What Does a Marketing Project Manager Do?

A marketing project manager oversees projects from start to finish, ensuring each project meets set deadlines, budgets, and resources. While other marketing roles focus on specific campaign details like identifying a target audience, creating ads, or monitoring metrics, the purpose of this role is project management. 

The role of a marketing project manager

As with any project management job, you'll serve as a centralized person who oversees each campaign phase. Marketing project managers often collaborate with the marketing team but may also work with other departments, like sales, and provide updates to upper management.

A marketing project manager likely works under a chief marketing director. While the chief is responsible for the overall marketing strategy, the project manager will implement a workflow that takes each project from concept to completion. 

Tasks and responsibilities in this position may include:

• Conducting daily task reviews

• Attending client meetings and communicating progress

• Assessing project status

• Assigning roles

• Tracking budgets

• Building workflows to streamlining processes

• Coordinating with vendors, if necessary

• Updating internal management on progress or issues

• Troubleshooting problems

Read more: How to Become a Project Manager: 6 Steps

Required skills for a marketing project manager

In addition to experience in marketing, certain workplace skills are helpful in this role. To be a successful marketing project manager, consider enhancing the following skills:

Time management

Completing a project on time requires good time management skills. As a project manager, you'll assess the project and quantify the time needed to move the project through each stage. You'll identify areas where you might be able to expedite the project and others where slowdowns could occur. By doing so, you'll be able to allot a specific number of hours to each team member so they can complete their portion of the project. 

Read more: What Is Time Management? 6 Strategies to Better Manage Your Time

Organization

Marketing project managers are master organizers. To organize a project, you'll use various tools to help, such as calendars and planners, budget trackers, and task reminders. It's fairly common for project managers to use project management software, which can help you organize multiple projects simultaneously and keep everyone on task. Tools like CoSchedule, Monday, or Trello offer features that include calendars, workflows, automation, and data visualization tools that aid in organization.

Read more: Organizational Skills: What They Are and Why You Need Them

Communication

On a daily basis, you'll communicate with several people as a marketing project manager. Communication is at the center of this job, from checking in on teammates and giving approvals to freelance designers to updating the chief marketing director on a project. Having effective communication skills is essential.

Read more: What Is Effective Communication? Skills for Work, School, and Life

Problem-solving

At some point, problems could arise, like incorrect perception of time and abilities, restrictive workflows, and factors beyond your control. As a project manager, you need to monitor projects, identify problems early, and reassign jobs if necessary to minimize delays and stay on budget.

Read more: 7 Problem-Solving Skills That Can Help You Be a More Successful Manager

Delegation

To complete projects, marketing project managers delegate tasks. When large teams are involved, a project manager could distribute jobs to dozens of people. For instance, a project manager might assign tasks like audience identification or content creation. Everyone must do their part quickly and efficiently to ensure the project stays on track. 

Salary and job outlook

According to Glassdoor, the estimated total pay for marketing project managers in the US is $87,223 per year [1]. This figure includes an average base salary of $81,864 and $5,359 in additional pay. Additional pay may represent profit-sharing, commissions, or bonuses.

As more companies see the need for project management, this translates to job growth. The number of project management positions will likely grow by 6 percent by 2032, which is three percent faster than average, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) [2]. 

How to become a marketing project manager

To become a marketing project manager, employers will typically require a degree, experience in the marketing field, and workplace skills that can facilitate the daily duties of the role. More specifically, here are some steps to enter this career path:

1. Acquire a bachelor's degree.

Typically, a marketing project manager holds a bachelor's degree in business management, marketing, or a related field. It's possible that a marketer who's familiar with a company's internal process could move into this management position. Still, someone with a degree in business, which provides a background in processes, budget, and strategy, could also fill this role.

2. Gain marketing experience.

To fill the marketing project manager role, you'll likely need some marketing experience that offers an introduction to logistics, time management, and client needs.

In a marketing position, you'll become familiar with a company's marketing strategy and expectations of the team. You'll understand each person's roles and how their efforts marry to complete a project. You'll develop working relationships with coworkers, freelancers, managers, and clients, all of which can help propel your career in marketing project management.

Read more: How to Become a Marketing Manager

3. Build the necessary skills.

To be an effective marketing project manager, a special set of skills is necessary is take a project through each of the following stages: 

• Initiation

• Planning

• Executing

• Monitoring

• Closing

During the initiation phase, project managers must assess whether a project suits the team and company well. To do so, you'll critically examine the project, review its benefits and challenges, and communicate your thoughts to executives. 

Planning projects require time management skills, while executing a project requires you to organize the project into smaller milestones and delegate tasks to others. 

You'll monitor progress, which means you'll troubleshoot problems and ensure the project meets its deadlines and client expectations. You'll close the project, review the process, and make improvements for the next one. 

Read more: 13 Key Marketing Skills to Boost Your Resume

Marketing project manager career path

After obtaining a bachelor's degree in marketing or business, start gaining experience in the marketing field. Be sure to look into entry-level marketing jobs like a marketing coordinator before moving up to the role of marketing project manager. 

Further career advancement beyond project management could lead you to a senior position, like a chief marketing director, or even a role like a chief operations officer.

Get started with Coursera.

In your quest to pursue a career as a marketing project manager, consider exploring online courses that can expose you to marketing and its core principles. The Introduction to Marketing offered by the University of Pennsylvania on Coursera is a great way to enter a marketing career path. The course covers three core topics in customer loyalty: branding, customer centricity, and practical, go-to-market strategies, and could offer insight into potential marketing jobs. Upon completion, gain a shareable Professional Certificate to include in your resume, CV, or LinkedIn profile.