CHAPTER 48
Project Management for Marketing
Keep It Lean, Don’t Slow Us Down
Marketing by its very nature is a creative endeavor. The people that tend to work in marketing (be it a functional area within an organization or on the agency side) tend have big ideas. They are artistic, expressive, free form. In other words, marketing and communications professionals shun too much process for fear it will stifle or slow down the flow of these creative juices. But having some form of organization in this creative work is essential in order to meet a stated business objective. That’s where project management comes in.
The American Marketing Association officially defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.1 A much simpler definition of marketing is offered in the popular college textbook, Marketing Management, which describes it as “meeting needs profitably.”2 Those “needs” are ever changing. Therefore, the more rapidly that an organization’s marketing efforts can capitalize on conveying that its products and services are the solution, the more profitable the organization stands to become. Marketing can accomplish this consistently by incorporating fundamental project management practices into marketing operations.
THE PROCESS GROUPS IN A MARKETING CONTEXT
Regardless of size, all projects have the same essential components, namely, a beginning, a middle, and an end. All marketing projects should also be aligned in some way with the organization’s business needs. To consider how project management can save time and money with a repeatable approach to meeting objectives, let’s begin by looking at a synopsis of the five process groups of managing a project, as defined in the industry-standard, the Project Management Institute’s Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), and the typical activities within each step.3
FIGURE 48-1. PROCESS GROUPS AND TYPICAL ACTIVITIES WITHIN EACH STEP OF A PROJECT’S LIFE CYCLE
As the figure demonstrates, the beginning of the project is initiate and plan, the middle is execute and monitor/control, and the end is close. The important thing is to understand the general elements of each process group (also considered steps or phases in managing a project), select the appropriate processes, and scale the tasks for each group to suit the specific project.
When leading a marketing project, each step of the process requires some diligence in ensuring that the questions shown in Figure 48-2 are answered. Note the larger volume of questions under “Plan.” It’s no coincidence. Planning is one of the most critical and often hastily overlooked elements of delivering any project successfully.
THE PEOPLE SIDE: BASIC PROJECT MANAGER COMPETENCY IS ESSENTIAL TO MARKETERS
Marketers may not hold the formal title of project manager, but they certainly are involved in delivering projects. Learning some basic project management principles will help anyone working on marketing projects maintain momentum and support for the initiative and help enhance the chance of project success.
One of the quickest ways to do this is to provide your marketing team a foundational level project management training course that covers the core technical components of project management (defining scope, scheduling, estimating, etc.). This gives the team a common understanding of how work should be performed. Customizing the training with your own marketing terminology and existing processes makes the content even more meaningful to the team members (and increases the likelihood that they will put the concepts into practice). Technical skills should be balanced with leadership skills. Marketing is an area that supports other segments of the business such as sales, customer service, and executive management. Therefore, sharpening the team’s ability to manage expectations, navigate through difficult conversations, and resolve conflicts will garner further respect from both peer groups and the C-suite, and foster positive working relationships, making it that much easier to get the job done!
FIGURE 48-2. SAMPLE QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN LEADING A MARKETING PROJECT
Here is an example of where building project management competency has paid off: The innovation function of one of the largest consumer products manufacturers in the world owns the commercial, marketing, and technical aspects of the company’s initiatives. Innovation team members were expected to be able to communicate issues and status directly with business unit general managers. With this increased visibility came the added need for stronger leadership and communication skills. In addition, the innovation function needed to standardize processes in order to be more successful in launching initiatives and improving the percentage of projects and programs meeting milestone targets. The company brought in customized versions of both leadership and project management essentials training. Over the last five years, nearly 1,500 participants have taken one or more of the over 150 course offerings at nine different sites around the world. Most significant is that since that time, the percentage of milestones achieved on schedule has improved steadily. To date, the rate of milestone achievement is ten times higher than it was five years ago. A measurement of the value of the program showed that raising the competency level of a program manager made it twice as likely that an initiative will meet all targets once it is launched. These data make a powerful argument for continuing to raise the competency level of program managers who lead high visibility, multibillion-dollar initiatives for the company.
