approvals and providing a platform to give and track feedback in the same place. Hence, everyone is on the same page.

Transparency

The transparent nature of this software allows the team to track and evaluate campaign progress and detect potential bottlenecks. As a result, project managers can make informed, efficient decisions that reduce waste, enhance operational efficiency, and boost campaign performance.

Marketing Resource Management

Marketing resource management capabilities become essential to help manage all the marketing resources. The ability to save the relevant brand, visual assets, and content can assist the team in saving both time and money.

Organization

The software allows project managers to keep track of all tasks and deliverables in one location, allowing the team to stay efficient, organized, and productive.

Productivity

The software should offer calendars, alerts, and a clear vision of what needs to happen next, allowing everyone on the team to focus on the goals.

Importance of Marketing in Project Management

Proper project management impacts the entire marketing campaign and everyone involved in making it a success. There are several stakeholders and team members involved in the campaign, but the three most important people on the team are

The Marketing Project Manager

They are the leader responsible for the success of the marketing campaigns. Keeping an eye on the project schedule, delays, marketing methods, and KPI monitoring are just some functions of the marketing project manager. 

Internal Stakeholders

These are the team members associated with the project. Their direct involvement with the marketing campaign allows them to be impacted by the decisions taken, campaign goals, and deliverables. These stakeholders could include technicians, sales representatives, executives, and more. 

External Stakeholders

People, such as vendors, clients, investors, etc., are the external stakeholders. Therefore, a project manager has to communicate with internal and external stakeholders and keep them informed about the project and its deliverables. 

Key Responsibilities of a Marketing Project Manager

There are four primary areas that a project manager is responsible for to ensure efficient progress and successful completion of the marketing campaign. These four areas are

Project Scope

The project scope includes the desired project objectives and management tasks needed to execute it. The project manager is responsible for completing the project scope.

Resources

The personnel, equipment, or other objects required to accomplish a project are resources. Because resources are an integral aspect of every project, the project manager must guarantee they are used efficiently.

Timelines

Project scheduling is one of the main functions of a project manager. Every project has a completion timeline. The function of the project manager is to organize resource allocation and task execution to fulfill these specified deadlines.

Budgets

An estimate of the project's overall cost, which includes individual task expenditures, is a budget. This budget needs to be maintained by the project manager.

Steps of the Marketing Project Management Process

The traditional project management phases and additional marketing strategies ensure the project's success. These phases include

Objectives and Analysis

This phase of marketing project management focuses on marketing campaign planning. It includes identifying success metrics and defining the project's end goals.

• Define end goals: End goals prove to be a major motivation during the project execution for the team and the stakeholders.
• Identify success metrics: Identifying key performance indexes right at the beginning of the campaign helps monitor the progress throughout the project lifecycle.

Marketing Strategy

Project objectives established during phase one drive the marketing strategy. Market research and data produce the most effective strategies to reach the campaign goals.

• Pinpoint your audience: Identifying and researching the target audience leads to high ROI and increased sales.
• Set messages and CTAs: A message should be developed which will be communicated to the audience, and a call to action for the audience to follow should be determined.

Project Scheduling

The marketing campaign may need creative assets and a precise plan for distributing these goods. Establish a team to help you with asset development during the project schedule phase.

• Clarify scope: Establishing the project scope will help the team understand the limitations of the project timeline, budget, and resources. Stakeholders will refrain from requesting frequent changes if the scope is established. 
• Delegate tasks: Delegating tasks is essential if the manager wants to keep the project organized. Make a project timeline and assign tasks to the team; task management tools such as a Gantt chart will help team members visualize task dependencies and project milestones.

Campaign Launch

After scheduling the campaign, the strategy is put into motion, and this phase develops the creative assets and sends them out to the customers. 

• Create project deliverables: Using a team of graphic designers and writers, the marketing department can produce great copy and visuals for the message and create better deliverables than the competitors.
• Distribute across marketing channels: Distributing the deliverables across various marketing channels depending on the target audience will get maximum views.

Monitor and Review

Monitor the project's progress using the success metrics established during the project planning phase. Performance information can be utilized to learn lessons for future projects once you have monitored your progress.

• Monitor results: Use project management software to monitor your KPIs in real time. Once you've launched your marketing campaign, you can assess how well your campaign performed and what adjustments you should make to your future marketing strategy.
• Set future standards: Use any lessons from monitoring your campaign to set standards for future projects. For example, if your campaign performed poorly with a specific age bracket, set audience limitations on this group for future campaigns.

Common Challenges in Marketing Campaigns

Many marketing teams experience difficulties while putting their marketing initiatives into action. Fortunately, the most prevalent issues are avoidable or quickly minimized with marketing project management. 

Project Risks

Risk is inherent in marketing campaigns, and it is difficult to foresee these risks or when they will arise. However, if the project manager does not reduce a project risk once it has taken root, the problem can impact project quality. The different types of risks are

• Technical risk: Email or digital marketing efforts are particularly vulnerable to technical risk. Security issues, hacks, password theft, or service failures can delay or disrupt a marketing plan.
• Market risk: These are threats to the entire market. These could include recession, margin, interest rate, and currency risk. While these risks are unpredictable, your team may plan for them so that you can act fast if they occur.
• Organizational risk: Internal operations issues cause organizational risk. This category includes reputational harm, communication breakdowns, lawsuits, and supply chain interruptions. 

