20+ Project Management Tips for Marketers

If you are working on a product launch, involve multiple stakeholders to help you nail your product positioning and messaging. These stakeholders can be both internal and external.

While I prepare the marketing materials, I assign very specific tasks to each person.

For example, I might ask a data engineer to check a selling point that is intended to make other data engineers interested in our product.

Then I could ask another product marketer to check a specific way in which this selling point is phrased to make sure it sounds clear.

This way, you will get your work checked by multiple experts, and it will be clear to them how exactly they could help you.

Have a central location in everything view that has all of your tasks that are due for the week in one board view so that the entire team is working towards the same objectives that are due or scheduled to be started/worked on during that period.

Using sprints (1 or 2 weeks) is ideal for this so that your team can easily find their tasks and aren’t super overwhelmed, but can easily find all of the tasks that they are assigned across all projects, instead of going into each project and having to hunt them down individually.

For any marketing project, if you want it to be successful, then it’s important to have clearly defined goals.

Determining the purpose of your project is vital in measuring the project’s success.

But the biggest benefit of defining your project goals is that you give your team a target for their creative thinking.

If you are managing a team, the best thing you can do for the success of the project is to get out of their way.

Integrate your clients in your work by using your free guest slots!

Clear communications should be a priority for every agency since the progression of your work is dependent on the client’s approval.

Instead of sending 20 back and forth emails and losing track of what each message was about, you and your clients can keep track of the project’s progress and all previous communications in a centralized location.

Your clients can leave comments, request edits directly on documents, move statuses, see dashboards, and more!

The single biggest “hack” for our marketing productivity has been batching work and protecting that time on the calendar for the specific work purpose.

We grew our first agency from 600 visitors/month to 15K in 8 months through our content marketing “batch days.”

Each Wednesday morning, we had time blocked for content writing and promotion. We’d start with our highest priority tasks from the backlog and get as far as we could in 2 hours. It started small, but the compound effects changed our entire business.

Today, we apply the same principle both internally and when helping agencies streamline their processes in ClickUp.

Start small with your batch work blocks, make sure you have clarity on what to work on before you begin, and then adjust your blocks as needed!

For any marketing team, it is crucial to have a clear communication flow.

It doesn’t matter if you work with super-advanced tools or a ‘simple’ Excel sheets – every team member needs to be aware of the ownership, responsibility, and contribution to the projects. In marketing, you never walk alone so the task distribution must be clear!

In my team, we adopted some agile methodology elements – check-in and check-out meetings, quick updates, weekly sprints, and monthly goals. This helps us respond quickly to changes and collaborate on a daily basis even when working remotely.

Are the tools important? Of course! But not for the sake of having them. They need to meet your needs and help you, not hinder you.

The best digital project managers know how the sausage is made.

If you weren’t a designer, developer, strategist, copywriter, etc., in your previous position, my biggest piece of advice is to learn how those people do their jobs. Talk to them, read blogs/ebooks, or subscribe to podcasts about that field—even sit in on their meetings.

Knowing this background information will help you to infinitely understand how to project manage them as individuals better, how to manage those types of projects, and in turn, help you grow into a more well-rounded professional.

Get a solid project management system and use it wisely.

Create a system for handling your projects and templates inside the project management platform so you can easily create new ready-to-go projects.

Have your goals clear, and understand which task actually requires your time and which ones can be delegated or postponed based on your goals.

I’ve seen that the best-managed projects have clear, detailed, well-defined goals, and someone who always has a bird’s eye view of those goals. In marketing, the small details often make or break a campaign, and therefore people who are executing don’t often have the chance to pause, stand back and see if they’re still moving towards the original goal of the project. In such a scenario, one meeting per day or week to check if we’re on track helps reset everyone.

Second, you need clear owners for each task, activity, and project. Even if it is a group task, like say a set of blog posts on a particular topic written by multiple members of the team, there’s one owner. This ensures there’s accountability and nothing drops off the radar.

When it comes to planning your project, get your whole team involved.

Your project is likely to run across departments and needs a fair bit of collaboration, so that should start at the planning stages. This will allow everyone to have input on the timeframe for delivery, the order that tasks need to be completed in, and what the roadblocks are likely to be.

Getting your team involved early allows you to be realistic with your planning, so you’re not left over-promising and under-delivering.

It will also ensure everything runs smoothly as everyone knows what’s happening and how they need to work together.

The best tip I ever got about managing marketing projects was to never let your feedback be the bottleneck that’s preventing a project from moving forward.

When I’m overseeing a marketing project, I’m usually only responsible for setting the strategy and then overseeing our in-house marketing team and contractors that are actually doing “the work.”That means I’m constantly getting pinged for my thoughts on this design or that article or those landing pages.

Giving thoughtful feedback doesn’t take a lot of time, but it is something they need me to do (i.e., I can’t delegate it).

