5 best marketing project management software + key features

Did you know that a recent Project Management Institute survey shows that an average of 11.4% of investments are wasted because of poor project management? When you put that statistic in terms of marketing projects, it translates to money lost on ads that aren’t performing, campaigns that aren’t hitting targets, and projects that aren’t hitting deadlines.

So, what’s the answer?

It could be marketing project management software. Imagine seeing your KPIs easily so that you can prioritize campaign optimization, or looking at a timeline for instant insights into project progress.

The right software can offer you all of that and more, so let’s go on a deep dive. Read on to learn what to look for in marketing project management software. Then we'll break down five of the best apps in the business for your consideration!

Key features of a marketing project management software

No matter what marketing project management software you choose, it should have a few key features designed to streamline project planning and management, including:

User-friendly, customizable dashboard

Usability is key. You shouldn’t have to hunt for the tools you use most, and everything should be clearly visible, easy to read, and easy to navigate. From the dashboard, you should have easily accessible collaboration features, project scheduling, and an interactive, intuitive interface that lets you track projects and marketing activities with ease.

Because all marketing teams are unique, give preference to software that offers dashboard customization so that you can arrange your workspace in a way that suits the way you and your team work.

Recurring and manual task automation

Don’t settle for project management software that makes you do everything manually. Automation is a big reason why teams rely on software for work management. At the minimum, software for managing projects should let you automatically schedule and assign recurring tasks based on templates you’ve created. Why? Because automating these tedious manual tasks will free up your team members to work on more important action items.

Real-time project updates

Status updates are no good if you see them too late to make them actionable. Make sure your project management solution gives you real-time project status updates so that you can stay on top of to-do lists and due dates, track progress, and take action whenever necessary.

Benefits of marketing project management software

Implementing the right marketing project management software comes with major advantages. The greatest benefit is that your team will be able to accomplish more — but how does the software enable that? Let's explore the specifics.

Keeps everything in one spot

Forget flipping between spreadsheets, documents, two different cloud drives, your inbox, several documents, and a billion browser tabs. Marketing project management software helps you and your team minimize all this clutter and chaos.

Progress tracking features help everyone stay on top of deadlines, file sharing keeps all your important files linked to tasks within the app, and team members can check off subtasks as they go so that everyone can see how the project is proceeding. You should be able to see your KPIs, objectives and key results, marketing budgets, and everything else all in one unified space: organized.

Improves team collaboration

Marketing teams are collaborative by nature, but when you rely on email and various disparate apps like Teams or Slack to communicate and collaborate, things can get messy.

A project management platform will help your team communicate more clearly. Most offer message boards or commenting features so individuals can add updates, request changes, or share their thoughts. Apps that give you card and board views are also a great way to get your team together and create an idea or brainstorming board to flesh out future campaigns.

Tracks and visualizes KPIs and OKRs

Marketing relies on key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs). KPIs help you track the success of your campaign and optimize where needed, while OKRs help you set, track, and attain goals.

Your project management software should help you track and visualize both of these things — although every app will do it differently. Some apps will have native support for KPIs, OKRs, or both. Others, like Teamwork.com, offer integrations that let you connect your favorite apps for managing and visualizing data.

Want to see how Teamwork.com gives you the best of both worlds? Integrations can help you track the key metrics your marketing team needs — click here to learn about Teamwork.com's world-class project planning capabilities.

Offers cloud-based tools

What is it about the cloud that makes it so important? It’s all in how people work these days. Many marketing teams are shifting from in-office work to hybrid or remote work — which means the apps that once ran on your company’s servers aren’t so easy to use anymore. That’s why all the top marketing project management apps today are based in the cloud. Users can access them from anywhere, even when some of your team members or even stakeholders are on opposite sides of the planet.

The 5 best marketing project management software for agencies

Now that you know what this kind of software can do for creative teams, let’s look at the five best tools in the business. Read below for pros, cons, pricing, and more.

1) Teamwork.com

Teamwork.com is a platform that will let you do it all. It’s a task management platform at its heart, giving you all the features needed to create, assign, and track different marketing project tasks. With this, Teamwork.com also offers several add-on features and integrations so that you can use it to track KPIs, manage your sales funnel, and more.

For marketing teams specifically, there are several features of interest. Teamwork.com’s card view lets you track individual campaigns — like social media or email marketing campaigns — within your overall digital marketing strategy. You can connect essential tools like Google Drive for file sharing so that team members can collaborate on the content you’re generating. It also offers integrations with essential tools like HubSpot and Plecto so that you can track KPIs and get in-depth insights and visualizations.

Want to see more reasons why Teamwork.com numbers among top marketing project management tools? Check out our features, tailor-made for marketing agencies.

Pros

• Handles most marketing project management needs in a single platform

• Includes plenty of add-ons and integrations, making it highly customizable

• Has a lower price point than competitors (but offers just as much)

• Updates regularly; new features and upgrades are common

Cons

• Some initial learning curve

• Mobile version not as fully featured

• System can slow down when handling a huge number of tasks

Pricing options

Teamwork.com offers four pricing tiers: Free Forever, Deliver, Grow, and Scale. As the name implies, Free Forever is a free plan ideal for small teams and freelancers up to five users, and for people new to project management. Deliver offers more features and a five-user minimum for $9.99 per month, and Grow offers more features yet plus a five-user minimum for $17.99 per month. Scale is the enterprise tier, which allows for tons of custom features — and of course, you’ll need to get a custom quote.