THE OTHER PEOPLE SIDE: STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
Any interested party associated with your marketing endeavor is considered a stakeholder. Customers (internal or external), team members, project sponsors, executives, and vendor partners such as creative agencies can all be among your key stakeholders. How you identify, understand the motivations of, engage with, and manage the expectations of your stakeholders can make or break your project.
Likewise, “the bigger the organization, the more diverse the stakeholders are likely to be, and the more controversial the change, the more difficult it can become to sell the change,” notes Nigel Lucas, a United Kingdom–based public relations and communications consultant whose client roster has included Network Rail, Jaguar Land Rover, HP, and Royal Bank of Scotland. He points out that one of the earliest lessons learned in marketing is that you need to sell the benefits before selling the features. He advises other marketers to “slice and dice” the benefits messages when a change is complex, in order to affirm the positive perceptions of certain stakeholders and help realign the negative perceptions of other stakeholders. “And, of course, you can’t do any of this until you know exactly what your various stakeholders think, feel, believe and worry about,” states Lucas. “We can all inform and make people aware of what’s happening. That’s the easy part. But true success can only be measured by the number of stakeholders you engage with and listen to, and, more importantly, actually persuade to get involved.”4
COMMUNICATION: IT’S OUR JOB, AFTER ALL
Communication is inherent to marketing. But how well we convey our messages to our identified stakeholders (see above) depends on how well we plan them. Hence the communications plan is an essential component of a marketing initiative. In preparing to write this chapter, I did some communicating of my own by reaching out to other marketing and communications professionals via discussion threads on shared industry Linked-In groups. I simply asked, “What project management practices are most valuable to your marketing and communications initiatives?” Two of the many responses I received emphasize key actions you should consider when developing your own communications plan.5
Rob Simms, director of Life Science Solutions at UL in Princeton, New Jersey, shared what he feels to be key questions to ask when developing the communications plan that also help circumvent delays with the internal message-approval process when executing a marketing campaign:
• Are the messages relevant to the business objectives?
• How will the message be conveyed (via social media, collateral, web content, etc.)?
• Has the messaging been vetted against existing content, including that of competitors?
These questions cover the areas of strategic alignment, channels for delivery of the message, and due diligence around message creation. Also valuable to include within a marketing/communications plan are sections for target audience identification (stakeholders), goals for what you want the plan to accomplish, a defined way to measure if the goals were met, and timelines for implementing your plan (including resource requirements and budget). Central to all of this is gathering the right inputs upfront.6
“Requirements gathering is, for me, one of the most important components of project managing a marketing or communications initiative. Service line/business stakeholders always jump to tactics without taking the time to really define the objective and the strategy for achieving it,” noted Allison Whitney, director of marketing for MedAmerica in San Francisco. She went on to say,
My requirements-gathering process starts with an initial pre-kickoff meeting where everyone can get their ideas off their chest about what poster, mailer, email, website, etc. needs to be created. I use that conversation as background information for a second more strategic discussion with the business decision makers (official project kick-off) to define and get agreement on the objectives. This process helps clearly delineate needs and wants and allows the marketing communications staff to develop strategies that speak to the true requirements of the client. This is one of the first things I train new junior (and not so junior) staff on when they join my team.7
TECHNOLOGY: THE GREAT ENABLER
Without question, technology is, and will remain, the backbone of marketing execution. Social media, CRM systems, websites, apps, mobile, marketing automation tools, and collaboration applications are among the many platforms and outlets being actively used by marketers in organizations of all sizes. Countless articles and data have been published about each and every aspect of these technologies that have broken down so many barriers to connectivity. While we can’t cover them all here, one aspect particularly relevant to marketers is the increasing use of online collaboration tools to facilitate and accelerate project delivery.
