How To Deliver a Digital Marketing Project on Brief, Time & budget?

By now, if you followed my blog posts I think we have reached a complete understanding of Digital Marketing and its effectiveness. I talked about different kinds of Digital Marketing and the ways in which we can make digital Marketing campaigns successful by targeting the right audience, considering the competitors, analyzing companies’ situation and simply just making the right decisions.

This week I'm going to talk about starting a digital marketing project, how to deliver it on Brief, Time and Budget…

Let's assume that the project we want to work on is creating a website for a London local designer. We have 6 months to create the website and put it into action. As the designer is local and fairly new to the market we need to be careful with the budget. We need to create a smart digital marketing campaign on a limited budget, and we need to deliver it on time, which is 6 months from now.

Client Information:

Designer: Alex Wood.

Clothing Line: Glamorous Bikinis, Bathing suits and Beach wear.

Description: creating a fabulous swim wear for women, because summer is all about looking hot and tanned, and a swimwear can either bring it out or hide your summer beauty.

Goal:

- Create a website for the brand.

Lets bring our efforts together and make this 'Website' project successful.

First, we need to consider the project phases, 'The 4 D's':

1. Discovery:

Meetings, Research, Gather requirements, Technical specs and Project planning.

2. Design:

Create Wireframes, Revisions and Interactive designs.

3. Develop:

Programming and Testing.

4. Deploy:

Project launch, Style guide, Possible additions and Finally Tracking success.

Second, we should also consider the 'Project Success Factors':

1. Agreement on goals.

2. A good plan.

3. Progress measurement.

4. Constant communications.

5. Management support.

6. Controlled scope.

Moreover, There are two common project methods:

Agile: Based on short, task oriented periods of time. project end is harder to define.

Waterfall: Based on a fixed length of time. Clear project end. Traditional Project plan.

For Alex's Website project we will follow the Waterfall method, As we have set goals, we have a clear vision of the project outcomes. Its not neccesarly a traditional project plan, as the web world is getting larger and websites are inceasing by the day, so we have to be very strategic and think of other contributors to the website's success,

Such as: Affiliate marketing, social media and SEO.

How?

Affliate Marketing: By advertising on other fashion and department stores websites. Also, as Alex is new in the market we can get some of the fashion blogs to write about him and link the article to his website, if bloggers are purely fashion lovers and would like to support a new fashion talent they would do it for free or maybe for just a little percentage. Maybe they can get exclusive news about Alex’s brand which will motivate them to write about it.

Social Media: its always good to get involved and social with the people, we can link Alex’s FaceBook and Twitter pages to the main website so his fans and customers can join them, and then they can send their friends requests to join his pages as well. So its like creating a network of people and providing them with the lastest designs, news and updates. Lately, Twitter has become an excellent marketing tool as celebrities use it and brands like Alex’s can use those celebrities to make them advertise for the brand and tag and link their status updates to Alex’s page.

SEO: As we all know by now, and as I mentioned in my blog post: ‘Top 10 Considerations for an Effective Online Marketing Strategy’ - Being highly ranked on search engines is something vital and companies should pay a lot of consideration into it as it increases the website's traffic and generates more customers and visitors. Remember to focus your website's content on keywords that you provide and are related to your brand.

Now we know the plan and objectives, Lets start budgeting!

According to SoloSignal, For an interactive website with custom design and quality coding, I would expect to pay somewhere in the range of $2,000 to $15,000. If you are paying less, you are probably getting an off-the-shelf CMS with a generic design template. For more complex sites or online applications, expect to pay $20,000+.

You may think that this is too much, Or where does this money go?

SoloSignal provides the answer to this Question in the following article 'How much should Web site Design, Development and Hosting cost?'

Behind every website is a programmer and a designer. The knowledge that these individuals possess and the time they put into every project is often overlooked and not considered when pricing a project. Sarah Lewis of Blogging Expertise explains this value nicely in A Frank Discussion About Pricing:

· Details. Professional designers and firms pay particular attention to the details that will make or break your site.

· Time. Most people who end up using a professional designer or firm understand that their time is worth something, and that spending your time on your core business is one of the best places you can invest your time. Working with web professionals allows you to tap into our experience and knowledge and save hundreds of hours.

· Experience. A professional designer or design firm isn’t just selling you hours on a project; we’re selling you years of experience in the sometimes-overwhelming world of the Internet.

· Knowledge. When you hire a professional designer or firm, you are also getting access to a wealth of information that we’ve gathered and are happy to share.

I like the way this article is written, as it puts together everything you need to know about website pricing. SoloSignal is a blog that has a lot of information about different areas of website development. It’s very useful!! For further information, pay a visit and check out their articles. Click Here.

We should always keep in mind that it’s very hard to stay within the budget. According GartnerReport, only 30% of IT projects, once started, never come to a fruitful conclusion. It also found that on average, 51% of projects exceeded budget by 189%, while delivering only 74% of the original functionality.

So in order to avoid that, speak to a few suppliers to establish a solid budget, and ALWAYS specify and mention your budget in your project proposal or brief.

Time is very precious and valuable, Thus it is important that it is divided according to the importance of every step and phase of creating a project. Its important to have Project Management, as it adds value to the project and the organizations themselves, because it creates an arranged and precise process of planning a project, moving to working on it and then eventually applying it. ManagementHelp defines Project management as a carefully planned and organized effort to accomplish a successful project.

"Project management includes developing a project plan, which includes defining and confirming the project goals and objectives, identifying tasks and how goals will be achieved, quantifying the resources needed, and determining budgets and timelines for completion. It also includes managing the implementation of the project plan, along with operating regular 'controls' to ensure that there is accurate and objective information on 'performance' relative to the plan, and the mechanisms to implement recovery actions where necessary." - ManagementHelp.

REMEMBER, always spend time and effort on making a good project plan, because if you have a set and solid plan it reduces that amount of work you have to put into implementing it. Also, the projects most probably will turn out more effective and successful.

There are many ways of achieving projects on time and budget, but it always depends on planning as it is the most important element in the process of constructing a project.

ShawSystems has a very clear and brief article called: '7 Steps to Delivering Projects On-Time and On-Budget', I think you should take a look it as its very useful and gets straight to the point.

Also, Here’s a slideshow about ‘How to Complete a Project On Time and Under Budget’, It’s a really good and informative slideshow, it talks about lots of “Project Planning Aspects” including Project Management, Project phases & methods and more.

Hope this information is useful & will get “Alex” to start a great and successful website for his swimwear brand on TIME & BUDGET!

Innas A.