9 features your marketing team needs in its project management tool

You likely have a favorite project management tool. It’s the one you’re familiar with and does all the things you want. Celeste in sales and Ira in IT have favorites, too. All three are different, and because they are all SaaS and use free trials or inexpensive licenses to attract customers, everyone can run the one they want.

They can until there’s a merger or acquisition or someone in IT or procurement suddenly notices a bunch of similar apps deployed across the organization. Now, everyone is going to be using the same project management tool. How do you know if it will meet your needs?

As long as it has these nine features, you can still manage your projects and keep the team connected. We’ve ranked them from most to least common so that you might need a more sophisticated application or a higher-priced version of the tool.

Dig deeper: How to use project management data to inform your marketing hiring strategy

Task management

When it comes to project management, task management is the table stakes. Any project management tool you’re likely to consider can create, assign and prioritize tasks related to various marketing initiatives. 

They will all allow you to set deadlines and track the progress toward completion so everyone on the team understands where their various marketing initiatives stand. An important aspect of task management is its ability to break down large projects (think long, multichannel campaigns, for example) into smaller, more manageable tasks assigned to various team members. 

Kanban boards

Kanban boards let you visualize the workflow of your team’s marketing projects. You can move the tasks that are part of a larger project from stage to stage (e.g., to-do, in progress, complete) so you can track your team’s progress. 

What’s often under-rated about Kanban boards is their ability to identify bottlenecks and understand what’s causing delays quickly. 

Dig deeper: 5 ways to use project management data to enhance operational best practices

Gantt charts

Many project managers love a good Gantt chart. For marketing teams, Gantt charts will help you plan and schedule your projects using a visual timeline. They make identifying dependencies between your tasks and tracking milestones easier. 

Like a Kanban board, Gantt charts help you track your team’s progress and adjust timelines as needed.

Some professional project managers prefer Gantt charts, while others prefer Kanban boards. It’s a personal preference, and your team will have its favorite. That’s why a project management application lets users choose their view is valuable to many teams.

Dig deeper: MarTech’s buyer’s guide to marketing work management platforms (registration required)

Calendars and timelines

One of the reasons project management tools are essential for marketing teams is their ability to keep everyone on the same page. That’s especially important with today’s dispersed workforces.

Project management tools with shared calendars will help your team coordinate schedules, deliverables and deadlines. Like most calendars, project management tools will allow you to set alerts and reminders so everyone knows essential dates.  

Embedded collaboration tools

One of the reasons teams benefit from project management tools is their ability to help people work together efficiently. Real-time collaboration is great, but as mentioned earlier, many teams have members in different locations and time zones.

Your project management tools need to support real-time and asynchronous collaboration, make it easy to share files, and collect feedback. The ability to add comments and discuss within the platform will help overcome the obstacles of a dispersed team. 

File sharing and document management

Along with collaboration features, teams need a central repository for project files and documents. In marketing, this can include everything from text to images to audio and video. 

Ideally, this centralized repository will also have access controls and version control, which make it easier for teams to collaborate on files (as long as you remember to set the access controls properly).

Reporting and analytics

Much of the focus on project management is on building things — creating campaigns, developing assets and more. But as your marketing knows, that’s just the beginning. Your team and project management tool’s job isn’t over when the campaign launches. 

Your project management tool should track the performance of your projects so you can measure ROI and identify optimizations. That’s not to say you can’t use your project management tool to track spending and allocations during the build phase. You can. That’s especially important when working with agencies, contractors and freelancers.  

Custom workflows

Every team has its own workflows and processes. They might drive you crazy and feel like red tape, but they’re a fact of life. You need a customizable project management tool that can be tailored to your needs. 

These include functionalities like custom templates for recurring tasks or projects. The use of AI in these tools means you will be able to save time by automating repetitive tasks. 

Integrations

When we talk about tracking campaign outcomes in your project management tool, it might sound like a redundancy you can live without. You probably have that data in your CRM, social media management tool, or marketing automation platform. 

However, when you integrate your tools, that data becomes available on whatever platform you’re working on. Syncing data between tools eliminates the time and errors from manually moving data from one platform to another.