Marketing project management software. There are millions out there. The problem isn’t the lack of it. The problem is – there are too many of it. How do you find one that suits all your needs and saves your time? Is there one miracle software that can address all your company requirements, fit your budget and save your time?
A marketing project management software should be able to cater to your business’s specific needs. A generic one can manage all your tasks and overall resources. However, it cannot solve strange problems that sometimes arise in niche departments. As a result, firms using this generic software and tools end up in a mess of backlogged blog posts and blotchy product analysis.
This is a problem most small and medium businesses are facing today. Small projects have fewer resources. However, they are also the ones with the biggest requirements. Therefore, their software needs to be flexible and accessible. They mostly demand detailed tracking and cross-functional coordination. Any marketing project should include diversity. Therefore, it’s hard to find software or a tool that fits the glass sandal.
If you want to save time and handle all project requirements with finesse, our friends at Ignitur.com recommends that you should choose marketing project management software that has the following qualities:
1. Collaboration
Your software needs to include data from other teams. A perfect project for the commercialization department includes some people coming together from different departments. Your software of choice should be able to reflect this external marketing collaboration with ease. Most importantly though, your software should be free. This will ensure collaboration with agencies, journalists, and customers. You should be able to share projects with them online to get recent reviews. Keep a marketing calendar and keep it visible for updates from sales reps as well. Keep publishing your marketing team plans and results from your executive team.
2. Reusability
Make sure the templates you are using right now, are still usable for your last projects. Designing the perfect marketing project management software will take you a considerable amount of time. When you move on to your next project, you can only use the template from this one. This way, you will not only be saving a lot of resources, but you will also be saving a lot of valuable time.
Did you know? Using a reusable template for your marketing project can help you save up to 20 hours per month. These include online brochure publications, event announcements, creating online ads and managing a trade show. Most big shots already have their templates ready to roll even before the event reports.
Study the past projects in your field. Inculcate the ability to clone the projects and then you can log inaccurate information from each project type. These templates serve as a plinth for your work. You can later build on these models to include signature elements including attendee details and key show timelines.
3. Customizability
What is perfect marketing project management software without customization options? Creative services and content marketing are not without their quirks and qualms. You simply cannot pick the random software labeled “Marketing Project Management” and expect to get brilliant results.
These are your individual projects that lead to a wholesome marketing project. Now, you can either micro-manage, or you can get a customized managing software that will take care of all the kinks in the production line. The sound management software will address all the bottlenecks and balance out all the resources available. You should be able to define the individual steps and manage the workflow. You might understand this better if we draw the analogy of a sales funnel. You are probably used to dividing a customer journey into different stages starting from initial interaction through to the purchase. Your software should enable you to create different workflows for the different project stages.
4. Cross-functionality handoffs
A marketing project spans several departments and marketing functions. Therefore, any marketing project has several handoffs. Your software should be able to coordinate the entire process. It should facilitate all collaborations between the several marketing functions. Simply collaboration within a small functional, marketing team is not enough anymore.
A startup has several strata, and all of them are involved in the functional handoffs. It is understandable if people want to receive a premonition in the case of future project proposals, marketing pitches, and meetings. Your software should at least be able to facilitate the cross-platform, multi-functional handoffs. Your project should not reach stagnation only trying to get feedback from a marketing review team.
5. Reports and relations
No marketing journey is complete without deliverables. You need to choose a tool that enables your marketing team to create a comprehensive report. This means your tool will need to collect data from every team ever involved in the project. Therefore, we go back to the point of cross-functional handoffs.
Most of the general marketing tools and software programs focus a lot on inputs and not enough on outputs. You can change that with a customizable software. A multi-functional software will yield a more market-centric report with clear deliverables.
Once your report is right, you can use that as a cue to strengthen your existing relationships with customers, social media influencers, designers, producers, journalists and everyone else involved in the marketing process. Good marketing project management software should be able to provide complete for CRM-esque abilities to your marketing team members. The software should be able to restore the lost glory of PR-related positions, where generic software systems usually fall short.
While most of the available project management software’s are built from the POV of a single project or management team, you can get your software designed from scratch to handle your company requirements. Good software is required to transcend all the functional teams of a company to churn out complete reports.
Marketing reports are usually of interest for everyone involved in the project. This is rarely just one team or one department. The good marketing software should be able to include all the people from other departments as well, to coordinate a thorough report.