Digital marketing project management involves overseeing various tasks, resources, and timelines to ensure the successful completion of projects. As digital marketing has become an essential aspect of any business, it's crucial for companies to have effective project management. It's ensuring businesses stay competitive and reach their target audience.
In The Digital Marketing Playbook: The Definitive Guide to Creating Strategic, Targeted, and Measurable Online Campaigns, Ian Dodson said there is much information for digital marketing. Finding where to start is a challenge. Even starting, you will be confused about how to proceed without wasting effort and budget.
With so much at stake, it's easy to see how poor organisational execution can be. So how do you get it right?
What is Digital Marketing Project Management?
Digital marketing project management provides team structure and projects through workflows and processes. A project manager will focus on delivering successful campaign projects while digital marketers finalise the marketing task list. It keeps everything under control, from planning to execution and evaluation.
Some of the duties involved in digital marketing project management, such as:
- Track and document the status of digital marketing projects
- Organise and assign project responsibilities
- Set, create and monitor budgets for campaigns
- Set up workflows to stay on the project timeline
- Generate campaign and metric analysis reports
While these duties will overlap with general marketing project management, digital marketing focuses on digital projects such as social media or company websites.
Nowadays, the role of project management in digital marketing is essential. Success growth may look like more closed deals, new followers on social media or new leads. However, without these roles, the company may lose opportunities to grow.
Various areas of Digital Marketing Project Management
Now let's get into the areas where digital marketing project managers work. You will find SEO, Content and Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Affiliate.
1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
“Don't claim to have a business if it's not on Google.” Have you heard about it before? SEO will make the company's website more “online”. They make the company's website rank up and be on the first page of Google.
Zero Limit Web shows that the first five results on google's first page for a given search account for 67.6% of all clicks. The more your audience visits, the greater your chance of converting prospects into customers.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is dedicated to managing all types of content ideas and projects. That includes blog content, videos, infographics, or promotional content. They ensure that businesses should publish content on time.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 67% of marketers report that content marketing delivers a 7% increase in leads to their brands. Therefore companies need to dedicate time and money to this area.
3. Email Marketing
You may be familiar with promotional emails or spam suddenly coming to your mailbox. According to HubSpot's Not Another State of Marketing, 77% of late marketers have seen an increase in email engagement. Another benefit of this strategy is a brand's customer data. Even so, the data still needs to be analysed to fit their target audiences.
4. Social Media Marketing
Almost everyone has social media, so companies should also take advantage of it. Data from Sprout Social revealed that 98% of consumers plan to buy at least one product through social shopping. A journal in the National Library of Medicine shows that the presence of a live streamer affects impulse online buying.
Social media marketing needs strategies and creativity. That is why companies must have social media managers as part of their teams. Ensuring companies’ content is well crafted and managing companies’ social media accounts are two main tasks of social media managers.
5. Affiliate Marketing
On TikTok, you must be familiar with affiliate marketing. It's a marketing strategy to work with influencers by promoting their products. Influencers will get a commission from selling the product. Brands get sales, and influencers will get a small kickback. It's a win-win.
How to manage projects in Digital Marketing
Companies need a smooth process to start. Here are tips that you can apply to start project management in digital marketing:
1. Define and set clear goals
The first step is to set clear objectives for the project management process. Without them, the project would wander with a myriad of problems.
Important points to note while setting goals are specific and measurable. For example, write goals using numbers. It's okay to write “reaching a new sales target”, but it would be better if “sales target of product A increases to 20% in March”. The last sentence has the measurement so that you have a clear target for what to achieve.
Besides, ensuring that the entire team understands this objective is essential. That way, you'll understand that everyone is working towards achieving the same thing.
2. Create a realistic timeline and plan accordingly
In addition to clear goals, you also need to set a timeline. We all know that time is a finite entity. More and more activities involve the digital market, making it time sensitive.
Here are some tips that will help from the start:
- Outline all projects and tasks in the team. Analyse in detail which tasks depend on the others. After that, create an essential work breakdown structure.
- Use a tracker to track progress. The calendar on the tracker will make it easier to see the closest deadlines.
3. Assess resources and prepare for roadblocks
The project manager must be sure of the project's resources, roadblocks, and finances. Before going to war with a tight campaign or timeline, this step is essential. Communicating with team members with similar projects is the best way to do this. Ask a few things, such as:
- Find out what worked and didn't work in the last project.
- Estimated time for each step of the project.
- What obstacles are there in the project, and how to overcome them?
4. Optimise workflows with project management software
Optimising workflows is the most significant component of digital marketing project management. The good news is that you can do it with project management software. It can help teams become more agile internally as well as working with clients.
5. Communicate with your project team
Communication is key to any ongoing project. Here are some tips for communicating with the team:
- Identify the role you want to fulfil. For example, content writers, social media admins or copywriters.
- Assign different responsibilities to each role and ensure the team understands their roles.
Conclusion
In conclusion, digital marketing project management is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy. By understanding the basics of project management, you can effectively allocate resources, prioritise tasks, and measure the impact of your marketing efforts.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out, it's never too late to learn the fundamentals of digital marketing project management. So, take what you've learned from this article and start applying it to your own projects today. By following these 5 principles, you will be well on your way to managing effective and impactful digital marketing projects.
