As marketers, we’ve all experienced real-life marketing project management nightmares. You know — the projects that should have taken two weeks to complete, but instead dragged on for most of the year. Or the article that stumbled through numerous, unnecessary rounds of approval due to poor version control. Or even worse, the high-budget video that was scrapped entirely because of a lack of strategic alignment from the get-go.
Marketing departments face a sea of challenges when it comes to getting work done quickly and efficiently. And unfortunately, these instances are common enough to feel like the name of the marketing game. But “it is what it is” is no way to create successful, integrated campaigns that make an impact on your customer — and your bottom line.
That’s where the right marketing project management software comes in. It brings your entire marketing department together to build and execute omnichannel campaigns quickly and at scale.
What is marketing project management?
Think about all of the elements that need to come together to create a cohesive marketing campaign. First, you need to determine the mission, the corresponding goals, an approved messaging framework, and a strategic approach. You also need to create the core pieces of content to drive that message home, as well as the social media posts, visual and creative assets, and maybe even press releases, all of which will be used to distribute and promote the campaign effectively across multiple channels.
Beyond that, your team needs to manage each task and ensure everything ladders up to the larger campaign. There are a lot of moving parts to manage, and without the ability to see how each of these pieces relate to the overarching plan, it’s easy for things to get lost in the shuffle.
This is where marketing project management comes in — the process of wrangling all of the people, tools, and activities needed to deliver and distribute a cohesive marketing campaign. For easy and effective management, you need a software solution that will be the behind-the-scenes micromanager of your marketing efforts — making the difference between an efficient, well-oiled marketing engine and a total hot mess.
Why use marketing project management software?
Your marketing team is full of different personalities, roles, and skillsets. The members of your creative team likely thrive with a more flexible approach and push back against clearly-defined processes and structure. The marketing analytics team lives and dies by logical outcomes and hard numbers. Your marketing project management software should help these cross-functional teams work together toward the same goal — creating great content and executing effective campaigns.
Here are six reasons you need marketing project management software and how it will transform the way you work.
1. Coordination
Without a clear way to track and manage timelines, deadlines, and next steps, coordinating campaigns can feel a lot like herding cats. The right marketing project management solution should provide a holistic view of every task and deliverable, so you can see exactly when and where things are getting off track.
Request a demo to see how NewsCred’s content marketing platform can give your teams full line of sight into every step of a campaign.
2. Collaboration
You can’t build successful integrated marketing campaigns without seamless communication and collaboration. But using email to send comments back and forth is a great way to lose track of critical feedback. A good marketing project management software should enable collaboration — allowing you to build flexible workflows to manage task approvals and giving your team the ability to provide and track feedback in the same place so no one misses any edits or comments.
3. Transparency
Marketing project management software gives your department the ability to monitor team processes, assess campaign progress, and identify potential bottlenecks. The result is the transparency you need to make informed, effective decisions that will minimize waste, improve operational efficiency, and maximize campaign performance.
4. Marketing resource management
A good marketing project management tool should also provide a digital asset manager to help you manage all of your marketing resources. The ability to store relevant brand, content, and visual assets will help your team leverage what’s already been created and reduce duplicative efforts, saving your marketing team both time and money.
5. Organization
Marketing campaigns have a lot of moving parts — they’re essentially the product of a comprehensive laundry list of “to-do’s.” Marketing project management software helps you keep track of every task and deliverable in one place, so you stay organized, efficient, and productive.
6. Productivity
Too often, marketing teams spend the majority of their time and energy wrangling tasks and responding to fire drills. A good marketing project management software provides calendars, alerts, and a clear view of what needs to happen next, helping everyone on your team stay focused on what’s most important. Bonus points if the tool provides operational efficiency analytics, like NewsCred’s CMP.
Types of marketing project management software
Social media management software
Social media management platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social allow you to schedule posts, measure content engagement, and understand social campaign performance. However, for sophisticated content marketers producing a lot of content for different channels and running integrated campaigns, social management software only solves one part of the content creation and distribution process.
Workflow and project management software
Workflow and project management software solutions (think: Basecamp, Smartsheet, Trello) allow teams to plan projects, track tasks, schedule distribution, and allocate resources. While these capabilities are critical to your marketing efforts, these tools don’t offer marketing-centric functionalities around ideating, digital asset management, or analytics that marketing teams need to create effective integrated campaigns.
CMPs
A content marketing platform (CMP) is a software solution that enables marketers to drive awareness, leads, and revenue through content. Some CMPs also offer project management capabilities to help marketers manage content production and campaigns. NewsCred is an example of an end-to-end marketing project management solution that provides data-driven ideation, analytics, and marketing resource management capabilities to help marketers ideate, create, manage, and track content production and campaign performance all in one place.
Interested in learning more about how NewsCred’s CMP as a solution for marketing project management? Request a demo now.
Jen Gustavson is a NewsCred Contributor.
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source https://thebtrade.com/2019/10/01/6-reasons-you-need-marketing-project-management-software/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-reasons-you-need-marketing-project-management-software
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