Marketing Project Management

A while back I had the opportunity to attend the Design Management Institute's seminar on Creating The Perfect Design Brief. It was an interesting event. Based upon attendance, it was also a topic that was top-of-mind to a lot of marketing executives at large companies. Although the goal of the seminar was focused on creating a design brief, the meat of the discussion involved how designers can work more effectively with business owners. What I found interesting (although not completely surprising) was the amount of whining in the room. No need to name names, but major complaints fell in to statements such as:

- The business folks have no idea how many projects we are trying to manage.
- Why are business people giving us feedback on design? They don't know anything about design.
- The deadlines we are given are ridiculous.
- Why is the room so cold?

As a provider of marketing project management software, I hear these complaints on a daily basis from prospective clients. And, I'll admit that these gripes are usually legitimate. However, I also get the sense that some of us in marketing could benefit from observing other areas of the corporation for a while. Things could be worse. Here are a few examples:

- Marketing departments always have lots of open projects that were due yesterday. Although lots of "quick turn" projects drive us crazy, there are some benefits. If your client can change his/her mind 5 times during a 5 day project, you should be glad you don't work in the IT department. Most IT projects last over 6 months. Some projects last more than two years. How many times can a client change his mind over a 6 month period? We may not like the fact that the business owner wants to change the color of the email banner, but how much work is really involved to make the change if the entire project is only 5 days long? On the flip side, IT folks must often throw away months of code if the business requirements change. I'll take shorter projects over longer projects any day.

- We don't like it when the client gives feedback on our designs, but think about the poor folks in Finance. They get feedback like "I'd prefer to recognize the revenue this month." The finance team may not like the feedback, but they also have to deal with the conflicts imposed by well defined accounting policies. These conflicts often lead to long/painful discussions where the finance team is forced to reject the client's request. Because of the strict policies, the finance folks often have unhappy clients and there is nothing (legally) that the they can do to make their customer happy.

- Tight deadlines are painful, but at least we often have clear marketing events that dictate an absolute end date for a project. After all, the big Thanksgiving Day campaign is going to be over by December whether it went well or not. However, the sales team may work for months to close a deal and they often have no deadline that is forcing the client to make a decision. I know I've personally waited over a year for a client to make up his/her mind about purchasing RoboHead. Tight deadlines are no fun, but they are usually better than no deadline at all.

So, cheer up marketers. It could be worse! How's that for motivation?

Posted by cmoody at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Seth Godin always has interesting (and sometimes controversial) things to say about marketing. When it comes to marketing project management, Seth wrote on his blog that marketing projects are:

"...almost always vague.
They almost always involve people who aren't your direct reports.
And they almost always use people who have other stuff on their plate."

I completely agree that these are some valid reasons why marketers are struggling, but I also think there are plenty of other challenges. I would add to the list that:

- Marketing projects involve visual/subjective deliverables. Ever heard the feedback "I don't like the way it looks"?
- Most projects have very short cycle times
- Marketing projects require lots of different approvals including approvals from people that often don't know anything about marketing
- Projects come in groups of 10 to 10,000. I've never heard of a marketing department working on just one open project.
- Many marketers lack basic project management skills (they're marketers not project managers)

No wonder MPM is a pain. Should we all just pack it in and take the next couple of weeks off? I for one have some yard work that needs to get done.

Well, before you tell your boss that you'll see him/her next month, I would offer up the following insight...

The above items are all just really good excuses to be lazy when it comes to managing your marketing projects. However, if you add some discipline to your projects, these are obstacles that can be overcome. Here are three basic things to keep in mind:

1) If you don't take the time to gather proper requirements, your project will be harder to manage (btw...this is basically Seth's recommendation, but he is much hipper than I am so it sounds cooler when he says it).

2) You need an effective method for communicating to your extended team (direct team members plus customers, partners, etc.). A lot of people try to use email. I don't recommend it.

3) You need a way to capture best practices so that you won't reinvent the wheel the next time you do a similar project.

On a future post, I think I'll write about why marketing projects are easier to manage than other project types. That should make us all feel a little better. Ok, back to my yard work.

Posted by cmoody at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

What makes marketing project management software different from regular project management software? In the case of many vendors, there isn't much difference. However, well designed specialty software tools for managing marketing projects have the following common attributes:

- Visual deliverables. Marketing projects revolve around items that the buyer will eventually see. Thus, the heart of a good tool is the ability to view and provide feedback on visual assets.
- Low overhead. Marketers manage lots of projects all the time. It has to be fast and simple to establish new projects and easy to manage multiple projects at the same time.
- Best Practices. Some marketing teams have best practices and some don't. A good tool allows a team to capture and refine best practices over time. As Leigh Duncan points out "Marketing credibility is dependent on skills and proficiency, organization and clearly defined process". But, marketing processes are never steady state so you need a way to implement changes as your processes evolve.

In addition to the above, if you can find a solution that is easy to learn and fast to implement, you've got yourself a winner.

Posted by cmoody at 02:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)