There are so many products and services for consumers to choose from on the internet these days that a proper marketing management strategy becomes an indispensable part of every successful online enterprise. It is not enough to produce a good quality commodity to sell. You must also find a way of reaching your target audience, convince them to choose your product, and, hopefully, retain your customers for future sales.
We shall first explain what marketing project management is and what skills are necessary for executing it effectively. We shall also describe the phases of a marketing project management process and highlight the benefits of making it a part of your ongoing business planning. We shall then mention some project management tools which can help you achieve your marketing goals successfully and adjust your business plans accordingly.
Marketing Project Management
Every enterprise needs help to complete its tasks and achieve its goals. Marketing project management attempts to plan, organize and facilitate all business operations to ensure the company's ultimate success on the market. There are numerous issues for a project manager to handle, such as the workflow, schedules, adequate accounting, legal paperwork, and budget.
The entire task may seem too daunting at first. But fortunately, there are numerous strategies and software tools to make it more manageable and productive. Besides, continuous advances in software technology create new opportunities to deliver some management responsibilities to online programs and mobile apps and focus on the creative aspects of the process instead.
But successful marketing project management does more than boost sales and secure the company's position on the market. It also facilitates more efficient and gratifying teamwork and improves the company's public image as well. The actual dynamics of the management process will depend on your particular business aspirations, as well as the requirements of the market. Still, the following concepts are part of successful management in most cases:
1. Setting Specific Goals
Effective marketing project management concentrates on clearly defined goals, preferably in operational terms. It does not help very much to try and increase your sales considerably because the goal is vague, first of all. Besides, it will never be possible to say whether an increase has been considerable enough.
Instead, you may decide to see how you can increase your sales by, say, 1.8% in six months.
2. Dividing Work into Tasks
Any grand project is hard to achieve because you are not quite sure where to start. The sheer size of the enterprise may seem too overwhelming until you begin to divide it into tasks and sub-tasks, and so on. The ultimate goal is to break the process into specific single actions.
The next step is to prioritize them and schedule them accordingly. This way, you will know for sure what you have to do, say, this afternoon as part of your marketing project management process. Besides, each particular assignment will not seem so overwhelming anymore.
3. Dividing the Process into Phases
The previous principle will be easier to implement, and it will make more sense to your team if you split the overall process into phases that your project has to go through for the sake of its successful completion in the end. This way, you will be more clear about why you are completing that particular assignment this afternoon.
Apart from that, both you and your team need regular reinforcement to work on the project productively. But your excitement might wear out quickly if you wait for your reward at the end of the road only. Splitting the journey into stages allows your team to rip the fruits of their hard work regularly.
4. Implementing Appropriate Software
Still, it helps to know that you are not alone in our day and age of advanced computer technology. Of course, you can continue to practice the multiplication table in your head if you like, but why do it if you have a calculator? There is so much to do for successful marketing purposes, and there is such a great choice of management tools available online these days that you may as well use them for your project.
By integrating a marketing tool into your project, you will plan and execute your tasks more efficiently and constructively, and you will facilitate more productive teamwork too. We shall return to the management software later in the article, but we would like to discuss the marketing project management process in more detail first.
Enhanced Team Communication
During the execution of the project, your team members will have to closely coordinate their specific tasks and assignments for the successful implementation of your plans. That is why an effective marketing project management strategy must facilitate internal communication in your company. Furthermore, the information they pass to each other should, ideally, be in an easily readable format and accessible at any time.
The aim is to provide seamless information flow among your team members, even across the departments. Fortunately, there are plenty of management tools designed specifically for these purposes. They will help you set multiple communication channels in your company and automate and supervise the intra-organizational information flows.
Four Stages of the Project Management Process
What follows is a general overview of an efficient management process. The division may seem too simplistic, but that is the target, after all. By simplifying our goals, we make them easier to achieve.
1. Define Your Goals.
That is one of the most important objectives for any constructive marketing project management. So many projects have failed because there were no clear aims in view. That is why the first step is to understand what you want to achieve.
