5 Best Project Management Software For Marketing Departments

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Are you a small-scale business marketer, managing and handling many tasks like content marketing, public relations, digital marketing, and advertising all at once?

If yes, you would agree that running a marketing campaign can be very turbulent without a systemic strategy.

In other words, you will be too devastated to concentrate on your business goals and overall marketing plan.

This is why it’s crucial as a marketer to start utilizing project management software—this project management software aids in delivering, collaborating, and planning out your marketing projects.

Projects software’s commonly used in industrial R&D, software development, and construction industries, among others.

However, many other marketing departments out there do not use this software; instead, they prefer to work with emails and spreadsheets.

This also works, but project management software provides you with project visibility and improved collaboration, as earlier said.

But here’s the thing about project management software, to get the most out of them, you must settle for the right software for your marketing desires.

And in this article, you will be exposed to the best project management software there is.

But before we get to that, here are some clarifications about project management software.

What Is Project Management Software Used For Exactly?

When it comes to handling or managing a marketing campaign, you can agree with me that it is complex.

In most cases, there are lots of variables, people, and resources involved.

Deliveries are meant to be made on time, and customers always want to be closely involved in every transaction.

To answer the question, project management software for marketing is essential in managing all the above-mentioned factors.

They are involved in activities like:

• Team collaboration
• Task management
• Time tracking
• Campaign planning
• Baseline management
• Client communication
• Workload management

Thus, if you have any issues handling any of these activities, you should consider using project management software.

What Are The Project Management Features Marketing Teams Need?

This is, however, based on the benefits a marketing team intends to get from using project marketing software.

Below are the significant features that come with using project management software.

• File Attachment: Sharing specifications, and designs among other documents, across to your stakeholders and team.
• Time Tracking: Time spent on campaign activities is invoiced to clients.
• Task Management: Manage workflow, assign tasks, and monitor campaign progress.
• Timelines: planning schedules satisfactorily by factoring in the team’s vacations and availability. There is a better overview of the team’s capacity and campaign in general.
• Boards: managing campaign iterations and ideas.
• Notifications and Reports: communicating the progress and important dates outside and within the team.
• Workload Management: helps avoid overwhelmed or underworked teams (managing the team’s capacity).

There are other essential features marketing teams need to consider.

They include:

• Budget: This should be put into consideration too. Most of these tools are priced per month while some are per user. So, it would be best if you considered the cost to cover both your clients and your entire team.
• Flexibility: if the tool is not flexible enough to allow your team to update and create information, then what’s the need?

Which Marketing Teams Need Project Software

Project management software is vital for all kinds and sizes of marketing teams.

This includes:

• Designers
• Advertising agencies
• Internal marketing teams
• Freelancers
• Brand management firms
• Marketing consultants

To most of the above-mentioned teams, project management software aids in managing, planning, and tracking campaign activities.

While for some, it aids in communicating and collaborating on work progress.

Why use Project Management Software for Marketing Departments?

It doesn’t matter if you work as a team or are the only marketer; with project management tools, your work is simplified.

Below are some of the reasons you need to start using project management software for marketing.

• Idea Capturing: This tool doesn’t just help you capture campaign ideas; you also get to organize and prioritize them with ease.
• Collaboration and Communication: This use of project management tools also makes campaign information available when needed. It also aids team partners in working on overlapping work together.
• Tracking of Time: Time used or spent during campaign activities is tracked with the help of project management software.
• Design Files and Documents: All specification documents and designs are easily accessible by team members are they are kept in one place using project management software.
• Project Planning: Aids in planning project timelines based on prior track records.
• Resource Allocation: Resources available are planned and allocated accordingly.
• Client Communication: It makes it very easy to communicate campaign progress as well as seek approval from clients.
• Tracking Campaign Progress: Project management software helps in tracking campaign progress, monitoring campaign tasks, and adjusting campaign schedules if need be.
• Great Picture View: It gives an excellent overview of the campaign project and its team capacity, thus avoiding burnout and being overwhelmed.