Solution: Using project risk management to minimize and limit risk in marketing campaigns. Set up a risk analysis during the planning phase to determine which project hazards are most likely to materialize and the highest priority risks. Then, utilize the findings to design the campaign and plan for pitfalls.

Scope Creep

Scope creep comes up when the scope of a marketing strategy exceeds the initial assumptions they set. Because teams do not create particular requirements during project planning, marketing campaigns frequently suffer from scope creep. If managers do not convey the restrictions to stakeholders, they may require modifications that the project team cannot meet.

Solution: During the early phases of the marketing campaign, define project objectives and discuss them with the stakeholders. Maintain open communication lines with stakeholders, so they understand the project's requirements, including the schedule and budget constraints. Project managers can also implement a change control procedure to manage change requests.

Poor Communication With Stakeholders

Many marketing teams struggle with poor communication with stakeholders. Apart from scope creep, other consequences of communication issues include:

• Vague project goals and outcomes that are inconsistent.
• Decreased team morale.
• Inadequate project funding.
• Duplicate work.

Solution:

1. Establish a strong channel of contact with stakeholders using project management software.
2. Provide real-time updates to all stakeholders participating in the marketing campaign, and encourage them to contribute feedback along the route.
3. Set project milestones as markers for the campaign's collective evaluation.

No Single Source of Truth

Marketing teams that communicate with stakeholders face-to-face, via phone, email, or video chat will find difficulties managing their marketing campaigns. Such traditional forms of communication do not offer facilities like a central source of truth, document sharing, software integrations, continuous status updates, or task management. Transparent communication improves project quality and enhances team communication.

Solution: Marketing project management tools provide this transparency and other functionalities to improve communication between team members and stakeholders.

Phases of Marketing in Project Management

Marketing project management has a four-phase lifecycle, which includes

Start

The commencement of the marketing project is the initial stage of the life cycle. It is the moment when key members of the marketing team will establish the project's objectives. These objectives are typically translated into project goals, which serve as the basis of a project charter. A project charter is a brief document that defines the project's main goals and expectations. The key to good marketing is defining your goals. It also serves as the foundation for how the marketing approach is streamlined successfully.

Plan

The planning stage is the second phase of the project's life cycle. In this stage, the marketing team will establish a project budget and prioritize deliverables. For example, team members may conclude that a marketing campaign or data collection is a suitable deliverable. These deliverables will assist the team in developing a marketing plan divided into numerous tasks. Remember that the more complicated the marketing strategy, the more tasks the marketing group will need to execute. Make sure to estimate the entire project scope. To ensure a successful conclusion, determine who will undertake which tasks.

Execute

The third phase of the lifecycle is when the team is required to put the project plan into action. At this point, the team leaders will assist in completing the marketing project. In addition, they will be in charge of tracking and reporting progress, creating new tasks as needed, and erasing anything that interferes with task completion. Team leaders must also be aware of the primary objectives when tracking progress.

Evaluate

The evaluation stage is the final phase in the marketing project lifecycle. It is the point at which a project is completed and the point at which the marketing team determines whether a project was successful if it needs to be improved, or whether the team needs to try something new entirely. Finally, the evaluation phase is critical in promoting the constant improvement of marketing initiatives.

4 Marketing Project Management Tips

Here are a few marketing project management tips that can be put into practice

Define Your Marketing Goals

Project managers must first outline the marketing objectives to gain the right clients and boost the business. It will ensure that marketing projects work together to accomplish a common objective. Also, it improves the total marketing effort and leads to greater outcomes. Remember to set the marketing objectives as simply as possible. The more goals one sets, the more difficult it will be for the team to meet deadlines.

Prioritize Marketing Projects

After identifying project objectives, deciding which initiatives are the most significant is crucial. Prioritization is essential in the digital marketing process. Too often, organizations will make a list of projects they wish to complete and then complete them in random order. However, to maximize marketing outcomes, project leaders should always prioritize the tasks depending on the overarching goal after that, consider terms of growth and where these projects rank. The projects that will provide you with the largest growth should be prioritized.

Understand Your Marketing Project Management Requirements 

Effective management of a marketing project is not possible until the team understands all of the project criteria. For example, the marketing team might begin a project only to discover that they lack everything required for a successful launch. This approach can lead to a significant waste of money and time. Agile project management is an excellent technique for quickly understanding project needs. It allows marketing teams to think rapidly and evaluate what is needed in a project. In addition, agile project management enables teams to make changes as they go.

Assess All Your Resources

Go through the resources and ensure that everything required is available for the marketing job. When reviewing resources, consider the talent on the marketing team, the present marketing budget, and the tools that will help speed up the marketing. These resources are critical for carrying out the marketing strategy. Then examine the aims of each marketing goal and make a list of the resources already available and what will be needed to attain the objectives.

Making a career in project management has never been this easy! Enroll in our Post Graduate Program in Project Management to get started today!

Conclusion

Marketing in project management enables marketing teams to organize and collaborate more effectively. Boost your digital-age project leader journey with our Project Management Certification course aligned with PMI-PMP® and IASSC-Lean Six Sigma. Enroll now!