Corralling Chaos: Project Management for Senior Living Marketing Teams

Published by Katie H on 05/31/202305/31/2023

Project management for senior living marketing teams is important. Here are some tips and tools to help corral the chaos and support your occupancy marketing efforts.

In today’s competitive business landscape, effective project management plays a crucial role in the success of any marketing team.

This is especially true for senior living marketing teams. The stakes are high, community marketing plans are constantly moving, and generating more qualified leads is top priority.

To stay on top of it all, savvy senior living marketing teams need to have a system in place that will minimize the stress, establish clear expectations, and corral the chaos.

If you are running full speed ahead, focused on community marketing plans, but never getting ahead…STOP!

Read our tips to help smart marketing teams create efficient project management strategies to keep your team on track.

With the right project management strategies in place, senior living marketing teams can streamline their operations, enhance collaboration, and deliver exceptional results. In this blog post, we will explore some efficient project management techniques tailored specifically for senior living marketing teams.

In this article, we are going to cover:

The 5 reasons every senior living marketing team needs a solid PM system
A 6 steps to help you get started with a project management system
…and 3 of our favorite project management platform recommendations

Did you know…70% of all projects fail. Implementing a project management process, however, is shown to reduce the failure rate to 20% or below.

And…42% of companies undervalue and don’t understand the need of a solid project management system.

Project Management - Why You Need It

Managing multiple community marketing plans is the perfect storm for a level of chaos that makes most marketers panic. Different locations, different demographics, different creative ideas, and even different branding… The variables expand exponentially when it comes to supporting the marketing efforts of a multi-location portfolio.

For this reason alone… Your Corporate Marketing Team needs to have a system in place to manage all of the deadlines, assignments, requests, and details.

But…in case you are not quite convinced that a project management system is worth the time, energy, or investment…

Let us share with you the five ways we see how a project management system can benefit senior living marketing teams.

Streamline Communication

First, you can streamline communication in one place for all tasks and projects. A project management system provides a centralized platform for senior living marketing teams to communicate effectively. It allows team members to share updates, discuss ideas, and bounce ideas off each other in a structured environment.

If one team member is out of the office, another team member can pick up the ball and run with a project knowing all the details and timeline. Most platforms allow you to search by keyword. So, no more digging through SharePoint to find that one project detail needed.

Campaign & Budget Planning

Second, you can implement enhanced campaign & budget planning. A project management system helps senior living marketing teams plan their campaigns more effectively. It enables them to break down complex marketing initiatives into smaller tasks, set deadlines, and assign responsibilities to team members. Assets and workflows can be cloned or duplicated to improve efficiencies the next time a similar project comes along.

With clear timelines and task assignments, campaigns are executed smoothly, deadlines are met, and everyone understands their role in achieving campaign goals.

Asset Management

Next, discover the value of efficient asset management. Senior living marketing teams often work with various marketing assets such as brochures, photos, videos, and digital content. A project management system allows teams to organize, search for and manage these assets in a centralized location.

This ensures easy access to marketing materials, reduces duplication of efforts, and helps maintain brand consistency across different marketing channels.

Reporting & Time Tracking

Then, you get improved reporting & time tracking. Project management systems often include reporting and analytics features that provide valuable insights. These systems can track campaign performance, measure key metrics, and generate reports to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing initiatives.

Most platforms can track time spent on each project or initiative, which is a key KPI needed to assess the bandwidth of your team and/or vendor partners required.

Organize Incoming Requests

And finally, you can organize requests from community teams. Senior living marketing teams often deal with ongoing marketing requests from community teams. Whether it’s a request for a print ad, email, or website update, it can be difficult to manage details of each request. A project management system can help streamline this process by providing a central location to store important documents. You can include project details, timelines and hours spent on each request.

Many platforms can also be set up to automate details of incoming requests directly into the system. These requests can then be assigned to the correct team member and given a realistic deadline and milestones needed to meet that deadline.

Six Steps for Senior Living Marketers to Implement Project Management

Now that you know WHY you should have a solid system for project management, let’s look at some techniques to help you implement a project management system

Define Clear Project Goals and Objectives:

Before embarking on any marketing project, it is essential to establish clear goals and objectives. This helps align the entire team and ensures everyone understands the purpose and expected outcomes.

For senior living marketing teams, goals may include increasing lead generation, improving brand awareness, or enhancing customer engagement. With each project, you can define the goal of the campaign early on. Teams can focus their efforts, allocate resources and team assignments effectively, and measure success accurately.