Keeping everything and everyone organized as a project progresses through its life cycle can be no easy task. Having a home base for project team conversations, documentation, schedules, and deliverable checklists facilitates keeping all aspects moving along as planned. There are many tools available to serve this purpose, many of which are also cost-effective for even smaller organizations to afford. Here is an example of how online collaboration tools can be useful at the project level:
CASE STUDY: WEBSITE REDESIGN PROJECT HITS TARGET GO-LIVE AND INCREASES ONLINE INQUIRIES 27 PERCENT
needed an updated site to help improve lead generation by communicating their services, highlighting their expertise, and effectively organizing their industry insights. The scope of work included the implementation of strategic information architecture, targeted copy enhancements, and sophisticated design features to reinforce the firm’s respected reputation.
Working with an outside vendor, Bright Orange Thread, the team used the online collaboration tool Basecamp as a way to track milestones, house project documents, view and maintain a schedule of tasks, and discuss issues, feedback, and ideas pre- and post-launch. Early on, all project team members committed to filtering all project communications through the Basecamp project site. Push emails were sent out to team members whenever something was posted that required their attention. Doing so allowed the geographically dispersed team to never miss any important details and to achieve each milestone date. The team had special threads dealing with specific functionality of the site such as live lead captures, organization and back-end maintenance of its extensive collection of thought leadership, messaging around its service offerings and demonstrated value, search engine optimization, and the architecture of the site being put into responsive design, which would optimize the site for any device.
The website went live as planned. In less than a year after the launch, PM Solutions’ thought leadership images and their valuable content marketing insights conveyed through the site clearly resonated with its audience. The company saw a 27 percent increase in site inquiries resulting in several sizable deals added to their business pipeline.
MARKETING OPERATIONS AT THE ENTERPRISE LEVEL: THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE AS CHANGE AGENT
The larger the organization, the more complex and challenging it becomes to break down cultural resistance and shift the way work gets performed. Marketing is no different. Silo mentalities are very much still in existence in organizations and often inhibit getting to market quickly. Establishing a marketing project management office (PMO) as a means to centralize the delivery of the organization’s strategies is an approach being taken by some forward-thinking organizations looking for ways to cut out the nonsense of a fractured operating environment. Instead, the PMO becomes the “mission control” for marketing, determining standards for delivery, for governance of the portfolio of projects that are prioritized in order of value to the business, and for enhanced capabilities of those delivering projects.
One such organization is Verizon. It has an enterprise PMO (EPMO) at the corporate level, and various PMOs at the functional levels within each line of business that operate independently. The EPMO facilitates a “PMO community” made up of representatives from each of the various business unit PMOs with the goal of collectively improving project performance to meet customer expectations.
Among these PMOs is the Verizon Wireless Marketing PMO, winner of the 2012 PMO of the Year Award (see case study below). “The marketing PMO is the business transformation function,” noted Sara Nunez, director of the EPMO for Verizon and part of the team that originated the Verizon Wireless marketing PMO nearly a decade ago. “Everything the marketing PMO does becomes part of the DNA of Verizon Wireless, and that’s key for success. By focusing on the business results and measuring them, we are ensuring that we are delivering what the business expects of the marketing function.”
Nunez offers her advice for those looking to create a similar marketing PMO structure:
Quantify why your PMO should exist. Remove the perception that everything can’t be quantified. It can. To gain and retain executive support, provide real data, such as what a day late to market costs your business, and define what the expected return will be on improvements to project delivery as a result. Establish a common language around project work and benchmarks in how the PMO will measure its value to the business. Define the capabilities required to gain process excellence and build a project delivery framework that has enough flexibilities built in to be used and scaled as needed. These actions will set the tone for adoption and agility, with just the right amount of structure to drive the right business changes.8
CASE STUDY: THE VERIZON WIRELESS MARKETING PMO SURPASSES AMBITIOUS GOALS
operates the nation’s largest 4G LTE and 3G networks and offers global voice and data services in more than 200 destinations around the world. With more than 94 million customers in the U.S., Verizon Wireless can truly be said to have “a household name,” and its Marketing department plays a large part in its success. Yet, less than a decade ago, it operated in a much more siloed fashion. Departmental leaders within the marketing organization resisted sharing project resources with one another for fear of jeopardizing achievement of their respective P&L objectives. At that point, the vast majority of the work completed by key functional areas was focused on the consumer market, while the minority of all project work was being directed to business and governmental clients, which was a key piece of the Verizon Wireless strategy.