That means that if I ever dawdle on giving feedback — which is usually some version of “looks great, please make this small change and keep on going” — then I’m holding up a project (sometimes for days) because I didn’t get around to spending the 15 minutes it takes to look at something.

If you add that up over the life of a project, you can end up delaying the ship date by a week or two just from a few instances of waiting on providing quick feedback.

For that reason, I try never to let feedback requests sit for longer than a day.

Marketing projects often require so many different pieces that it’s difficult to stay focused on the ultimate goal.

That’s why we start every new project at Userback with a simple and yet powerful question – What does success look like?

By answering this one question, we’re able to align our team, identify the tracking that we need, and ensure all the different pieces keep moving the project forward to achieve our ultimate goal.

At Marker.io, we work product first, so we write extensive specs for each new feature we build.

We approach our content creation in the same way!

Before we write a single line of content, we fill out a detailed spec template: what is the pain point, who is the audience, what is the content type and format?

We also ask ourselves: are we creating this content piece for SEO, for virality, for sales enablement, or for brand building? We find that this method allows us to produce high-quality content every single time.

Review your workflows every month, and adjust the project management system accordingly.

Remember that the processes you have in place are supposed to help you move faster, not slow you down.

In a high-speed work environment, projects and team dynamics evolve fast.

The procedures that made sense just a few weeks ago might quickly get outdated. And when they do, they’re going to inevitably frustrate your teammates and reduce work’s overall efficiency (and the satisfaction it brings).

The start of new projects can be exhilarating or daunting.

If you’re among those, who easily get overwhelmed by New Big Projects, then I’d recommend getting started with a timeline.

Usually, there is a deadline for projects, so laying out the timeline for execution helps make the project more manageable and at the same time inspire for action (when you realize it’s best to get going sooner rather than later), not to mention help in delivering the project well on time.

ClickUp is an awesome tool for managing all your clients in one place.

As someone needing oversight on the business, especially on big-ticket projects, one useful tip is to use ‘Tags’ and ‘Timeline’ view across the ‘Everything’ in Spaces.

Our team is instructed to ‘Tag’ projects such as a new website, as ‘Projectdev.’ We then have a timeline view in ‘Everything’ that displays all projects with this Tag ‘Projectdev.’

This provides incredible oversight allowing me to stand back and assess start dates, end dates, and the pipeline across the ENTIRE BUSINESS and all clients -all in one streamlined view!

Try your best to unite all of your project management efforts.

When there are multiple apps that you use for project management and collaboration, a team member can have a hard time catching up with all of them.

Instead, find a project management platform that solves all your problems at once, such as ClickUp (especially recommended), Asana, or Notion; and turn your project into a living organism in that platform so your teammates can direct their focus on a single platform.

It sucks to say this, but just because a project is a top priority for you as a marketer doesn’t mean it’s important for others involved in your project.

Your subject matter experts may be literally rolling their eyes at the thought of spending their time giving you input or feedback.

So your #1 job is to get people HYPED.

Grab them by the collar and make them see the big picture: more traffic, more leads, more growth for the company.

Make them feel like awesome superheroes and great overall people for helping you.

You can do that by regularly updating ClickUp tasks, celebrating every little bit of progress, and reminding everyone of the plan and their role in it.

ClickUp for Content Management is a game-changer.

We’re able to create task templates for all of our landing pages, easily identify bottlenecks with our Board view status tracker, and know what’s coming next using tags and priorities.

Blog reviews are streamlined using automation, and email flows can be visualized on Mind Maps.

The customization is truly what makes ClickUp such a powerful tool for marketing teams.

Don’t underestimate the value of recurring tasks.

Each day in the life of a marketer is unique. Priorities change rapidly, and we often need to pivot at a moment’s notice.

However, there are plenty of habitual responsibilities that are essential in our roles. We monitor data, perform audits, review competitors, etc. Often these simple yet important tasks slip between the cracks.

Create a system of accountability for your recurring day-to-day tasks. It saves a little space in your brain to focus more on the unpredictable work ahead.

Have a clearly defined project goal and understanding of scope before diving into execution.

With a thorough outline detailing the project timeline, objectives, and strategy, you’ll be able to maximize efficiency in the use of company time and resources.

Bring any blockers to light from the start, create scalable solutions and keep your team aligned!

As marketers, we’re always juggling many different types of content tasks each day.

To laser my focus on what needs my attention, I use a combination of Home and the Task Tray.

I start at Home, find which tasks I need to work on for the day, and then tab them to Task Tray. I’ll even drag them in a sequence, so I know which order to work on what.

Not only does it keep me focused on what I need to do, but it’s also super satisfying to un-tray tasks as I complete them throughout the day!

My #1 Project Management tip for Marketers is to never underestimate the power of organization!

Whether you’re using a Post-it note, project management platform like ClickUp, or good old Excel spreadsheets, keeping your tasks organized is the best way to stay on top of projects and meet your deadlines.