Project management is the set of practices to mobilize people and resources towards the execution of a strategy with a defined deadline for delivery. It understands the path between planning, execution, measurement and adjustments. The project manager intends to lead the team on the best path to the desired result.
how to go from planning to the result with more impact and less waste? This is the objective of those who dedicate themselves to the project management in Digital marketing. Skill increasingly desired by HR, Marketing and Sales leaders in internal teams, digital agencies and technology-based companies
But we know that turning visitors into customers requires commitment from everyone involved. It’s from the professional project management the mission to unite people, resources, deadline and goal to overcome adversities towards the agreed goal
Here we explain how to implement good practices by combining the knowledge of the various methodologies of this discipline. Look!
What is project management?
Project management it is the set of practices to mobilize people and resources towards the execution of a strategy with a defined deadline for delivery. It understands the path between planning, execution, measurement and adjustments.
More than following the fulfillment of the checklist of tasks, the project manager in Digital Marketing intends to lead the team on the best path to the desired result.
In content strategy for example, is the person of project management the mission to accompany the process that goes from planning, setting the agenda, writing, optimizing for IF THEillustration, publication and dissemination of an article for blog.
Note that this position acts as a mediator between the various skills involved in producing a post, a performance deliverable that aims to increase the volume of organic visits to the site.
And that makes the digital project management differentiated from the knowledge produced by engineering professionals, for example. This was the pioneer area in the dissemination of good practices in project management considering the existence of physical products, such as a building, a garage and an avenue.
What changes in Digital Marketing is that we are talking about agile project management and based on the provision of creative services. This difference makes the market revisit the various methodologies in search of one more suited to the speed and innovation related to digital consumption behavior.
How important is project management?
Team overload, reworking of known demands, low productivity, misalignment of customer expectations, delivery delays… These are some of the most common problems in Digital Marketing teams with difficulties in their operation.
Only then can we understand the importance of project management and its relationship with the profitability of service provision. Well, it is worth remembering that the biggest cost of a Digital Marketing operation is in the people.
The more rework, the more hours of the team dedicated to the same demand. This makes the cost of delivery more expensive, the lower the profitability of the company they work for. That is why it is so important to understand better about digital marketing team building.
In digital agencies, in particular, the profit margin is already tight. And in times of greater competition for talent to work in Performance Digital Marketing, neglecting the digital project management it is also to assume a share of responsibility with the disengagement of the team, turnover and high costs with the recruitment and selection process to replace the voluntary departure of talents.
What is the project life cycle?
If we understand the project as a set of temporary efforts, the life cycle will comprise all the steps that guide the team from planning to demand delivery.
Planning, execution, measurement and analysis/insights are the most common phases in a digital marketing delivery. For each type of project (site, post, rich material, video, event, live) there will be characteristic sub-phases.
Check out the lifecycle of this post, for example:
- Planning
- Definition of the objective
- Definition of success criteria
- Search of key words
- Definition of agenda and subtopics
- Definition of those responsible and delivery deadline
- Execution
- Search with references in project management
- Content Production in Google Docs
- Review of content and SEO best practices
- Publication in WordPress
- Disclosure respecting existing playbook
- measurement
- Monitoring of performance indicators (visits, organic positioning, linking, lead generation from the article)
- Analysis/Insights
- Definition of improvements for upcoming related articles and post optimization opportunity
The analysis and insights stage opens the way for the creation of another project. The optimization of this article with new term.
What are the main project management methodologies?
Waterfall or Cascade, Project Model Canvas, Lean, scrum, Kanban and telling. There are several project management methodologies in use. Here we will highlight the most applied in internal teams, digital agencies and hybrid Digital Marketing teams that we know.
In practice, what is worth noting is that each team adapts its methodology considering the way in which the service is contracted.
digital producers
The production companies are partners with internal teams and agencies in the execution of demands that the contracting team cannot make possible due to deadlines or skills. This is the case for website and application producers. In this case, the commitment to the result in sales it’s lower.
The focus is on the balance between scope, quality and deadline. And then the Scrum methodology is usually more present because it is dedicated to the execution of an agile delivery by a pre-defined deadline/sprint.
Digital Marketing Agencies
In digital agencies there is a combo of methodologies in use. The best practices are seen in teams that use practices based on agile management, brought by software developers and adapted for the provision of Digital Marketing services, in what we now know as Agile Marketing.
Combining Kanban, Scrum and Lean, agile methods understand that the search for productivity and success involves dividing the team into a multidisciplinary and self-organized group to meet the same interest (same client, same project, same industry or same area of knowledge / service).
With deadlines, roles and objectives aligned, the group is able to act in a less bureaucratic way towards what is success for the common client. Excess documentation is removed and the practice of fail fast and learn fast is encouraged.
Here the evolution is monitored more closely and the client gains more visibility about the final product, being even invited to be part of the team in many configurations.
Internal Digital Marketing Teams
Good agile management practices are already seen in most successful internal teams. Closer to the commercial and administrative team, this configuration is less concerned with project scope and hours measurement.
The focus is on balancing the various interests of internal customers and, in some cases, outsourcing contracts. Not infrequently, they live in a waterfall/cascade mix for more traditional areas of the Marketing and agile management for those dedicated to lead generation.
What does a project manager do?
As you can see, a project manager has a strategic position in Digital Marketing teams. There are those who recommend hiring them as soon as an agency is founded or creating an internal team to build and improve the workflow as the area grows.
When defining roles and responsibilities, leadership needs to connect the skills expected for the role. This is because it is common for coordinators to accumulate the function of developing people and managing projects.
They arrive at the role after success as experts in the execution and development of behavioral skills related to empathic communication, self-responsibility, systemic vision, problem solving and time management.
In other teams, the project leader does not take responsibility for developing people and lives up to what we know as a Y career. In this case, the project specialist mobilizes the team to fulfill the agreed life cycle. But it is the leadership of people who handles the promotions, feedback on performance and culture alignment and disconnection.
Do you want to understand how you are management maturity of your Digital Marketing team? Check out the quiz we prepared to evaluate the execution of good practices applied in performance-based teams.