2) Asana

Asana is a platform made with project management in mind. This tool lets you manage work at scale and can keep even the largest teams on task. Use it to create project roadmaps, set goals, and track tasks, milestones, and more.

While Asana focuses primarily on managing tasks and bringing collaborative teams together, it also offers budgeting, budgeting, and KPI tracking features — a must-have for marketing teams that want to manage their projects and track KPIs using fewer tools.

Pros

• Easy-to-use collaboration tools

• Organized, intuitive interface

• Optimized for web, desktop, and mobile

Cons

• Difficult to set up recurring tasks

• Not always clear which team members can see certain projects

• Clunky notification settings

Pricing options

Individuals and small teams of up to 15 members can use Asana for free with limited features. Asana Premium adds more features and removes the member limit for $10.99 per month, and you can get even more features with Asana Business for $24.99 per month. Last, Asana Enterprise offers custom pricing, increased security, specialized support, custom branding, and more.

3) Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan is a visual planning tool that is popular among project managers. It gives you a colorful interface with a timeline that clarifies tasks and deadlines. Toggl also has a board view designed to help you follow up on task status — and you can use drag-and-drop features here to switch tasks around, which is ideal for teams that need some flexibility in their planning.

One thing that sets Toggl Plan apart from other options is that it supports a variety of methodologies. Agile teams will find all the features they need: You can set up Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and more. There are also resource management and reporting tools that can help you track KPIs and other important marketing data.

Pros

• Colorful, fun interface

• Easy to see overlapping tasks to make scheduling easier

• Simple to use, minimal learning curve

Cons

• No way to export schedules or task lists

• Not as much functionality for KPI and budget tracking as competitors

• Very few integrations; lacking major tools like Google Drive and Dropbox

Pricing options

Toggl Plan is free for solo users and offers quite a lot — unlimited Tasks, Plan Timelines, Milestones, and more. You can upgrade to Toggl Plan Team features to manage a team for $9 per user per month, and for $15 per user per month, you can upgrade to the Business tier, which adds data exports plus more options for privacy and control.

4) Hive

Hive is somewhat unique in the project management software marketplace in that it was designed especially for remote teams and hybrid work. As it has grown, users have helped shape it into the ultimate co-working and project management tool. It has an active customer forum where users can post and vote on new features or offer feedback.

If you need integrations, this app has a lot of them — including Gmail support and support for most of the big cloud drives so you can share docs and other materials easily.

This app also features a diverse set of views and tools for time tracking and task management: timelines, timesheets, team resource organization, approval workflows, project templates, and more. There are even tools specifically for marketing teams that will help you track KPIs and other aspects of your digital marketing strategy.

Pros

• Customizable interface accommodates many use cases

• Different views make it easy to spot bottlenecks

• Drag-and-drop functionality for tasks

Cons

• Mobile app could use some improvement

• Analytics could be more robust

• Customization options can be overwhelming; more templates would make it easier

Pricing options

Hive has three different pricing tiers. Solo is at the bottom: It’s completely free to use for one or two people, though it does limit features. Teams is the mid-level tier, offering flexible add-ons, sharable forms, time tracking, more integrations, and other features for $12 per month. Prices vary for Enterprise — you’ll need to work with Hive’s sales team to customize your package.

5) ProProfs Project

ProProfs Project is great for everyone, from freelancers and small businesses to enterprises. It’s designed to offer simple project management tools so that you can track multiple projects from one dashboard. It expands easily so that marketing departments can collaborate with other departments and keep track of work in progress. This app also offers reporting tools and the ability to create invoices in just a few clicks.

While this app doesn’t offer functionality specifically for tracking KPIs, it does other things that digital marketers will love. For starters, it’s easy to design dashboards specifically to suit the needs of your marketing team, allowing you to track multiple different campaigns easily — plus all the tasks within each campaign.

What’s more, this app offers loads of integrations — including integrations for the most popular cloud storage services — which makes it easy for marketers to share and collaborate on the content they’re developing. Individuals can also use message boards to comment on files and tasks, making collaboration even easier.

Pros

• Allows users to do everything from a single dashboard

• Provides fast insight into task status with progress bars

• Works very well for remote and hybrid teams

• Tracks multiple marketing campaigns

Cons

• Expensive 

• No CRM functionality or KPI tracking included

• No automation for scheduling recurring tasks

• Lackluster reporting tools

Pricing options

This app gives you four tiers, starting with Forever Free, which is free, but limits you to three projects and 10 users. For $19 per month, you can upgrade to Solopreneur, which allows 10 projects plus unlimited users and teams. At the next level, the Team tier, you unlock 50 projects, reporting and charts, Dropbox integration, and other tools for $49 per month. The fully unlimited version of ProProfs Project unlocks everything — but is relatively pricey at $199 per month.

Marketing project management made simple with Teamwork.com

It’s time to take the stress out of managing your marketing projects. Why not use an app that lets you and your team seamlessly track and collaborate on your marketing campaigns? Teamwork.com offers you all of that, plus plenty of integrations so that you can share files, visualize KPIs, and more — everything you need to create and refine marketing campaigns that sell.

Get a firsthand look at what Teamwork.com can do for your team by signing up here.