Why marketing teams need dedicated project management
Marketing teams need to stay organized if they want campaigns to actually launch on time. Between coordinating with designers, copywriters, developers, stakeholders, and sometimes external agencies, there's a lot of moving pieces. Drop one ball and suddenly your product launch is delayed or that social campaign goes out with broken links.
The right project management tool keeps everyone aligned on deadlines, priorities, and who's responsible for what. No more "I thought you were handling that" moments. No more hunting through email chains to find the latest version of creative assets. Just a clear view of what needs to happen and when.
Marketing teams aren't usually made up of project management nerds or technical folks. They need tools that are actually intuitive - something you can jump into without spending three days in training videos. The project management software on this list hits that sweet spot of powerful enough to handle complex campaigns but approachable enough that your social media manager can figure it out in an afternoon.
We focused on tools that handle the specific chaos of marketing work: creative reviews, campaign timelines, multi-channel coordination, client approvals, reporting to stakeholders who want pretty dashboards. Generic project management tools can work, but these are built with marketing workflows in mind.
From planning your Q1 content calendar to managing a rebrand across six different channels, these tools help marketing teams move faster without everything falling apart.
What we looked for in marketing PM tools
There's approximately five thousand project management tools out there, and most of them are either too simple (glorified to-do lists) or too complex (built for software engineers managing sprints). Marketing teams need something in between.
Visual workflows topped our criteria. Marketers think in campaigns, launches, and content calendars. They need to see timelines, dependencies, and bottlenecks at a glance. Board views, Gantt charts, calendar views - these aren't nice-to-haves, they're essential. If you can't quickly visualize "what's launching next week and is it actually ready," the tool isn't doing its job.
Creative collaboration and proofing came next. Marketing involves a ton of visual assets: designs, videos, social posts, ads. The ability to comment directly on images, mark up designs, track revision rounds, and get approvals without bouncing between tools saves hours every week. Wrike and Asana both nail this with built-in proofing features.
Automation matters more than people think. Marketing has a lot of repetitive workflows: new campaign requests, content approval chains, social post scheduling. Good tools let you automate the boring stuff so your team can focus on the creative work. Set up a template for product launches, automate task assignments, trigger notifications when approvals are needed.
Templates and pre-built workflows help teams hit the ground running. Most marketing activities follow similar patterns: blog post production, event planning, product launches, campaign execution. Tools with marketing-specific templates mean you don't have to build everything from scratch.
Reporting and dashboards keep stakeholders happy. Marketing leaders need to show progress, track budgets, demonstrate ROI. The best tools make it easy to generate reports that actually look good and tell a story, not just export CSV files that someone has to manually format.
Integrations with marketing tools are critical. Your project management tool needs to play nice with Slack, Google Drive, creative tools, social media schedulers, email platforms. If it lives in isolation, people won't use it.
Lastly, we considered ease of use and learning curve. A tool can have every feature imaginable, but if your team needs a week of training to figure out basic functions, it's not worth it. The best tools feel intuitive from day one.
1. Wrike
All Round Use
Wrike is basically built for teams that need serious project management power without the enterprise software headache. For marketing specifically, Wrike shines in a few key areas.
The visual proofing and approval feature is clutch. Upload a design, tag your team members, they leave comments directly on specific parts of the image. No more "can you move the logo down a bit" feedback that nobody can interpret because you don't know which logo or how much. You click, comment, approve. Version control keeps track of iterations so you're never confused about whether you're looking at v3 or v7.
Workflow customization lets you build exactly what your team needs. Standard campaign approval process? Build it once as a template, reuse it forever. Different workflows for different campaign types? No problem. Wrike is flexible enough to adapt to how your team actually works instead of forcing you into rigid structures.
Gantt charts and timeline views are perfect for seeing campaign dependencies. If the design phase is delayed, you can instantly see how that impacts content creation, development, and launch dates. Useful for catching problems before they become disasters.
Wrike has marketing-specific templates ready to go: campaign planning, content calendars, event management, product launches. Grab one, customize it slightly, and you've got a framework in minutes instead of building from scratch.
Automation speeds up repetitive work. Set up rules like "when design is approved, automatically assign to copywriter" or "send reminder three days before deadline." Small time savers that add up when you're running multiple campaigns simultaneously.
Dashboards and reporting are powerful. Create custom views showing campaign status, team workload, budget tracking, whatever metrics your stakeholders care about. The dashboards actually look professional, which matters when you're presenting to leadership.
Integrations cover the major tools marketing teams use: Slack, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Marketo. Connect your existing workflow instead of abandoning tools people already know.
Real-time collaboration means multiple people can work on project plans, update statuses, leave feedback without conflicts or version hell. Everyone sees the same current state.
