If you have many people working for your marketing agency, you need a project manager. A project manager ties everything together and makes sure the whole team is working efficiently.
A project manager has to understand the big picture, not merely the small details. They need to make sure everything gets done on time and on budget. They need to know how well each team member is performing, plus how well each part of the project is going.
Project managers work in many fields – for example, a manufacturing company needs project managers. They are particularly important for management and professional services, including marketing agencies.
What Do Marketing Agencies Do?
Marketing agencies know everything about helping companies sell products. A marketing company might specialize, but they usually offer a broad range of services. They can help a company with anything related to selling:
- Building email lists and selling products through email campaigns
- Using analytical tools to measure the success of anything the company does
- Organizing and planning events
- Helping the company get through a crisis
- Creating video content
- Creating any other content, such as blog posts, logos, images, or social media posts
- Creating and improving websites
- Increasing traffic to a company’s website with search engine optimization or advertising
Marketing agencies mostly help companies with digital marketing. Advertising has moved online, so helping companies with television, radio, or print ads is less important. Offline work remains a significant part of marketing agencies’ total revenue.
What Do Project Managers Do?
The project manager makes sure everything gets done on time and before the budget runs out. There might be more than one client and a lot of employees, so they have to communicate with a lot of people and find a lot of information. Project managers are generalists that have to learn a lot of different tasks, such as:
- Creating a timeline to get everything done on schedule
- Giving the right responsibilities to the right team members; knowing each team member’s skills and interests
- Facilitating communication between different team members
- Talking to people at the client company to determine what they want in detail
- Identifying problems that slow the project down and solving them
- Planning and scheduling meetings
- Suggesting additions to client companies’ ideas
- Correcting the team if they are doing anything the client company doesn’t want
The project manager has to understand the entire project. They must make sure that people who create content, optimize the client’s website, and run paid ads are all doing their jobs. They can achieve it by implementing reliable agency management software. If one part of the project is lagging behind, the project manager might move people from one team to another.
Project Managers Work With Many Different People
Project managers need to talk to a lot of different people at their company, at the client’s company, and outside of those companies. They might talk to a third or fourth company if they are outsourcing some of the work to people who aren’t in their team. They can also talk to freelancers the company hires, and to people who supply products to the client company.
Imagine that a project manager is building a website for a company. They will need to talk to the client company, plus the client company’s website host.
They will need to talk to their own company’s website builders, SEO specialists, and copywriters. They might also have to call freelancers or another company if some work must be outsourced. They then have to make sure all of these people stay up-to-date on what needs to be done.
What Skills Do Project Managers Have?
Again, a project manager needs to be able to visualize a large project. They have to be able to keep track of many different people and whether their tasks are progressing on time. More than anything else, they must understand the sort of work a creative agency does in detail.
Project managers have to be capable of leadership and must be good communicators. Problems will commonly appear if a lot of people are working together, and the project manager has to resolve them. They need to know how many days it usually takes for their workers to complete different tasks.
What Challenges Do Project Managers Face?
Project managers have to stay up to date. A strategy that worked five years ago might fail now. They need to follow industry news and use new and effective strategies before other agencies do.
Project managers also have to talk to and reassure clients. They have to give clients a realistic timeframe and then make sure their team gets it done on time. They cannot greatly overestimate how fast their team can get things done, and they can’t underestimate the budget.
A client might have several deadlines, one for each task, and the project manager has to make sure everything gets done before each of them. A project manager might also make sure that any reports their company produces for the client are good enough.
Marketing Projects Can Fall Apart Without a Good Project Manager
A team needs a good leader. While a few people might be able to work together with no clear leader, a big group of people cannot. Someone needs to be in charge.
What Advantages Do Marketing Agencies Offer Client Companies?
Sometimes, a company can have its own workers do most or all of the tasks that a marketing agency would do. However, a marketing agency can often get the work done faster and for less money. A competent team led by a good project manager can greatly increase a client company’s sales, far beyond what they could do themselves.
Marketing agencies are full of experts in online and offline marketing. If a company tries to rely on their own employee’s skills, they might not do the job as well, or it might take them longer. The company’s workers may also know nothing about marketing and have completely different skills, so there is no choice but to hire a marketing agency.
Marketing agencies already have expensive software used in digital marketing. If a company tries to run a marketing campaign itself, it might have to buy expensive new software.
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