A launch, a trade fair, a brand refresh: Each is a multi-person, multi-step project with an end date
A significant part of marketing’s work consists not of ongoing activities but of projects with a beginning and an end. A new product launch, participation in a trade fair, a website redesign, a brand identity change,
catalog preparation, a dealer meeting, market research, or entry into a new market; each involves dozens of tasks, many internal and external participants, agencies and suppliers, a budget, and interdependent delivery dates.
Marketing project management is taking these jobs beyond the “campaign” or “event” record and planning them as real projects, defining their resources and budget, distributing tasks to owners,
tracking progress, and evaluating the outcome. The marketing calendar shows when projects will happen; project management shows how that date will be reached.
In most companies, marketing projects are run through e-mail, messaging groups, and personal to-do lists. Who is responsible for which job, which task depends on which, why the agency’s delivery was late, how much of the budget has been spent;
the answers to these questions are on the computer of the person running the project. That a delayed task will also push back the tasks that depend on it is noticed only at the last moment; as launch day approaches, the workload piles up on a single person.
When the project ends, how long it took, what it cost, and what went well or badly are not recorded; the next launch is planned from scratch, with the same mistakes. Running marketing projects in a tool separate from the company’s other projects
also severs the connection with product development, production, and sales.
In Minerva, marketing projects are a structure in which the project management module works together with the marketing plan and campaign structure. Every marketing project is defined with its work breakdown structure, tasks and subtasks, owners,
internal and external participants, dependencies, milestones, and start and end dates, and is linked to the related campaign, event, brand, and product. Agency and supplier deliveries are tracked through the business partner record;
the project budget is tied to budget management, and expenses flow directly into the project from purchasing and invoice records. Tasks are reflected in users’ personal task lists, delays become visible through alerts and notifications,
and meeting notes, documents, and correspondence are attached to the project record. Because projects such as a product launch sit in the same system as product management and the production plan, the alignment between the product’s readiness date and the marketing calendar is seen automatically.
When the project closes, its record of duration, cost, and outcome becomes the template and benchmark for the next project.
Manage your marketing projects not through e-mail chains, but as real projects with defined tasks, owners, budgets, and dependencies; let every launch learn from the one before.