Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Project managers play a crucial role in digital marketing. They help to ensure that campaigns:
- Meet the brief with high quality output
- Are delivered and deployed on time
- Are delivered within the agreed budget
A wide range of project management frameworks and methodologies are available. These include PRINCE2, Scrum, Lean, Critical Chain Project Management, and more. Here, however, we’ll take a broad look at the value that project management and project managers bring to marketing campaigns.
What is a project?
Any initiative your team undertakes that has a defined deliverable and delivery date can be classed as a project. And any project can benefit from the efficiency and clarity that project management will bring.
Planning is a key starting point for any project. Unfortunately, project management can easily be overlooked when planning resources for a campaign. Unless it’s already baked into a company’s culture, it can seem unnecessary, especially for smaller projects. And for agencies it can be even harder to justify, as clients don’t like paying for resource that doesn’t seem to be crucial to getting the campaign delivered.
Benefits of project management
With that in mind, what benefits can project management by a dedicated project manager bring to a project? The benefits include:
- Fluid communication between stakeholders, marketers, clients, external suppliers
- On-hand status updates on where the project is at any time
- Resource planning, ahead of when it is needed rather than being called for reactively
- An accountable, central point of contact to manage the web of interdependencies in a project
- Client assurance and confidence
- Predictable deadlines
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Will Francis
Will Francis is a recognized authority in digital and social media, who has worked with some of the world’s most loved brands. He is the host and technical producer of the DMI podcast, Ahead of the Game and a lecturer and subject matter expert with the DMI. He appears in the media and at conferences whilst offering his own expert-led digital marketing courses where he shares his experience gained working within a social network, a global ad agency, and more recently his own digital agency.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Evaluate contemporary models and approaches for enabling digital strategy execution
- Appraise how digital strategy and marketing activities can support wider business strategy and drive growth
