5 Advantages of Gantt Charts for Marketing Departments

Starting a new marketing campaign can be intimidating, especially if you don’t have any idea about how to keep it on track. Whether it’s a small creative project or a large-scale marketing campaign, putting project management into practice is more important than anything else.

Without effective management, your projects will take too much time to complete and everything will eventually turn into chaos.

One of the most popular ways for marketing teams to make their projects more manageable is by creating and maintaining Gantt charts.

In this article, you’ll learn several brief facts about Gantt charts and how largely it could impact project management for marketing departments.

Gantt chart and project management

This might sound exaggerated but the Gantt chart is a strong project planning tool that can make or break a project. When managing a project, managers and teams are required to keep a close eye on all the activities and ensure that everything gets completed as scheduled.

Now, Gantt charts allow you to do this and more, without any hassle. These are simple bar charts that illustrate and display the complete time span of a project, including details like:

• The start date and finish date of the project.
• The list of tasks that need to be done.
• The start date and finish date for each task.
• Who is working on what?
• What tasks are dependent on each other?
• The progress made in each task.

All in all, Gantt chart software is crucial for successful project management. It helps to plan, schedule, and deliver projects, irrespective of their type and size.

The advantages of using a Gantt chart for the marketing department

Now that you know the importance of a Gantt chart in project management, let’s see what benefits it brings to your marketing department.

1. Better planning and scheduling

No marketing department can run efficiently without proper planning and scheduling. Gantt charts are an easy way to plan and schedule marketing tasks as per the project deadline. Using a Gantt chart, managers and teams can break projects into manageable tasks and have a better understanding of their key milestones in a project and work division.

This information further gives them the ability to create project plans and schedules that guarantee successful completion of every marketing task and subtasks within the desired timeframe.

2. Lesser complexity

Whether it is a single task concerning a marketing project or a group of tasks, Gantt charts help to keep track of every task and bring all the relevant data in one central place. It offers an easy-to-use and user-friendly design that makes even the most complex marketing information easily accessible.

A Gantt chart tool contains horizontal and vertical fields that visually convey every little detail without any confusions or potential headaches. This saves marketing teams a lot of time and more importantly, it drastically improves their chances of being successful in a project.

3. Clear task dependencies

The biggest advantage and the most useful feature of Gantt charts is that they help to identify which tasks are parallel and which are sequential in a project.

With a Gantt maker, teams can see what tasks are dependent on each other for their successful completion. This provides them with a deeper understanding of the relationships between tasks and allows them to organize their projects accordingly.

4. Improved communication

Effective communication between managers, staff, and stakeholders is an integral part of the marketing project management process.

A Gantt chart offers an array of benefits including more productive and enhanced communication. It helps to ensure that everyone involved in a project is on the same page and has access to the same information, thereby avoiding misunderstandings and promoting mutual understanding.

5. Better utilization of time

Many marketing teams pitch delayed projects and campaigns as one of their biggest challenges. A Gantt chart helps project managers and team members to make the most effective use of their time while managing marketing projects.

It provides them with a unified view of the project’s progress and allows them to allocate their time to what really needs to be done rather than working mindlessly.

Gantt chart project management tool

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Considerations for finding the right Gantt chart software

There’s no doubt that a Gantt chart is the strongest project management tool for the marketing departments or any other department for that matter. From branding agencies to PR firms, almost every team is trusting Gantt chart software to help them increase their productivity and efficiency. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to the numerous advantages, there has been a significant increase in the popularity of Gantt chart tools.

Today, marketing teams have access to a vast pool of tools and apps that are specifically designed to match their project management needs. But the important question is – How to evaluate and select the right Gantt chart tool?

Below, you will find the list of considerations for choosing the right kind of a Gantt chart tool. These considerations may vary with the type and volume of projects you manage.

So, just think of these considerations as a starting point when evaluating available tools and software.

• Make sure that the software you invest in is easy to use and also offers a free trial.
• Focus on tools and software with professional-grade scheduling and task management features.
• Look for the functionality which allows you to share project data with people outside your office walls.
• Find a product that has the ability to provide real-time reports on the current status of the projects.
• Look out for a Gantt chart generator that allows you to make changes as easily and frequently as possible.
• Functionality is important but it doesn’t mean that you have to compromise with the integrity of your project. Find software that protects your data from all kind of threats.
• Pay attention to software that offer ready-made marketing templates for planning.

By the way, ready-made templates significantly simplify the work of project managers. For example, you can find dozens of marketing templates in GanttPRO.

Thanks to this Gantt chart maker, you can create a new template or try the ready-made option and choose the best one.

Here is how Nikita Danilin, a Project manager and Customer service manager at the digital advertising agency Mir Reklamy Digital comments on the work with the tool:

Among the available GanttPRO templates, you can find:

• Marketing budget template.
• Nonprofit marketing plan.
• Content marketing plan template.
• Social media marketing proposal.
• Marketing checklist.
• Product launch marketing plan, and many more.

You can edit templates in Google Sheets or download them for free in Excel.

The bottom line

This is, of course, the smallest overview of what a Gantt chart is and how it can benefit your marketing department. The best way to learn more about Gantt charts is to create one for your project. And if you are already using Gantt charts to plan and schedule your projects, please, don’t hesitate to share your experience in the comments below.