Every manager needs to be evaluated before purchasing, and the first step in evaluating a Project Management software is by reading the reviews from its users.

Evaluating these reviews helps small-business marketing managers know the pros and cons of each software from the viewpoint of other marketers.

This helps in shortlisting products on qualitative parameters like customer support, flexibility, and features.

Tip: Asana provides a flexible and intuitive interface for creating, assigning, and tracking tasks which can help marketing teams stay organized and on track, especially when juggling multiple campaigns or projects.

What makes good Project Management Software for Marketing Departments?

The following are the key features that a good project management software for marketing teams should have:

• Task management: Task management is crucial for marketing teams to improve workflow and daily operations. It aids in establishing a completely defined workflow that team members can adhere to, removing uncertainty over project duties. You can plan, organize, and complete activities on time with effective task management.
• Collaboration: Communication is crucial for a project to run smoothly. Marketing departments must continually communicate and collaborate on deliverables. Their job requires them to share files and give or receive approvals on photos, films, banners, and other types of creative deliverables.
• Budget Management: A business cannot be sustained over the long term with frequent budget overruns, nor is it desirable. A good marketing project management software gives you total budget visibility so you can monitor your spending in real-time and never stray from your plan.

Tip: monday.com allows marketing departments to customize their project boards, templates, and workflows to suit their specific needs.

How to choose the right Project Management Software for Marketing Departments

While most project management software designed for marketing have a lot in common, there are some special features you’ll need to get the most out of your system.

Collaboration is one of the fundamental project management elements that should be in a good software solution.

Every good project management software for marketing should have collaboration features like file sharing, message boards, task comments, and team chat.

Also, check for the Kanban workflow feature.

Kanban workflows are ideal for tracking marketing activities from concept to publication.

This enables marketing managers to understand exactly where jobs are in the completion process and provide insights into process problems.

Marketing efforts, especially when sending content to external clients, are extremely time-sensitive.

If you’re looking for a tool to enhance your marketing agency efforts, time-tracking features will be necessary for enhancing efficiency and billing your clients for your efforts.

Tip: Asana integrates with a wide variety of other marketing tools, such as social media platforms, content management systems, and email marketing software.

Best Project Management Software For Marketing Departments

1. Basecamp

This is the best choice for agencies searching for easy-to-you and simple task management and communication that gets things done.

In other words, Basecamp is the best management tool for operating multiple projects.

It is a cloud-based project management tool.

Unique Features

• Basecamp comes with important features for project communication and file sharing. They include;
• A message board where ideas and projects are discussed.
• A separate screen that allows marketers to manage projects with their clients.
• A chat feature that allows communication between marketing team members.
• Allows for allocating to-do tasks to one or more people.
• Provides reports for an adequate understanding of the team’s projects and capacity.

Pros

• Effective collaboration or partnership using chat and comments messaging.
• Low cost.
• Effective in managing multiple projects.
• Easy to use.
• Beneficial in scheduling events with recurring events.
• Amazing file sharing and internal messaging.
• Message boards.

Cons

• There is a limited reporting function.
• There is no custom workflow or task management.
• No timelines for campaign plans.

Pricing

Basecamp offers its users a flat monthly rate for an unlimited number of projects and users, starting from $15.

There is a free plan with, of course, limited features.

2. Asana

Asana is also a cloud-based task and project management tool.

It is an extensive project marketing tool suitable for marketing departments or agencies that handle or manage complex projects or large teams.

Unique Features

• Allows for effective project communication by providing project status updates for both stakeholders and managers.
• Provision for file sharing via Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box integrations.
• Allows users to create project dashboards for tracking project status.
• It allows for effective task management by allowing users to create tasks and subtasks and assign and track them using dashboards and Gantt charts.

Pros

• Users are allowed to create custom task workflows with boards.
• Marketers can easily get clients’ approval using the approvals and proofing outline on the software.
• Easy to manage the team’s workload.
• Easy to design schedules using timelines and calendars.
• Easy to picture campaign progress using the custom dashboards.
• There is portfolio management for big agencies.

