The role of the Marketing Project Manager combines the skills of the Marketing Manager (or Marketing Director) with those of the Project Manager with the aim of managing strategic projects in the field of marketing and communication.
Project Management & Marketing
The role of the Project Manager is becoming increasingly important in many industries and has started to merge with other relevant roles within organisations. Marketing, above all, is a field of work that is very prone to influences and changes.
In this article we talked about how the Agile method of working can also be applied to Marketing, and the influences of Project Management on the matter are not lacking either.
The need to apply the principles of Project Management to Marketing has therefore given rise to the figure of Marketing Project Management, a role that is increasingly on the rise in many organisations.
The Responsibilities of the Marketing Project Manager
The Marketing Project Manager is a project manager specialised in the planning, management and execution of marketing campaign projects. This professional figure is useful in organisations of all types and sizes: from large structured companies to small communication agencies.
One of the main responsibilities of the Marketing Project Manager is to turn the client’s vision and strategy into reality by identifying all the tasks that need to be completed within a marketing campaign and assigning them strategically to team members.
The Marketing Project Manager plays a supervisory role and has to manage not only projects but also the resources needed to realise them, be it team members, budgets or materials.
The Tasks of the Marketing Project Manager
Collaborating with the Marketing Director
The collaboration between Marketing Project Manager and Marketing Director is a key factor in creating a successful marketing strategy. The Marketing Director (or Marketing Manager) takes care of the content and creative side of campaigns while it is the Marketing Project Manager’s job to organise and structure the activities to bring the strategy to fruition.
Supervising Content Production
This activity is carried out by the Marketing Project Manager in cooperation with writers, designers and creatives and is bound to the very structure of the company in which the Marketing Project Manager works. Some organisations have in-house creative departments while others rely on external suppliers. In the first case, it is the Marketing Project Manager’s task to Coordinate and Manage Resources in order to achieve the result required by the organisation, while in the second case the Marketing Project Manager has to search for freelance resources or maintain contact with the external supplier company.
Defining Project Budgets and Deadlines
It is also the task of the Marketing Project Manager to define the project budget in accordance with the company’s requirements and availability, and to set deadlines for the entire team and ensure that they are met.
Managing the Content Calendar
In the context of strategic marketing, the Content Calendar is a key element, which can determine the success or failure of a campaign. This is why the supervision of the Content Calendar falls within the remit of the Marketing Project Manager.
Competencies of a Marketing Project Manager
The skills required of a Marketing Project Manager are many and very varied.
Among the hard skills we find a combination of the competencies that tend to be required for the role of Marketing Manager and that of Project Manager. Some of the skills required are:
- Data analysis: ability to read and interpret data in order to devise effective strategies.
- Knowledge of tools: whether these tools relate to Marketing (social network scheduling, calendar scheduling,etc.) or Project Management (such as Trello, Slack or Microsoft Project)
- Planning and strategy: for data usage, campaign design and resource management.
- SEO: this knowledge is now required by all professionals involved in marketing.
- Strategic content creation: this skill is extremely necessary to work in the field of Marketing.
- Budget and resource management: one of the skills that unites the worlds of Marketing and Project Management is definitely budget and resource management.
- General culture skills: the world of communication is closely linked to entertainment and having an extremely developed general culture knowledge is certainly a competence that a successful Marketing Project Manager must possess.
The most important soft skills, on the other hand, include:
- Organisational capacity
- Prioritisation
- Decision-making
- Communication
Marketing Project Management Certifications
AgilePM: AgilePM is a project management method that consists of an innovative approach that combines the governance and rigour required to operate in project management with the agility and flexibility needed by organisations to adapt to continuous change.
Agile Change Agent: The Agile Change Agent course provides practical skills in the area of Agile and Change and is especially aimed at professionals involved in Agile or transformational change.
PRINCE2: PRINCE2® (PRojects IN Controlled Environments), is a project management method introduced in 1996 and now used in more than 150 countries, in both the public and private sectors. It has established itself as the most widely used project management method in the world. PRINCE2 offers professionals and organisations the essential information they need to successfully manage projects of all types and sizes.
If you are a Marketing Project Manager and would like to obtain certification, we offer AgilePM, Agile Change Agent and PRINCE2 training. Visit our website or contact us for any information!
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