6 key skills to be a great Marketing Project Manager

Marketing project managers are usually the people you see running around the office, knocking on doors, scheduling meetings and talking about deadlines.

You probably already know what designers and content managers do in the marketing team, but the role of a project manager may seem a little obscure.

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What does a marketing project manager do?

The marketing project manager covers a very wide field of responsibilities, but to put it briefly, this is the person who has to make sure that "the magic happens". This is the person responsible for implementing large-scale projects, coordinating several teams and ensuring that the key players meet their deadlines.

We have identified 6 key skills that are designed to facilitate collaboration between teams and enable marketing project managers to stand out from the crowd.

1. Learn to break down silos

As a marketing project manager, you're the link between marketing and virtually every other team in the company. That's why you'll avoid extra work and communication misunderstandings if you can break down the silos that may exist within your organisation and ensure that your teams work together.

Sounds obvious. But how do you ensure that your teams are communicating openly, sharing information and documents, and keeping track of project progress all in one place?

To do this, many companies adopt a collaborative platform, or a Work Organisation System - commonly known as Work OS - where all the teams plan their projects and follow the same procedure. The aim is to ensure that everyone is on the same wavelength. Centralising documents, communication, project tracking and updates makes it easier to share information, which in turn avoids certain tensions and ensures that everyone is up to date.

2. Planning long-term projects

Define clear objectives and KPIs based on the concept of "north-star metrics" - a metric that aims to assess the real value that your product brings to the customer.value that your product brings to your users - can help you stay focused and on target, especially for long-term projects. Once you know what your projects are going to look like and how you're going to measure their success, learning how to break them down into different phases and delegate responsibilities is an ability that can be acquired over time and cultivated.

monday.com, a Work OS that helps thousands of teams manage their projects, has templates for marketing project managers, e-commerce sites and real estate sites. It can also be useful to look for examples to see how others organise their projects and to start building the project flow and timeline from there.

3. Don't just supervise, do the work yourself

While planning and coordination remain key skills for any self-respecting marketing project manager, it's also about being comfortable with the idea of writing the article for the magazine.idea of writing the article for the upcoming event, meeting the product team, or selecting the right colour for the conference stand. These will all be part of your day-to-day tasks.

4. Establish procedures

Once you've completed a few projects, you'll start to see trends emerging. You'll then be able to define the best techniques for obtaining approval or feedback from key stakeholders, for planning projects and also for working better together as a team. Take advantage of these observations to introduce techniques that can be used again and again.

This will be all the more valuable when it comes to building a team, saving time and making the most of the knowledge acquired on a given project. These are also essential when you start supervising projects remotely. Without the possibility of being physically present in the office, the techniques used must be as clear and intelligible as possible, the people responsible for each task must be designated beforehand, and information-sharing requirements must be transparent.

Many teams use monday.com to centralise information about the planning and management of their projects, and to do so transparently - whether this involves setting deadlines or knowing who is responsible for the various tasks inherent in the project.

5. Improve with data

When you start to move from one project to another and need to review your approach, it's important to analyse the data available to you to understand what's working, what's slowing you down and how you can improve. It's true, however, that collecting data on a process that involves several teams can be complicated. On the other hand, when you and your teams are using the same platform with real-time updates, it's easy to carry out a retrospective analysis, to collect data as you go along so that you can make improvements.It's easy to collect data as you go along, to understand instantly which parts of the project didn't go as planned, or which parts were left undone for too long.

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6. Develop a procedure for resolving problems

As with any major project, your plans won't always go according to plan. You're bound to come up against problems or unexpected situations. So it's a good idea to establish a clear process that you can build on over time and learn from again and again.

These six key skills can be of great use to any marketing project manager who is looking to bring their projects to a successful conclusion, who wants to introduce better coordination between teams, or who is still looking to improve. Get access to simple marketing models, essential market data and tips and tricks for all things marketing!

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