For most business owners, the marketing team is the backbone of the operation. They bring in leads, convert traffic to customers and have the power to make or break a company's public image.
A successful marketing team is built on two pillars: people and customers. This means that how you manage your team is instrumental to the success of your marketing campaigns, and more broadly, the overall success of your business.
But managing any team can be tricky. This is particularly true when it comes to marketing teams, which often juggle multiple projects across a range of different channels and platforms. This is where marketing project management tools come in handy.
A marketing project management tool enables marketing teams to streamline, plan and organize all the steps they’ll need to take to complete a given project. Project management tools usually come in the form of a software or an app which your team can use to increase work efficiency and build a solid, repeatable workflow.
These types of software help organize work, collaborate with team members, and make the task management process simpler and more efficient. Any team could benefit from a set of marketing tools that assist them in keeping everyone on the same page, and tracking the progress of individual projects.
There are loads of project management software options to help keep your marketing team on the same page. Here are 10 great ones to keep your marketing team organised, productive and accountable.
For team knowledge management, shared docs and notes.
Notion is a great tool for businesses and marketing agencies alike to access all the information needed to complete tasks easily and efficiently. The interface is like a giant, online corkboard with notes tacked all over, making it easy to understand and use. You can split notes into sections and nest them within one another on the message boards, so the look of your project page doesn’t get too overwhelming as your projects grow.
Notion helps teams stay on track, focus on the essential tasks, and collaborate in-house with other team members to complete daily tasks and projects. It has great functionality as a knowledge management marketing tool and can assist teams in keeping track of project to-do’s in an organised, collaborative way.
Notion is great for improving teamwork because of its collaborative interface, which allows edits, due dates, and sub tasks to be changed and seen in real-time by all members. It's super customisable too, so your team can build its own solution.
For project management.
ProofHub is an agile marketing project management software with a handful of cool features to help creative teams work efficiently. It helps with resource management by keeping track of your tasks, files, clients, teams, and spreadsheets from one place. This portfolio management tool can help teams achieve their objectives at a faster rate by increasing team productivity and efficiency.
Like Notion, you can use it as an all-in-one team collaboration and project management solution. You can also use ProofHub for one-on-one and group chats.
For team communication and collaboration.
Chanty is a communication tool that will assist you in staying in touch with your team in a variety of ways. Chanty lets you interact with your team in real-time however you choose, including messages, voice notes, video calls, and voice calls.
Chanty has excellent sorting and filtering options to keep track of communication and work progress, so conversations don't get lost. Its main feature is Teambook, a central hub for all the messages, and tasks related to certain projects. Teambooks are great for marketing teams, as they help get rid of conversations being split over a variety of channels and individual chats.
For email marketing.
Mailchimp is a marketing platform that allows businesses to create and deliver email newsletters, signup forms, and event invitations to clients and customers. Marketing teams can use Mailchimp to manage mailing lists, customize email templates, and even automate entire email marketing campaigns.
While it’s not specifically focused on project planning like the other services on the list, Mailchimp is a helpful tool for marketing teams. Having an easy, streamlined way to build your email list and communicate with your audience is a great way to increase your marketing success.
For time tracking and workflow management.
DeskTime is a fully automated time tracking and productivity software that can help marketers stay on track with marketing campaigns.
This program is used to track time spent working on projects by identifying which URLs and apps you or your team members been using to see track your work and project time.
DeskTime, though helpful for gathering data and staying on top of project timelines, can be a little Big Brother-y if not used well.
It’s best to use this type of software as a way for workers to monitor themselves, rather than as a way for bosses to penalize workers for taking healthy breaks. This is especially true for those who are working from home.
For keyword research and SEO metrics.
Ahrefs is an SEO toolkit that includes free instructional courses. This web-based platform can assist you in increasing organic traffic to your website by providing tools for link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking and full website audits.
In a nutshell: Ahrefs gives your marketing team the tools they need to get higher Google rankings. It's an essential tool for any business who wants to become more visible to their audience (everyone), but is particularly crucial for teams who use content as part of their marketing strategy.
For customer relationship management.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing, sales, and CRM platform. HubSpot offers a number of solutions to help digital marketers improve website traffic, convert users into leads, and generate a demonstrable return on investment. Though since it’s at a higher price point, it's more suited to larger businesses.
HubSpot also offers services f or search engine optimization, social media marketing, web analytics, and content management. Its marketing platform has everything you'll need to run successful marketing, sales, content management, and customer care operations.
For project and task management.
Asana is a collaboration tool that helps marketing teams stay on track by streamlining project management. Your team can track projects and view their tasks, due dates, task dependencies, and any comments that supervisors or other team members have made all in one place.
Asana’s platform is organised and easy to use, making it simple to stay on top of team needs, and track progress. In tandem with a communication software like slack, this project management system can help your team check off the assignments on their task list like a pro.
Asana is extremely flexible—if you’re someone who likes to delineate specific, step-by-step guides for your team, you can do so quickly and easily. On the other hand, your Asana board can be as simple as a handful of pinned tasks. You can also turn on notifications, so that you can be sure you won’t miss a beat.
→ Read our in-depth comparison of Asana and Monday.com
For project management, organisation and communication.
Basecamp is a project management and communication platform that can help your marketing departments complete assignments while staying connected as a team.
Basecamp holds all your project management information in one place, making remote work easier. While it’s not as task driven as Asana, where you can see tasks pinned on a shared board, Basecamp focuses on communicating with the team and adding task progress to a shared schedule.
With message boards, to-do lists, file sharing, and calendars that update in real time as team members add their progress, Basecamp is a great solution for teams looking for one app for all their organisation and project management needs.
For a single app solution for tasks, docs, chat, goals and more.
ClickUp, like Basecamp, aims to consolidate all your relevant project management features and communications into one streamlined platform. Like Asana, you can pin and alter your tasks in ClickUp to keep your team members or stakeholders up to date, and like monday.com, it is a project management tool with CRM capabilities.
In addition to having a task board, ClickUp offers a chat feature, a doc platform for drafting in the app, places to integrate with other apps, and more.
ClickUp targets businesses working on teamwork projects in digital sales, marketing, health, non-profit and anyone working remotely. It has a bright, cheerful interface and is intuitive to use. Plus, it's updated with new features consistently.
Pricing:
EngageBay is the cloud-based all-in-one Marketing, Sales and Support tool that covers a range of uses. It offers a 360-degree customer view, which gives businesses a more complete understanding of their customers and allows them to do the right thing for each person who visits their website or stores.
EngageBay has an appointment scheduling software (Calendar) that allows businesses to easily schedule appointments with their customers, as well as a helpdesk system designed to help small businesses resolve issues with customers and improve customer service.
The tool includes features such as creating multiple projects, organizing tasks using kanban boards, connecting with clients through one-on-one chats and public groups, time tracking for billing purposes, and free file storage of up to 5 GB.
Core features of EngageBay:
A great tool makes the job easier. And while you’re not building a house, the same can be said when it comes to the digital tools you use for marketing.
These tools we've outlined make it easier for your marketing team to collaborate on, manage and complete tasks, so they can work more efficiently to grow your business.
Of course, not every tool will suit every business. We recommend you try at least a couple of tools before committing to your tech stack.
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