Let’s be honest. There is little quantifiable about marketing short of measuring click throughs that lead to purchases and coupons clipped. OK, maybe that’s being a little simplistic but it seems unusual to see marketing and project management meld together.
Yet one blog writer says it can be done and done meaningfully. Alex Pejak, writing at ProjectManage.com, puts forth this thought. “Marketing involves many unforeseen occurrences and uncertain activities, as any experienced marketing professional knows all too well. Therefore, the purpose of marketing project management isn’t to try and determine the indeterminable; rather, it’s to significantly increase the chance of success by predicting some things and managing the uncertainty of the rest,” she says.
That means project managers should become more involved in the marketing side of their companies. If for no other reason than to demonstrate the value of project management across different disciplines.
Pejak adds, “For example, marketing professionals using the ‘seat of the pants’ approach often find it’s a headache to keep up with assigning tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities. Their team’s priorities may seem to be a bit mixed up, with bottlenecks appearing in one or two places. Their projects simply don’t ‘flow’ smoothly. The solution to all this is effective project management.”
She puts forth this question, “What can project management do for your marketing?” Pejak suggests, “In essence, project management acts as an effective glue to hold the project together. A good project manager spends a great deal of time ensuring everyone in the team knows when things are due and what their responsibilities are. If things are going better than anticipated, or if something goes wrong, they step in to adapt the schedule in light of the progress (or delay) and avoid bottlenecks elsewhere.”
There’s another area of strength for project managers: analyzing data and metrics. “Metrics allow everyone to see where a project is and where it is going, and identify potential problems while there’s still time to fix them. This quantification aspect is often considered the most important part of effective project management, and so it’s vital to identify metrics for both overall progress and individual processes,” said Pejak, an economist interested in project management and marketing research.
Cheryl Connor, a contributor at Forbes.com, says, “Traditionally, marketing experts are not strong project managers. They are creative geniuses who produce their best ideas by themselves or in small collaborative teams.”
She then goes on to say, “Imagine the benefits organizations would gain if their marketing people were able to think and behave like traditional project managers. Metrics would soar. Timelines would shorten. Competitive advantages would increase as teams deliver newer and stronger campaigns and marketing initiatives with greater efficiency and ease.”
Connor adds, “What are the elements of effective project management that marketers should learn to adopt? In a nutshell, they include:
Project planning
Document and task management
Organized document storage
Project cost tracking
Return on investment analysis
Independent and collective task management”
Pejak adds that long-term, even if project managers don’t stay involved in marketing, there will be benefits. “After optimizing the project planning process, managing new projects becomes intuitive and very easy. The standard work plan becomes ingrained in everyone’s habits, productivity soars, and embarking on new projects stops feeling like an uphill battle,” she says.
Do your homework before pitching your participation in the marketing process. After all, few folks look on kindly to outside interference. Use your strong analytical skills and dazzle them with metrics. Marketing folks may be pegged as creative but a lot of their decisions are data driven.