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| Why Marketing is the new Project Management |
Ever since I joined the great Indian IT workforce, I was always in awe of Project Management (PM) function. They were travelling, on-calls, sweating, drinking umpteen coffees, understanding what Townhall meetings actually meant. (I mean who understood Townhall meetings!!) Ever since I finished my management degree, I have been working in Marketing (various sectors but Marketing as a field). Some were success, some were lessons, some abject failures and some I do not want to remember.
The other day while I was talking to a mentor, she mentioned that we have to be successful in our projects. That struck me a bit odd. Internally I was like, we are marketers - we launch campaigns, we write messaging, we figure out how to target our buyers, we do everything that is not project! That's for engineering! Externally, I nodded and opened Google.
Just to ensure that Google did not bias my results - I opened in incognito (I know it's not much, but at-least it does not use my previous searches to bias this query) This is what people have talked about Project Marketing and Marketing. I have made sure results contained marketing and project management. 209 Mn+ results. Mind-blow? Not really - when an egg can become famous on Insta, anything is possible - but I digress.
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I wanted to read more. So I went to the PMI website (PMI = All information on Project Management) and read up articles with marketing. This blog stood out for me - Project Management in Marketing. (While written in 2000, it's still a good read for Product Marketing folks)While there is a lot of literature, I am convinced that we are now entering the age where Marketing is now entering an age where project management in marketing is essential. This is because:
- Marketers now have a seat at the revenue table – we are now not only asked for qualitative results, we need to tie up back activities to companies ROI. No fancy metrics, no fluffy jargons - marketing now needs to deliver on hard numbers. And to flow this up and down the chain of command, tasks are broken by projects which have numbers assigned to them
- Organisation's need a single person whom it can go to for data on a project. It’s not that we need a designated Project Management Zombie, but having a lead on a team of marketers helps keep everyone happy.
- While the organisation needs a single point of contacts, in the end it's all about the team. The team needs to be managed and nurtured to accomplish the project. Want to launch a campaign to upgrade your free customers? You will need email, retargeting, social, customer success, CRO and even sales to win it. Adopting a project management approach gives the team a structure/framework to work with
- We have moved from having Marketing done by agency to having big Marketing teams in-house that are now as global as the other departments. It's not uncommon to have teams based out of multiple geographies contributing to the success and daily grind of Marketing. Managing multiple campaigns can lead campaigns going awry and wrong. Tools/processes used by Project Managers help immensely to deliver right first time
I am going to approach all my tasks from a Project Management perspective - how about you? Let me know!
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The Author: Siddharth Sharma
About:
Seasoned marketing leader with 12+ years of experience helping organisations achieve results at scale from marketing. I have worked across B2C & Enterprise SaaS to deliver on brand & growth. My roles have to been primarily build, lead and scale marketing teams across demand generation, digital marketing, content marketing, affiliate, partnership, product marketing, inside sales, offline branding and pr.
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