Project Management in Marketing
Stay organized with project management tips and tricks when working in marketing and communications
Communications professionals know the constant struggle of juggling multiple projects simultaneously, a task that can often be overwhelming. This is where my love of project management comes into play.
So what is a project? "It's a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result." (PMI) Sound familiar? We take on projects every day in marketing and communications.
We don't often think about the steps we take to work through projects in our jobs. Still, once we are aware of them, we can use project management processes and best practices to improve our focus on goals, planning, time management, team communication and overall ROI.
There are several easy ways to improve your marketing through project management.
Keep It Simple
A popular project management method has five phases:
Initiating (start your project and define your goals)
Planning (break down your deliverables, milestones, schedule, budget and workflow)
Executing (create and publish your content)
Monitoring and controlling (assign, monitor and analyze your content)
Closing (report and measure its impact)
These phases can be applied to any project and can help structure the order of project completion, no matter the size. Visualizing and following these phases can help bring order to what seems like an overwhelming project and make it manageable.
Define Your Goals
If you have several projects on your list to start, and you are unsure where to begin, define your project goals to bring focus to the projects that truly impact your business.
Tip 1: Make sure they are SMART goals: specific, measurable, accurate, realistic, and time-sensitive.
Tip 2: Make sure you and your team always have access to a document that outlines these goals. This is often summarized in a "project charter."
Assess Your Resources Before Tackling the Project
No matter the project, always take your talent, tools and budget into account. Assign the people, tools and cost associated with every project to assess the associated needs and limitations. This can often affect the priority or projects and schedule if resources have limited availability.
Prioritize Your Projects
Rank your projects by priority based on management directives, impact on business and growth potential.
Tip: Try to rate your content on a scale of 1-3. "3" means the project is a high priority, whereas a score of "1" suggests you should put that project on the back burner.
Build out your project deliverables
Make sure to break down your projects by their deliverables. These tasks are a comprehensive list of everything that has to be completed. Take your list of project tasks and assign the necessary milestones for each. This gives your projects near-term deadlines, which allows you to improve as you execute.
Build your project schedule and workflow
Now that you have your goals, resources, deliverables and milestones, you can plan out your next month of work within a project management software of your choice. A fantastic tool to bring all your information together.
You may already utilize project management software. I have personally used asana, but monday.com, Trello and MS Project are great options. This is where you build your projects in a schedule, assign the necessary people and resources and create clear deadlines.
Create, Publish, and Share Your Content
Get creative and execute your many project deliverables outlined in your workflow while managing and updating team members.
Monitor And Control Your Project
It is essential to review your progress frequently and check in with other teams that impact your work. There are always situations where you may "pivot" in a new direction, but frequent check-ins, meetings and reviews can help mitigate this risk and keep you on track.
Close Your Project
Once a project is complete, you can measure the impact it had on your goals. Depending on the project's size, a formal report on the measurable analytics may be necessary, or it can be a simple closing discussion with your team once the final project is delivered.
Alyssa Gosse
Vice President & Partnerships Director
IABC Waterloo