MARKETING MATTERS
Marketing Project
Management 101
M
aking sure your marketing gets
done, at its root, is simply project
management. And good project
management can be broken into 4
main steps:
1. Outline the process.
2. Break it down to the smallest components.
3. Assign a due date to all of it.
4. Do the work.
Yes, the steps are front loaded. Over half
of project management happens before
you even begin working. Planning is key to
smooth project management. It’s not im-
prov— it’s a fully-rehearsed production.
Getting Started
To start, you should have a plan with a
list of your marketing activities for the year.
Another part of your plan is outlining your
deliverables, or all the things you’ll produce
throughout the year. Usually I start my proj-
ect management process there, treating each
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deliverable as a big picture starting point in
the planning journey.
One deliverable might be a website, bro-
chure or a trade show booth. All these de-
liverables have varying levels of complexity.
You’ll approach managing each project a little
differently. For my example I’m going to out-
line the process for managing a website. This
type of project is a pretty complex beast so it’s
a great example of something that requires
beaucoup project management.
Real Life Deliverable: Website
STEP 1: Outline the big picture.
First, you’ll need a process to go from con-
cepts to finished site. These are your big pic-
ture benchmarks.
Our web building process is never com-
pletely finished because the deliverable of
building a website is a moving target. While
the individual steps inside of our process con-
tinue to evolve the phases and benchmark of
the process have remained the same since we
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MONICA PITTS
started in 2005. Our big picture process looks
like this:
Phase 1: Planning
• Initial consultation
• Estimate
• Project kick off
• Initial designs
Phase 2: Develop
• Write content
• Build templates
• Page designs
• Programming
• Training
• Take live
Phase 3: Monitor & Improve
• Continuing updates
• Site monitoring and software updates
• Annual site review
STEP 2: Break it down to the smallest
components.
When we plan a website, we start with a
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