Smash Projects like a Pro

A Marketing Director, Creative Director and an Agency Producer walk into a bar…the joke is, they did no such thing. Why? Because they don’t have the time to be drinking anything other than strong black coffee. With more projects and protocols than people to carry them out, marketers need project planning systems more than ever. The heart of project management for marketing is simply this; the combination of steps and methods used by a group of people to get campaigns out the door on time and on budget, then reviewing how it all went. Good news is, you were born in time for the Digital Revolution and there are a ton of marketing campaign project management tools out there specifically tailored to you and your team.

Why Project Management Tools?

Marketing tools for Marketers

Even if you work with the most avant-garde bunch of creatives ever assembled, you’re going to need a process to get stuff done. Industry agnostic PM platforms offer generic ways to display your marketing calendar and give you a bit of Kanban board action, but apart from scheduling and ‘To Do’ lists, they are just not built to encompass the full journey from planning to content creation and post analysis. Marketers, just like any profession, need tools designed specifically for their wheelhouse.

Whether you call it Marketing Resource Management (MRM), MarTech or Marketing Operations software, marketing project management tools centralize processes and make each step in the collaboration chain easier. From setting up the big picture structure of workflow to task management, team collaboration, resource allocation, budgeting and goals, briefing, and feedback loops on performance – the trick is to choose a customizable solution that integrates all of these functions under one roof.

Control, visibility, agility, collaboration and efficiency are a given, but a true marketing ops tool will be fully fitted out to handle what marketers care about most – creative content. 

Capabilities needed in a Marketing Project Management platform:

Master Briefing Hierarchy 

The first part of the project is the online master brief, where you’ll outline the strategy, budget, timing, personas and insights, creative requirements and execution strategy. At this first stage, you’ll get overall project approvals from relevant stakeholders, so you are ready to then start requesting asset creation or edits.

The benefit: By doing the approvals and getting buy-in at the strategy stage, you’ll save hours avoiding refinements on creative assets generated further down the funnel.

Campaign and Task Briefs

Using the Master Brief as a base, create broader Campaign and Task Briefs. These sub-briefs inherit the approved strategy from the Master Brief such as budget, persona and strategy data, brand promise and other aspects, such as mandatories and fine print. 

The benefit: Zero repetition and confidence the brief is compliant.

Work within Campaign & Task Briefs

Bulk upload, send for approval, proofing and mark up creative that is related to a specific brief or task all from within the actual brief. 

The benefit: Everything is all in one place which is great for both tracking and saving time. Cutting out email hunts trying to piece together ‘who did what when’ plus the ability to perform bulk actions saves hours. And, when all assets are finally approved, you can automatically push the final assets to the DAM and beyond.

Kanban & Calendar Views of Briefs and Marketing Projects

You can view all Master Briefs, Campaign Briefs and Task Briefs on Kanban Boards or Calendars.

The benefit: This makes it easy to not only have a birds-eye view of all projects from a timing perspective but also segment marketing projects by priority, project lead and other parameters. You can also easily re-assign and move projects with drag and drop between boards.

Seamlessly Distribute Content

Whether your audiences are internal or external, publish your approved content directly from IntelligenceBank with internal links, or via public links on our content delivery network (CDN). Alternatively, enable your team members or stakeholders to login and self serve the files they need.

The benefit: Time saved on the basics.

Calculate ROI on Campaigns and Assets

At the end of a campaign, automatically calculate the ROI of each campaign by entering the actuals versus budgets and run reports on all campaigns by division or geographies on a regular basis to see what works, and where there are budget overages and savings.

The benefit: Preloaded templates that sit right along side your campaign – hours of your life back!

When choosing Marketing PM Software

• Get a solution that is easy for the whole team to use and covers campaign project management from go to whoa
• Make sure it’s comprehensive enough to seamlessly manage as much of the heavy lifting as possible, such as automation via Dynamic Creative Templates 
• Check it has a list of features for end to end campaign management
• Look for a vendor that will be able to customize your platform so it looks like your business and not theirs. It should also be able to jive with any systems you may have with ‘if this, then that’ workflows. At IntelligenceBank, we call them API handshakes, and we enable you to integrate processes with thousands of tools you use every day 
• Ensure it has top level privacy, security and permissions based features
• If budget is tight, choose a provider that has levels of service you can cherry pick and grow with over time
• Staff training and customer service is critical during onboarding. You’ll want to choose a provider with 24/7 service and the ability to pick up the phone
• Don’t be a guinea pig. Opt for a service that has been around for 10+ years, has big brands and a global presence
•  Compare providers, via the latest uber-respected Forrester WaveTM Report

The pressure involved with consistently keeping up with the pace and complexity of modern omnichannel marketing campaigns can be significant. Don’t fall behind and give yourself peace of mind by using the same system over 500 major brands use to streamline their operations and marketing project management.  Contact us for a demo.