You should also adjust your goals to the circumstances on the market and your current financial situation. And once you understand your goals clearly, it is time to express them in operational terms. Without that definition, your goals will remain your dreams only. They will be harder to achieve or even stipulate in your contracts.
You should set your goals in agreement with all the parties involved too. The latter may include your sponsors, shareholders, staff members, and your potential or actual customers. That is why there is a lot of negotiation and documentation at this stage, and the successful completion of this phase will produce some form of contract, verbal or written.
2. Plan Your Project.
Once your dreams have transformed into goals, it is time to translate the latter into specific steps and schedule them in their logical progression. At this stage, you will benefit from using some tools for a visual presentation of your plans. The aim is to let each member of your team know what he should do and when.
Besides, this stage requires a high degree of collaboration among your team members and a fair amount of team coordination on your part too. Fortunately, there are some excellent charts and other tools to facilitate your marketing project management process at this stage.
3. Execute Your Project.
Now that you have set and defined your goals and coordinated the plan with all the parties involved, it is time to execute the project. At this stage, you will often have to modify or even discard some of your initial plans to adapt to the flexible circumstances on the market and numerous other factors.
That is why you will need a lot of active feedback channels inside the company and between the company and the clients. And again, you will find plenty of highly effective management tools to track and evaluate your progress and make marketing project management strategies more adequate to your customers' needs and preferences.
4. Assess Your Achievements.
Finally, when you have completed the project, it is time to evaluate the results. Even if you do not intend to get involved in that particular project again, you will still want to know, for future references, where you did well and where you did not, and why. And if the project is to repeat itself, the final assessment of the results becomes vitally important for your further progress.
Essential Management Skills for Marketing Projects
Effective marketing project management is a challenging task, and it requires particular skills, both from you and your team members:
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Management Skills. Everybody on the project should, at least, know how to organize his work, assess the workload realistically, and schedule his tasks. Some management tools can help them to an extent, but still, a certain amount of self-management is inevitable. Moreover, as the project leader, you will also have to organize other people's work and assign responsibilities accordingly.
- Experiential Knowledge of Project Management Techniques. It will also help if you and your team members are familiar with the basic marketing project management strategies. And it will work even better if you have practiced them too. For this reason, attending some workshops or even reading appropriate literature will considerably increase your chances of completing the project successfully.
- Interpersonal Skills. Project work requires a lot of collaboration. For this reason, one's communication skills play a vital role in the process too. Statistically, a high percentage of ineffective or even destructive work occurs due to the so-called human factor. Ideally, your team members should possess sufficient interpersonal skills to be able to coordinate their activities.
Pros of Effective Project Management
Effective project management creates considerable benefits for the project and the organizational culture, the following being the most significant ones:
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You will be able to conduct more rational and adequate planning.
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It will considerably improve the team's work performance.
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Your company will secure a better and more stable position in the market.
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It will enhance team collaboration and internal communication.
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It will boost your sales, increase your profits and reduce your costs and expenses.
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On top of that, it will result in lower absenteeism and higher customer satisfaction too.
Marketing Project Management Software
Numerous management tools you can find on the internet these days will noticeably improve your team's overall performance, and they will free you from a large amount of routine work too. This way, you will be able to focus on the more creative aspects of your project management.
Moreover, some highly advanced applications can complement your skills by providing invaluable data, tools, and appropriate software, which will ensure a more efficient, productive, and seamless execution of your marketing project. Bitrix24 is an excellent example of such software.
Bitrix24 project management application will:
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Schedule business tasks and set the deadlines
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Automate the sales and marketing operations
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Apply an advanced CMS to generate new leads
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Integrate and analyze customer support across all available communication platforms
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Provide Kanban and Gantt Charts to facilitate efficient project management
Conclusion
In our age of online shopping, you have to exert considerable effort to promote your products and services on the market. Besides, effective marketing project management requires particular skills, knowledge, and experience too. We hope our article has helped you to that effect a little. For everything else, there is Bitrix24.