Quick Tip: Consider using the SMART framework to set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This approach provides clarity and ensures that goals are realistic and aligned with the organization’s overall strategy.

Develop a Comprehensive Project Plan:

A well-structured project plan is a roadmap that guides the team through each phase of a marketing initiative. It should outline key milestones, deadlines, deliverables, and the allocation of resources.

For senior living marketing teams, a project plan may include tasks such as market research, content creation, digital advertising campaigns, and event coordination. Breaking down the project into manageable tasks and assigning responsibilities to team members ensures accountability and allows for effective progress tracking.

Quick Tip: Project management systems allow you to create project or task templates to make setting up the project quick and easy. Once you’ve outlined your company’s general process for developing a campaign plan, consider saving templates to use for other communities and future campaigns.

Foster Cross-Departmental Collaboration:

Senior living marketing teams often collaborate with various departments such as sales, operations, and customer service. Establishing effective communication channels and encouraging cross-departmental collaboration is crucial for project success.

With a project management system, everyone can be assigned tasks and deliverables as necessary for your campaign. Teams can even set milestones for regular meetings, project updates, communicate directly in assigned tasks, and share assets all in one place.

Quick Tip: Most project management tools have integration with other communication and collaboration tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams. This makes cross-departmental collaboration easier to share updates and feedback in real-time.

Integrate Project Management Across Your MarComm Tech Stack:

Similar to the cross-departmental collaboration tools, project management systems can also integrate with other marketing tools such as content management systems, email marketing platforms, and analytics tools. This integration allows for seamless data sharing and automates repetitive tasks, freeing up time for the team to focus on more strategic activities.

For senior living marketing teams, connecting these tools improve efficiency, eliminate redundancy, and provide real-time visibility into project status for all team members.

Quick Tip: Before choosing your project management platform, look at the other tools you are already using. Audit how a strong project management system fits in with those tools and connects to share data and information for a streamlined marketing operation process.

Monitor and Evaluate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

Measuring the success of marketing initiatives is essential to gauge performance and identify areas for improvement. When it comes to managing the progress of multiple marketing projects and campaigns, project management tools keep everyone on track with KPIs. You can set reminders for monitoring and measuring success.

Senior living marketing teams are already setting relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns – why not have clear and measurable ways to define campaign buildout progress and success?

Regularly monitoring these KPIs helps the team make data-driven decisions, optimize strategies, and refine their approach for future projects.

Quick Tips: Look at how your project management tool sets project milestones, measures teams capacity, defines goals and benchmarks that align with your occupancy efforts. All of this can help measure the amount of work, progress, and overall success of your marketing team.

Project Management - Top Picks for Senior Living Marketers

As you can see, efficient project management is the backbone of successful senior living marketing teams. By following the tips and steps above, teams can enhance their productivity, deliver exceptional results, and meet the unique needs of the communities they serve.

Now let’s look at a few tools we recommend for Senior Living Corporate Marketing Teams.

We’ve identified our top three picks for project management systems that are well-suited for marketing teams within the senior living industry:

Asana: Asana provides marketing teams with tools for planning campaigns, managing tasks, and collaborating with team members. It offers features like custom project templates, timeline visualization, and integrations with popular marketing tools.

ClickUP: ClickUp is a newer but popular project management platform that aims to streamline and centralize project management processes for individuals and teams. It offers many features and tools to help users organize tasks, collaborate effectively, and track progress.

CoSchedule: CoSchedule is a project management system designed specifically for marketing teams. It includes features like a centralized calendar, task management, content planning, social media scheduling, and collaboration tools.

When selecting a project management system for marketing teams, it’s important to consider the features you need. For example, campaign planning, content management, collaboration, reporting and integration capabilities might make a difference for which platform you adopt. Consider the ease of use and user interface, as marketing teams often involve members with varying technical skills.

While it may be an investment of time to set up and implement, a good project management system will save you time and improve processes in the long run.

With the right project management system, your team can control the whirlwind of marketing operations. These systems put you back in the driver’s seat and allow each team member to set realistic deadlines, goals, and time management skills. There’s no one right platform for every marketing team so we recommend doing some research and choosing a platform that fits the needs of your team.

Getting the support your team needs…

If you work for a senior living marketing team that would benefit from some extra support in your digital marketing strategy, Let’s Chat. Schedule a free Digital Discovery Call.

We know you have a lot on your plate. Our team partners with your team to help you strategize and execute smart digital campaigns that deliver results. Schedule your call with us to learn how we partner with senior living operators.

Share the Smarts