Depending on your personal role in the business world, you probably have one of the two opinions on marketing project management: 1) it is a simplistic task that does not require an experienced professional and never truly drives effective results, or 2) it is the primary determinant of any company’s marketing success in differentiating its brand in the market and creating a corporate identity that sticks in the minds of your consumer.
If you are of the first opinion, it is likely that either you do not specialize in marketing, or are the person who has assigned the least-stressed employee in your company with this extra “side task” when the need arises. If you identify more with the second statement, you probably were, have been, or are destined to be, a marketing manager or director at some point in your career.
The truth is that regardless of the size of your company, budget or annual sales, marketing project management is a necessary and essential component to any company hoping to compete on some attribute other than price. Throughout my career, I have seen too many companies spend thousands, if not millions, on marketing programs that were ultimately ineffective, only to blame the lack of response on an untalented designer, copywriter, or audience who just didn’t “get it”.
The reality is, that like any function that drives business, marketing project management requires the complete attention of a team of professionals who are able to advise, with some level of confidence, what works, what doesn’t, and who is likely to respond. These are truly the basic tenets of how effective your campaign will be, and while I firmly believe that marketing is never more than a very educated guess, by following a few simple steps, you can manage a seamless marketing project that garners results.
Know your audience. Too many company leaders have a well- defined image of what they believe their company is and why a person buys their product or service. In marketing, this is great—except that often times, especially in smaller organizations, that image is nowhere near the one your customers perceive or believe. To avoid this costly mistake, the very first step in developing your marketing project is shopping your core message to your audience. This does not have to be a costly undertaking; it does not require the assistance of a research professional. It can be as simple as emailing a pdf file of your creative draft to a few key customers in your industry and asking them what they think. Based on their response, regroup with your company’s decision makers and re-target your message if needed. This simple act can save you a fortune in wasted marketing dollars.
Establish a target timeline and stick to it. All industries and businesses have peak seasons, even if it is not intuitive at first glance. Give some serious thought to when customer’s would most likely be receptive to your message. Maybe this is driven by product seasonality, or perhaps by internal business functions, like budget season. Whatever it is, establish a target date and get a final sign off from all decision makers agreeing to the date, and the times that any person giving feedback on the collateral needs to be available to review it. Unless you have serious reason to believe you identified it wrong once the project is underway, do not deviate from it. Ever.
Additionally, adhering to such timelines provides the opportunity for future benchmarking. If you mailed the last week in April in 06 and got a disappointing response, use the information to strategize your future efforts. This allows you to test different approaches and eventually determine what is and is not worth repeating.
Limit the feedback you seek. Not only will this allow you to follow the timeline premise, but it will also ensure that the project does not stray so far from the mark that it is barely recognizable from concept stage to completion. I have seen many projects evolve so far from the conceptual strategy by press time that even the manager giving the directives wasn’t quite certain what the objective of the piece once it arrived in the mail box. While a certain amount of changes are both recommended and necessary, at a certain point, remember the adage: “too many cooks spoil the broth”. Seek the opinion of key executives and legal advisors, and make sure your marketing and operations professionals are on board with the communications. Other than that, you’re just adding unnecessary complexity to a process that is largely subjective by nature.
Pull your key targeted list and scrub, scrub, scrub. In an industry like direct marketing where a great response is 1%, it is well-worth the pain and money to spend a significant amount of time understanding your mailing list. Not only will it eliminate wasted funds by seeking out inappropriate prospects, bum mailing addresses and incorrect names, you will increase the likelihood of driving a response that translates into qualified leads and actual customers.
Put result tracking methods in place. Before you release any piece that you want to formulate a response read on, make sure you have some tracking measure into place before it is released to press. This can take the form of a unique source code, or additional discount. It does not matter what system is in place, as long as it is readable by the marketing professional within your company. Additonally, do not forget to add yourself to the seed list! I am shocked at the amount of campaigns I have been involved with where at the end of the day, no one on the team was signed up to receive the piece, therefore, we had no idea what the finished sample looked like to the customer, or when and how it even arrived.
Marketing project management takes discipline and skill, and is a practice in which you will surely always encounter unexpected bumps in the road. However, you can greatly reduce the headaches, and maximize your return on investment, by managing to a few simple steps.