Cons

• It can be overpowering when used for simple marketing projects or by small teams.
• There is no chat feature.

Pricing

Asana offers a free plan with only fifteen (15) team members for as many projects.

Their paid plan is available in three (3) options; premium, business, and enterprise. Each is based on the number of features included.

The paid plan is a monthly subscription starting at $13.49.

3. Monday.com

Contrary to Asana and Basecamp, Monday.com is not just a cloud-based project marketing software, as it comes with an option for on-premise deployment.

Monday.com is a popular project management tool that provides its users with multiple ways to view project campaigns.

Unique Features

• Effective project collaborations by allowing team communication simply by adding messages to tasks.
• The timeline planning feature allows its users to plan timelines across various stages of a project and track the project’s progress using a dashboard.
• Project templates allow its users to customize their project workflow templates which can be replicated later for similar projects.
• A time tracking feature that helps in tracking the time spent on a project by each member. The information obtained is later used in billing the client.
• A file management feature that allows users to add images, files as well as other multimedia files to their tasks. Users are also allowed to search for documents using this feature.

Pros

• There are multiple effective ways to view project campaigns, like using lists, timelines, boards, and calendars.
• Easy to use reporting tools.
• Customer support is amazing.
• Users are provided with vast customization options.
• Presence of enterprise-level safety.

Cons

• Monday.com does not offer a free plan.
• Tasks can only be managed from a task list.
• The software slows down once too many projects and users are added.

Pricing

Monday.com comes with monthly subscription plans available in four options; basic, standard, pro, and enterprise.

There is a 14-day free trial, and the least paid plan is valued at $8.

4. Podio

This is another amazing but yet simple project management software with customizable and automated workflow.

With Podio, the organization of a marketing team’s communication is easy to customize.

Unique Features

• Automated workflow is triggered by task completion.
• There are many extensions and integration like SmartGantt, alongside an option to create a custom integration.
• Allows users to custom web forms used for collecting information.

Pros

• Users can organize and prioritize tasks using task boards.
• Files can be attached to tasks.
• Tasks can be managed using custom task workflows.
• There are Android and iOS apps to help manage tasks while on the go.

Cons

• There are no workload and planning management options.
• The read-only client access is not accessible in the free and basic plans.

Pricing

Podio offers a free plan which is only available to five (5) users.

The paid plans are available on a monthly basis, with the least valued at $11.2.

5. Workamajig

This is another marketing workflow tool built precisely for in-house creative teams and agencies.

The idea behind Workamajig is to bring new business, accounting, traffic, creative, media, production departments, and client management alongside their task into one partnership software.

Unique Features

• This software comes with extensive features regarding project management. They include:
• Overall team’s availability is accessible for resource planning.
• Projects can be tracked per retainer.
• Access to templates for detailed estimating.
• Marketers can view all expectations in an agency’s pipeline using an opportunity widget.
• Lord for integration with SmatPlus and STRATA for media billing.

Pros

• Allows for time tracking in managing billable hours.
• Users are allowed to create from their task lists.
• Allows management using any project procedure like Kanban, Agile, and Waterfall.
• Helpful in managing forecast demand and multiple teams.

Cons

• Workamajig project management software may feel complicated and expensive for small marketing teams.

Pricing

The Workamajig project management software doesn’t come with a free plan.

Just like other software, it comes with a monthly subscription plan with a price of $50 for five (5) users.

Conclusion

With the list of the best project management tools above, you are for sure ready to take the next step, which is evaluating them based k your specifications.

Here are three steps you need to follow:

• Evaluate the features you need.
• Request for the product’s free trial.
• Estimate the cost of owning the software or product.

Choosing the proper project management software for your marketing needs is essential to get the best out of it in organizing campaigns of all kinds.

Hopefully, with the help of this piece, you will be able to decide on the best project management software or tool for your marketing needs.