The learning curve is moderate. Wrike is powerful, which means there's more to learn than simpler tools. But they provide templates and guides that help teams get productive quickly. Most marketing teams are up and running within a week.
Pricing is mid to upper range. Free tier exists but is limited. Paid plans start around $10 per user per month, scaling up for advanced features. Not cheap, but the proofing and automation features justify the cost for teams managing complex campaigns.
2. Asana
Best for Product Teams
Asana has a reputation for being one of the more approachable project management tools, and that's totally deserved. The interface is clean, calm, not overwhelming. Perfect for marketing teams that don't want to feel like they're learning enterprise software.
Multiple view options let different team members see information how they want. Board view for visual thinkers, list view for task-focused folks, calendar view for deadline-driven people, Gantt charts for seeing dependencies. Same data, different perspectives. This flexibility helps when your team has different working styles.
Goal tracking connects campaigns to actual business objectives. Set a goal like "increase newsletter signups by 20%," then link all related campaigns and tasks to that goal. Track progress in one place and show stakeholders how marketing activities contribute to company objectives. Way better than disconnected task lists.
Creative proofing is built in. Upload designs, videos, or any visual asset, and team members can comment directly on specific parts. Track revisions, get approvals, keep everything organized without jumping to another tool. The proofing workflow is smooth enough that teams actually use it instead of falling back to email attachments.
Custom fields let you track campaign-specific data. Add fields for campaign type, channel, budget, target audience, launch date, whatever matters to your team. Then filter and sort by those fields to get different views of your work.
Automations reduce manual busywork. Set rules like "when task moves to 'ready for review,' assign to creative director and post in Slack." Or "three days before deadline, send reminder email." Saves time and prevents things from falling through cracks.
Templates are fantastic for recurring workflows. Blog post production, social campaigns, event planning, product launches - build the workflow once, reuse it forever. Asana has a library of pre-built marketing templates you can use as starting points.
Portfolios give marketing leaders a high-level view across all campaigns. See what's on track, what's behind, where resources are allocated. Great for coordinating across teams and making sure nothing gets overlooked.
Reporting features generate updates automatically. Weekly campaign status, team workload, completed vs planned work. Share with stakeholders without manually compiling everything.
Integrations are extensive. Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, Adobe Creative Cloud, Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, basically every marketing tool you can think of. The Slack integration is particularly good for keeping conversations and work connected.
Asana hits the sweet spot of powerful but not overwhelming. You can be productive on day one, then gradually discover more advanced features as needed. Marketing teams appreciate this gradual learning curve versus tools that dump 500 features on you immediately.
Pricing is reasonable. Free tier works for small teams. Premium starts around $11 per user per month, Business tier (which includes portfolios and advanced reporting) is around $25 per user. Mid-range pricing for what you get.
3. ClickUp
Most Flexible
ClickUp is the "everything and the kitchen sink" option. Seriously, this tool does basically everything. Whether that's a good thing or overwhelming depends on your team.
Customization is ClickUp's superpower. You can configure it to work however your team thinks. Different spaces for different campaign types, custom statuses, unique workflows per department, fields for any data you want to track. Some teams love this flexibility. Others find it paralyzing because there's too many options.
Views are extensive. List, board, calendar, Gantt, timeline, workload, table, map, mind map, activity feed. Plus you can create multiple views of the same data for different purposes. Marketing managers might use Gantt view while team members prefer board view.
Docs and wikis live inside ClickUp, which is handy for keeping campaign briefs, brand guidelines, and strategy documents alongside project tasks. No need to jump to Google Docs or Notion.
Whiteboards for brainstorming and planning. Visual collaboration space for mapping campaigns, planning content, ideating. Then convert whiteboard elements directly into tasks. Useful for the messy early stages of campaign development.
ClickUp AI helps with content creation and summarization. Generate campaign ideas, write first drafts of social posts, summarize long threads, create action items from meeting notes. The AI features are hit or miss - sometimes brilliant, sometimes generic - but when they work they save time.
Automation capabilities are powerful. Build complex workflows with multiple triggers and actions. When X happens, do Y and Z, but only if condition A is met. You can automate almost anything, though setting up complex automations takes time.
Dashboards are highly customizable. Track campaign metrics, team performance, budget utilization, whatever data matters to you. Drag and drop widgets to build exactly the view you need.
Templates and the template center help teams start faster. ClickUp has marketing-specific templates for campaigns, content calendars, social media planning. Community templates from other marketing teams provide additional options.
Time tracking is built in, useful for agencies or teams that bill clients. Track time per task or campaign, generate reports, see where hours are going.
The big caveat with ClickUp is complexity. Yes, it can do everything. But that means there's a lot to learn and configure. Teams that invest setup time love it. Teams looking for quick wins might get frustrated. I've seen marketing teams abandon ClickUp after a month because they never got past the setup phase.
