6 key skills to be a great Marketing Project Manager
Marketing project managers are usually those people you see running around the office, knocking on doors, scheduling meetings and talking incessantly about deadlines.
You probably already know what designers and content managers do on the marketing team, but the role of a project manager may seem a little obscure.
What does a marketing project manager do?
The marketing project manager covers a very wide field of responsibilities, but to put it succinctly, he or she is the person responsible for making sure that "the magic happens". This is the person who implements large-scale projects, coordinates multiple teams and ensures that key stakeholders meet deadlines.
We've identified 6 key competencies that facilitate cross-team collaboration and help marketing project managers stand out from the crowd.
1. Learn to break down silos
As a marketing project manager, you're the link between marketing and virtually every other team in the company. That's why you'll avoid extra workload and communication misunderstandings if you can break down any silos that may exist within your organization and make sure your teams work together.
Sounds obvious. But how do you ensure that your teams communicate openly, share information and documents, and track project progress within a single space?
For this, many companies adopt a collaborative platform, or Work Organisation System - commonly known as Work OS - where all teams plan their projects and follow the same procedure. The aim is to ensure that everyone is on the same wavelength. Centralizing documents, communication, project tracking and updates makes it easier to share information, which in turn avoids certain tensions and ensures that everyone is up to date.
2. Plan long-term projects
Define clear objectives and KPIs based on the concept of "north-star metrics" - a metric that aims to assess the real value your product brings to the customer.ritable value your product brings to your users - can keep you focused and on target, especially for long-term projects. Once you know what your projects are going to look like and how you're going to measure their success, learning how to break them down into different phases and delegate responsibilities is a skill that can be acquired over time and cultivated.
monday.com, a Work OS that helps thousands of teams manage their projects, has templates for marketing project managers, e-commerce sites and real estate sites alike. It can also be useful to look for examples to see how others organize their projects and start building the project flow and timeline from there.
3. Don't just supervise, do the work yourself
While planning and coordination remain key skills for any self-respecting marketing project manager, it's also important to be comfortable with the idea of writing the article for the client.idea of writing the article for the upcoming event, meeting the product team, or selecting the right color for the conference booth. These will all be part of your day-to-day tasks.
4. Establish procedures
Once you've completed a few projects, you'll start to see trends emerging. You'll then be able to define the best techniques for getting buy-in or feedback from key stakeholders, for planning projects, and for collaborating better as a team. Take advantage of these observations to introduce techniques that can be reused again and again.
This will be all the more valuable when it comes to building a team, saving time and capitalizing on the knowledge acquired on a given project. These assets will also be indispensable when you start supervising remote projects. Without the possibility of being physically present in the office, the techniques used must be as clear and intelligible as possible, those responsible for each task must be designated beforehand, and information-sharing requirements must be transparent.
Many teams use monday.com to centralize information about the planning and management of their projects, and to do so transparently - whether when it comes to setting deadlines or knowing who is responsible for the various tasks inherent in the project.
5. Improve with data
When you start to move from one project to the next and need to review your approach, it's important to analyze the data at your disposal to understand what's working, what's slowing you down, and how you can improve. It's true, however, that collecting data on a process that involves several teams can be complicated. On the other hand, when you and your teams are using the same platform with real-time updates, it's easy to conduct a retroactive analysis, to collect data as you go along in order to better understand what's going on.It's easy to collect data as you go along, to understand instantly which parts of the project didn't go as planned, or which parts were left unfinished for too long.
6. Develop a problem-solving procedure
As with any major project, your plans won't always go according to plan. You're bound to come up against problems or unexpected situations. So it's a good idea to establish a clear course of action that you can evolve over time, and learn from again and again.
These six key skills can be of great use to any marketing project manager who is looking to bring his projects to a successful conclusion, who wants to introduce better coordination between teams, or who is still looking to improve. Get access to simple marketing models, essential market data, as well as tips and tricks for all things marketing!
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Article translated from French