Common marketing project management challenges and how to solve them.
In today’s fast-paced marketing landscape, it’s crucial to manage projects effectively to stay ahead of the competition. Marketing project management software provides marketers with a centralized platform to manage and streamline all their marketing projects, resources, and approvals. However, marketers face several challenges while managing their projects. Let’s take a closer look at some common marketing project management challenges and how to solve them.
- Well-Briefed Marketing Projects
One of the biggest challenges in marketing project management is getting every project off to a good start. Poorly briefed projects can result in missed deadlines, revisions, and increased costs. To avoid this, implement a process where all briefs are processed by one nominated person in the marketing department. This person can ensure that all stakeholders use a consistent marketing brief template to capture every detail of the project. The template should highlight that if any details are missing, the brief will be returned to its owner and not processed. This way, all stakeholders are clear about the project requirements from the beginning, preventing unnecessary changes later in the process.
2. Greater Transparency Over Marketing Resources
Effective resource management is key to project success. To ensure greater transparency over your resources, use a shared calendar so that every team member knows what the other is working on. Maintain a template of project tasks and resources so that you don’t have to waste time logging this information every time you start a new project. Consider using a marketing resource management solution to provide an instant overview of all your resources across multiple projects. Such a solution enables you to assign and reassign tasks easily, estimate expenses and resources for upcoming projects, and run reports.
3. A Central Platform from Which to Manage Marketing Projects
A centralized platform provides a framework for planning and tracking your marketing projects. Marketing project management software offers unprecedented transparency, where all briefs, files, assets, feedback, and approvals are saved in a central online location. Create dedicated milestones and deadlines to suit your needs. A user-friendly dashboard enables you to see the progress of your project at any time, from anywhere.
4. Efficient Reviewing Processes and Tools
Efficient reviewing processes and tools are essential to produce high-quality projects that are timely and on budget. Using traditional tools such as email can result in missed feedback and revisions. It’s important to save all feedback and artwork versions in an email folder as soon as you open it. Send changes to your designer once you have everyone’s feedback to avoid missed changes and revisions. Consider adopting online proofing tools that provide a faster turnaround on artwork. Stakeholders can easily mark up artwork online and add comments, and compare versions side by side to ensure changes have been made.
5. Streamlined Approval Workflow Processes
If your current approval process is ineffectual, it’s time to identify where it’s letting you down. Ensure that you only involve stakeholders who are necessary to get the project approved and finalized on deadline. Request feedback in the correct sequence so that approvals are not double-handled, leading to high revision counts. Review the tools you have to support your approval workflow process. Consider implementing an approval workflow solution that enables you to create your unique approval pathways, ensuring that no stakeholder is missed. An approval workflow solution also allows you to save and track all feedback and approvals in one central location, providing greater transparency over the work in progress.
6. Increased Collaboration
Spreadsheets are error-prone and don’t offer much in the way of collaboration. Managing resources and projects on spreadsheets is problematic for marketers. Consider using marketing project and resource management software to plan, track, and stay abreast of your project and resources. Approved stakeholders can always see exactly where all marketing projects and resources are at so that everyone is on the same page.
7. Productive Project Meetings
Project meetings can be time-consuming and can take hours out of your day. While these meetings are crucial for effective project management and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. One of the biggest challenges of project meetings is keeping them productive and efficient. Without proper planning and structure, meetings can quickly become unproductive and a waste of time. It is essential to have a clear agenda and goals for the meeting, as well as assigning roles and responsibilities to each participant. Additionally, keeping the meeting focused on the topic at hand and avoiding tangents can help keep everyone engaged and productive. By addressing these challenges and implementing effective meeting strategies, project managers can ensure that meetings are a valuable use of everyone’s time and contribute to the success of the project.
8. Integration with other marketing tools
Your marketing project management software should integrate with other marketing tools, such as your marketing automation software, CRM, and social media management tools. Integration with these tools will help you streamline your marketing efforts and keep your team on the same page. Your team will be able to work more efficiently and effectively, and you’ll be able to track the success of your marketing campaigns more accurately.
9. Scalability
Your marketing project management software should be scalable and able to grow with your team. As your team grows, your software should be able to handle more projects and users without slowing down or becoming less efficient. It’s important to choose a software solution that can scale with your business and meet your changing needs over time.
10. Customization
Every marketing team has unique needs and workflows. Your marketing project management software should be customizable so that you can tailor it to your team’s specific needs. This may include creating custom fields, workflows, and templates that fit your team’s unique processes. Look for software solutions that offer a high degree of customization so that you can create a solution that works for your team.
In conclusion, implementing marketing project management software and marketing approval workflow solutions can help your team overcome common marketing project management challenges. By simplifying your briefing process, increasing transparency over marketing resources, using a central platform to manage marketing projects, using efficient reviewing and approval workflow processes, and increasing collaboration, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing team. Look for a software solution that integrates with other marketing tools, is scalable, and can be customized to fit your team’s unique needs. By adopting these solutions, you can streamline your marketing efforts and achieve greater success with your marketing campaigns.
