When it comes to managing your inbound marketing efforts, there can be an overwhelming number of deadlines, to-do lists, team members to manage and fine details to pay close attention to. It can be difficult for any sane person to keep all of it straight. In fact, it’s enough to raise anyone’s blood pressure and keep you awake at night!
On top of that, people dread logging into their email first thing in the morning only to see hundreds of messages in their inbox. This study suggest 28 percent of a worker’s day is spent on email. Additionally, the clutter can be annoying, hard to manage and a huge time waster. So in the middle of all this—how do you find what you really need to be productive through all the chaos and noise?
Here at Kuno Creative, we have been using a project management tool to increase our productivity, improve our internal and client communication, organize our tasks to be more effective and bring more peace and unity to our workplace. While Basecamp has been our go-to program, there are many excellent project management tools available to make everyone’s job a whole lot easier.
When used consistently across the company, there are many benefits of a marketing project management software when it comes to your marketing efforts (and your sanity). You won't want to miss out on these!
Keeping your project organized is the key benefit in using a project management tool. Depending on how your company manages individual projects, it’s easy to see and control workloads and overall marketing calendar based on tasks being accomplished. The to-do lists, discussions, file storage and calendar features are easy to use and help you find exactly what you need when you need it.
No more searching through endless email folders and messages looking for the latest proof or string of brainstorming ideas. Because you are able to give anyone with an email address access to a project, a project management tool offers a great improvement in the communication channels between you, your team and your clients, creating a stable and reliable relationship between all parties involved. Everyone is able to see your thought process and, in turn, you are able to assign them tasks, such as reviewing proofs, approving concepts or providing feedback to ideas.
We truly believe the best successes involve complete transparency. A project management tool jumps the hurdles and brings down the walls separating “us from them” when it come to working together as a team to reach the same goals. We are completely open and upfront with our process, our team members and the status of our clients’ accounts. As their inbound marketing partner, clients have full access to our team of experts, and we encourage them to be as involved in the process as they wish to be.
Uploading files and sharing with the team has never been simpler, and the file storage feature is great for referring back to old proofs and previous ideas. The client project becomes a living document, easily updateable on the fly, accessible from anywhere and inclusive to all team members. Most project management tools integrate with mobile devices, allowing team members to check in anytime from anywhere.
Project management software opens a whole new dimension to group collaborations with discussions created to include new ideas, brainstorming sessions or strategy. Conversations on specific action items can be easily changed to include just relevant people on the string, and previous history on topics is saved to refer to and catch new team member up on the status of the project.
When a project is properly organized, every member knows what needs to be accomplished and by when, and the project expectations are clear to everyone. To-do items are assigned to just one team member at a time, eliminating any confusion over who is doing what so nothing falls through the cracks to be forever forgotten. There is a clear schedule of events to accomplish goals and keep a project moving along.
Clients are given the freedom to be as involved as they wish from everyday activity to once-a-week reviews. It is easy to see a quick overview of every action going on in their account and who is in charge of getting things done. Even if a team member misses a day, he or she is able to catch up on what was accomplished in their absence. Plus, having a snapshot of the account is easy to pass along to other members or the boss you report to.
Schedules and project calendars are easily changed when unexpected situations arise or additional time is needed to focus on a specific action. Clients are able to see the scheduling effects of any delayed decisions or what is holding up their project from moving forward. Because it is a scalable solution for small or large companies, it is a truly customized tool depending on what you are looking to get out of it.
If you are feeling overwhelmed and the intricacies of inbound marketing are weighing on you, you may want to consider turning to a project management tool to get organized and alleviate some of the pressure. Implementing a marketing project management software into our process has created a more harmonious marketing machine that has aided us in fine-tuning our own processes as we grow and evolve.
What are your experiences with a marketing project management software? Any tips or hints for making the most out of this organizational approach? We’d love to hear your feedback!
photo credit: a4gpa
