Marketing project management tools can help you plan, execute, and monitor your campaigns, but they are not one-size-fits-all solutions. You need to customize them to fit your team's needs, goals, and workflows. Here are some tips on how to do that.
Before you choose or adjust a marketing project management tool, you need to understand your current situation. What are the main challenges and pain points that your team faces? What are the goals and objectives that you want to achieve? What are the processes and procedures that you follow? How do you communicate and collaborate with each other and with other stakeholders? How do you measure and report on your results? By answering these questions, you can identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement in your marketing operations.
Communication is key here. You have to make sure you're talking to the producers, requestors, and stakeholders in your organization so that you have a crystal-clear understanding of your project-management needs. Once you've asked the right questions and gathered data from everyone involved, you'll be able to start gathering a comprehensive list of your needs. Armed with that list, you'll have have what you need to start narrowing down your tool options and testing out solutions.
Needs Assessment: Start by conducting a thorough needs assessment with your marketing team. Understand their specific workflows, pain points, and requirements for project management. I disagree with the idea that one-size-fits-all solutions can adequately meet the unique needs of every marketing team. Customization is essential, but it's equally important to carefully evaluate existing project management tools in the market. Sometimes, a well-designed, specialized tool can save time and resources compared to building a completely custom solution.
Focus on what’s not working and what is causing pain. That’s what you want to build the project around fixing. If you start with this utopian view of what your company would be like with an effective tool you’ll spend so many cycles reinventing what perfect looks like. Small tests of change are keep to any process based implementation.
Use the platform functionality first. Use what's already there. It should be 80 percent standard functionality- 20 percent customization. If you can't get most out of what you need day to day out of basic functionality that's supported by the Vendor consider going with another Vendor who meets your needs better.
To customize project management tools: 1-Analyze your team's workflow to identify bottlenecks and communication needs. 2-Customize views and dashboards to display relevant information for different roles and projects. 3-Automate workflows and processes to save time and effort. Utilize reporting and analytics to track progress and identify areas for improvement. 4-Foster a culture of customization by encouraging feedback, providing training, and regularly reviewing and updating the tool.
Not all marketing project management tools are created equal. Some are more suited for specific types of projects, teams, or industries. Some are more user-friendly, customizable, or integrative than others. You need to choose a tool that can adapt to your team's needs, not the other way around. Look for a tool that offers features such as templates, workflows, automation, dashboards, calendars, reports, and integrations. Also, look for a tool that can scale with your team's growth, complexity, and diversity.
Here are a few recommended project management tools for digital marketing operations and why they're impactful: - Asana: User-friendly with customizable workflows, ideal for diverse marketing projects. - Trello: Intuitive card-based system for visual project management, versatile for various marketing tasks. - ClickUp: Known for automation, streamlining repetitive tasks, and scalable for growing agencies. - Notion: Flexible for creative collaboration, an all-in-one platform for note-taking, task management, and documentation. - Jira: Robust and highly customizable, perfect for handling complex projects in digital marketing. Remember to select a tool based on the specific needs and workflows of your company.
One of the benefits of using a marketing project management tool is that it can help you assign and track roles and responsibilities for each project. This can improve accountability, transparency, and efficiency in your team. However, you need to define your roles and responsibilities clearly and consistently. You can use a RACI matrix or a similar framework to map out who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each task, deliverable, and milestone. Then, you can use your tool to assign and notify the relevant team members.
When I first started my role as a MOPs manager, I made a point to make an Org chart of everyone relevant to me that I work with. I put everyone’s email, profile photo, and a short job description for them as they relate to Marketing Ops. It has served me (and incoming employees) well. There’s a million ways to handle it so find the right one for you. It should be quick to edit, however, since responsibilities and roles often change. This also makes task management much easier as MOPs professionals tend to liaison between a number of different teams. It’s common for people to come to us for help outside of our normal job description - and knowing who’s who in your space really helps the positive impact that you can make.
Another benefit of using a marketing project management tool is that it can help you streamline and standardize your workflows and templates. This can reduce errors, delays, and redundancies in your team. However, you need to customize your workflows and templates to match your team's needs, goals, and preferences. You can use your tool to create and modify workflows and templates for different types of projects, such as content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, or event marketing. You can also use your tool to set deadlines, dependencies, priorities, and statuses for each task.
If the tool allows, creating intake forms that in turn formulate tasks is the easiest way to ensure the MOPs team gets all the info they need to create and execute campaigns. This automates a large part of the process, eliminating a good chunk of back and forth, while at the same time, ensuring compliance and removing human error with regard to not following template requirements or procedure.
To help with resource tracking and planning, consider templating the time specific tasks by role that are needed to complete a project. I've found this very helpful to build a baseline over a period of time. Looking back on a period of time, (quarter, year, etc..) You'll see just how many hours/resources are needed for common marketing tasks. This also can help a marketing leader build a strong business case for additional headcount or resources in the future.
A third benefit of using a marketing project management tool is that it can help you automate your repetitive tasks. This can save time, energy, and resources in your team. However, you need to automate your tasks wisely and strategically. You can use your tool to automate tasks such as creating new projects, assigning roles, sending reminders, updating statuses, generating reports, and integrating with other tools. However, you should not automate tasks that require human judgment, creativity, or feedback.
Not everything can or should be automated, but automating those repetitive tasks takes some of the monotony out of the every-day grind. Project Management tools like Asana allow you to build project templates that can be tweaked as needed.
As a MOPs Manager with ADD, I don’t think I could live without Asana. It can be difficult at times to get your whole team aligned, but often MOPs professionals have more pull than they realize. I had a bad habit of telling everyone “Yes” when I first started - but that habit lead to mistakes and more time lost to fixing them. Now, my marketing team knows that if they want something done, it needs to be assigned to me in Asana. If I get any action item whatsoever, it gets an Asana task right away. The quicker I can get that task out of my mind and into my tasks queue, the more mental space I have to do my best work.
A final benefit of using a marketing project management tool is that it can help you monitor and improve your performance. This can enhance your team's effectiveness, productivity, and satisfaction. However, you need to monitor and improve your performance regularly and systematically. You can use your tool to collect and analyze data on your key performance indicators, such as quality, speed, cost, and impact. You can also use your tool to solicit and share feedback, suggestions, and best practices. Then, you can use your insights to optimize your tool and your processes.
Adoption is a key! As an admin, monitor how your team utilizes the platform. You can track the activity and run training if you see a decrease in platform usage from individuals in your team.
Tailored Workflows: Customize the project management tool to match your team's specific workflows and processes. Ensure that it reflects the stages of your marketing projects accurately. In a marketing team, they customized their project management tool extensively. They integrated it with their CRM system, allowing them to seamlessly track leads through the sales funnel. They also set up role-based permissions to control who could access sensitive customer data. Customized reports were generated to provide real-time insights into campaign performance. This level of customization improved their efficiency, data accuracy, and overall project management capabilities.