As a small business owner, you have too much on your plate. This article is related with a brief to Best Marketing Project Management Softwares. Managing multiple projects, social media, marketing, sales, onboarding clients and product innovation all demand your undivided attention. Collaborating across teams can be difficult on any day, but when obstacles arise, it can be almost impossible. Traditional approaches to marketing project management are not effective. You need a powerful tool that is easy to understand, serves your purpose well, and gets the buy-in from your team. We have you covered. In this guide, you will get all the information that will help you decide on the best marketing project management softwares for your business. Let’s quickly go through the amazing benefits that the best marketing project management softwares can give you. [embed]https://youtu.be/3V0Fp_XQxw0[/embed]

Benefits of using the best marketing project management software

Here are some of the benefits of marketing project management software.

• They give you an overview of all your marketing activities, which results in better control.
• Replacing inefficient manual systems with project management software reduces operational costs.
• They help improve employee productivity, reduce errors and improve coordination among the departments and stakeholders involved. This results in better products and higher revenue.
• They make your project delivery efficient by allowing you to assign tasks, helping you collaborate with your team members, making the marketing process smoother and enabling you to get real-time feedback from clients.
• You can schedule resources on demanding tasks.
• You can calculate the return on investment on different projects.

As a small business marketer, you may be torn between digital marketing, content marketing, advertising, and public relations. You might also be dealing with many types of professionals like ad agencies, graphic artists, social media experts or sales associates. Then by all means, you should put in the effort to find the best marketing project management tools for the sake of your business growth. These marketing project management software solutions have different functionalities, pricing structures and deployment. So, how do you choose the one that fits your needs? It’s best to do a self-audit of your small business requirements and then find that perfect fit. Let’s see how...

Key considerations for deciding on the best marketing project management software

One of your key considerations as a small business is to invest in a software solution that is low-cost and yet offers all the major benefits. Think over these points to understand your unique requirements.

1. You may not want your clients to have access to all the same resources as your in-house team that manages marketing projects. You might want an external portal to collaborate with your clients.
2. While running marketing campaigns, many team members might be involved in the various stages of the review process. Do you want a solution that automatically forwards marketing material to the next stage and sends alerts to those responsible?
3. If you are using cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive to store project assets, then does the marketing project management solution integrate with these?
4. Marketing software can be cloud-based or on-premises. The software also has to be able to run on Windows, Mac or mobile devices if the employees are going to use it on their laptops.
5. If you are using freelancers for marketing work, are you able to set permissions for accessing certain information.
6. Does the project management tool integrate with other software that you are using like QuickBooks, CRM tools like Salesforce, social media apps and analytics tools?

How to evaluate the best marketing project management software

Now you should have a fairly good idea of how you are going to use the marketing project management software. Let's dive into the features currently available. Prioritize those that are important for you and narrow down your choices. So let's get started.

1. Task management

The software should provide enough flexibility of breaking down a complex task or a goal into manageable tasks that you can track separately.

2. Dashboards that give the complete overview

Dashboards should display the real-time status of your projects, processes, action steps, responsible people, deadlines, fees and expenses. Dashboards are visual elements and should be customizable with charts and graphs.

3. Easily generate reports

Project managers need to generate lots of reports for management and audit purposes. The tools should come loaded with customizable report templates.

4. Project or task completion timelines

The project roadmap should be full of tasks and timelines. As you check off tasks, your tasks’ timelines should automatically update and the next set of timelines should be triggered.

5. Email integration for direct updates

The project management tool should have the flexibility of integrating with your emails so that you can add comments, set timelines and update tasks right from your email inbox.

6. Mobile app version to track projects

If you want to check your project status on the go, then a mobile version of the software should be available.

7. Seamless integration with existing tools

Apart from using the best marketing project management software for your small business, you are also going to use other software like financial apps and CRM tools. Does this project management software integrate seamlessly with other software?

8. Automated workflows

The more automated routine tasks are, the more efficiency it brings to the team. For example, upon completion of a workflow, the approving authority should be notified automatically.

9. Pricing

Does the pricing suit your budget? If the benefits outweigh the costs, then adopting the software is the right step. Most marketing software solutions come with a free trial period for you to test them out thoroughly. Finally, don't  forget to evaluate the product reviews. They are one of the most valuable resources for knowing the pros and cons of any marketing software. Your action steps ... So, if you manage a small business, choose from the best marketing project management software available in the market. Now that you have a fairly good understanding of how these project management software options can help you take your business on a growth spurt, it’s time to take action. Assess the specific needs of your business and do an evaluation of the platforms available. Sign up for their free version. If it makes your work easier, then continue using it. If not, move on to the next one. After having tried a few of them, you will know what best suits your needs and can adopt that solution for your organization.

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