The Chief Marketing Officer at the time recognized the need to create a more efficient, integrated approach to delivering against his organization’s strategies, and commissioned the creation of the Marketing PMO as a way to meet ambitious goals including:
• 50% cycle time reduction
• 90% on-time delivery for top projects
• 70% on-time delivery for all other projects
• 100% alignment of organizational resources to top prioritized projects
The PMO’s mission was and continues to be “the financial advisor and delivery arm for the strategies of the organization.” To that end, it is accountable for the portfolio and the delivery of top tier projects for the entire Verizon Wireless enterprise. Verizon Wireless has shown its executive commitment to a project management culture by funding and growing the PMO every year since 2006.
To deliver on its mission, the PMO consists of an array of skilled project management leaders with a strong grip on the business rationale and impacts of the portfolio. There is also a focus on individual performance appraisals and making sure that each team member is clear that their performance expectations are tied to project success. To refine its delivery approaches, the PMO has utilized the standards of the Project Management Institute and other key methodologies as the basis for its methodology and processes. It began by implementing a governance process, called VZLaunch, to refine its product development process. The model established stage gates that defined the cross-functional work required in each gate. A team of cross-functional gatekeepers decide if the project is ready to move to the next gate and the next stage of development. This process guaranteed that cross-functional teams built products correctly and reduced re-work. It resulted in project management functions applied consistently across the enterprise.
In 2008, the first iteration of portfolio management was established at Verizon Wireless. Over the next year, the organization began the facilitation and allocation of the enterprise’s resources to the top-priority projects. It also drove cross-functional organizations to commit resources and timelines resulting in the effective use of the enterprise’s resources. By the end of 2008, these collective efforts improved the cycle-time of product delivery by 25 percent. Another two years showed that the initial goals for the PMO set out at its inception had been achieved or surpassed:
• Cycle time had been reduced by 58% despite the increasing complexity of projects.
• Top projects were being delivered on-time 100% of the time.
• All other projects were delivered on-time 80% of the time.
• A manual process provided 100% alignment of organizational resources to top-prioritized projects.
• Prioritization of the entire enterprise’s work (over a US$1 billion portfolio investment) is completed every month.
Verizon Wireless now knows which projects will advance its strategy. It has predictability; when a product is scheduled for launch, the launch will be accomplished on-time. In 2012, the Verizon Marketing PMO was the winner of the PMO of the Year Award. Administered by the Project Management Institute (PMI®), the award salutes a Project Management Office that has demonstrated excellence and innovation in developing and maturing an organizational structure to support the effective management of projects.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Identify the standard process that is used by your marketing group to deliver its projects (refer to Figure 48-1). If a documented process does not exist, can you map out a basic approach that would serve as a framework for how work gets delivered?
Does your marketing team have any formal training in project management approaches (both technical and leadership aspects)? If not, what type of professional development would be most beneficial to the group in order to boost their delivery competency most quickly?
Think about a project you recently completed. How could you have improved upon your project communications?
Would a marketing PMO structure work within your organization? What are the cultural change implications that would need to be considered? Is there appropriate executive support for a structure like this?
REFERENCES
1 American Marketing Association, “Definition of Marketing,” 2007, http://www.marketingpower.com/aboutama/pages/definitionofmarketing.aspx.
2 Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Marketing Management, 14th edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2012).
3 Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), 5th edition (Newtown Square, PA: PMI, 2013).
4 Personal interview with Nigel Lucas. Conducted via emails July 20–22, 2013.
5 Research survey. Conducted via LinkedIn on the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) Group discussion board, July 13–25, 2013, www.linkedin.com.
6 Personal interview with Rob Simms. Conducted via emails July 20–22, 2013.
7 Personal interview with Allison Whitney. Conducted via emails July 20–22, 2013.
8 Personal interview with Sara Nunez. Conducted via telephone and email July 25, 2013.
9 PM Solutions Research, 2012 PMO of the Year Award, ebook posted at http://www.pmsolutions.com/resources/view/pmo-of-the-year-award-2012-ebook/.