Integrations cover all major marketing tools. Slack, Google Drive, Zoom, Salesforce, HubSpot, social media tools, email platforms.
Pricing is competitive. Free tier is actually usable. Paid plans start around $7 per user per month. Good value considering how much functionality you get, assuming you actually use it all.
Bottom line: ClickUp works great for marketing teams willing to invest time in setup and learning. If you want something you can use productively day one with zero configuration, look elsewhere.
4. monday.com
All Rounder PM Tool
monday.com (they style it lowercase, which always looks weird to me) is super visual and colorful. If your team likes seeing progress at a glance with minimal clicking, this is a strong option.
The board-based interface is intuitive. Each campaign or project gets a board, tasks are rows, attributes are columns. Color-coded statuses make it immediately obvious what's done, in progress, or stuck. You can customize columns to track whatever matters: deadlines, owners, campaign type, budget, priority.
Multiple views let you look at the same data differently. Timeline view shows Gantt-style dependencies, calendar view displays deadlines, Kanban view groups by status, chart view visualizes data. Switch between views based on what question you're trying to answer.
Automations handle repetitive work. monday.com has a visual automation builder that's easier to use than ClickUp's, though less powerful. Set up rules like "when status changes to approved, notify creative team and move to next phase." No coding required.
Integrations connect your marketing stack. Slack notifications, Google Drive attachments, Zoom meetings, email tools, social media platforms, analytics tools. The ecosystem is pretty comprehensive.
Dashboards combine data from multiple boards to give leadership a high-level view. Track all campaigns simultaneously, see team workload across projects, monitor budgets and deadlines. The dashboards look polished, which matters for stakeholder presentations.
Templates for marketing workflows get you started quickly. Content calendar, campaign management, event planning, creative requests. Use as-is or customize to match your processes.
Forms for intake and requests help manage incoming work. Build a form for campaign requests, internal teams fill it out, submissions automatically create tasks on the right board with all context included. Beats email requests or random Slack messages.
Time tracking shows where hours are going. Useful for agencies billing clients or teams trying to understand time allocation across campaigns.
The learning curve is gentle. monday.com is visual and intuitive enough that most people figure it out quickly. There's depth for power users, but you don't need to master everything to be productive.
Two downsides worth mentioning: pricing gets expensive as teams grow (starts around $8 per user per month, scales up quickly), and some teams find the colorful interface a bit much. If you prefer minimalist design, monday.com's rainbow approach might feel overwhelming.
Overall, solid choice for marketing teams that want something visual, flexible, and relatively easy to learn. Works particularly well for teams coordinating between internal marketers and external agencies or contractors.
5. Hive
Best for Chat
Hive positions itself as the tool for hybrid and remote teams, which honestly describes most marketing teams these days. The built-in chat and collaboration features recognize that modern work happens across tools and timezones.
Multiple project views cover different perspectives. Kanban boards, Gantt charts, calendar, table, portfolio view. Marketing managers might live in Gantt view tracking campaign timelines while team members prefer Kanban for daily tasks.
Hive Chat brings conversations into the same tool as work. Instead of coordinating in Slack then updating tasks in a separate PM tool, discussions and task updates happen in one place. Reduces context switching, though some teams prefer keeping chat and project management separate.
Proofing and approvals are built in. Upload creative assets, gather feedback, track revisions, get sign-offs. Version control keeps everything organized. Not as polished as Wrike's proofing, but functional enough for most marketing teams.
Goals and tracking help connect daily tasks to bigger objectives. Set campaign goals, link related tasks, track progress. Show stakeholders how marketing activities contribute to business outcomes.
Resource management and workload views prevent team burnout. See who's overloaded, who has capacity, redistribute work accordingly. Particularly useful for marketing teams juggling multiple campaigns with overlapping deadlines.
Automations streamline workflows. Set up recurring tasks for weekly social posts, automate assignment when new campaign requests come in, trigger notifications at key milestones. Hive's automation builder is straightforward, not quite as powerful as ClickUp but easier to use.
Content calendars help plan and visualize publishing schedules. See all content across channels in calendar view, identify gaps, ensure consistent output.
Custom dashboards track metrics that matter to your team. Campaign status, budget vs spend, content production pipeline, team velocity. Build views for different stakeholders: detailed for marketing managers, high-level for executives.
Time tracking with summaries shows where hours go. Generate reports for clients, understand resource allocation, identify bottlenecks.
Templates for common marketing workflows speed up project creation. Campaign launches, content production, event planning. Build once, reuse forever.
Integrations connect to Slack (even though Hive has chat built in, many teams still use Slack), Google Drive, Zoom, Salesforce, and other marketing tools.
The all-in-one approach is Hive's strength and potential weakness. Having chat, project management, time tracking, and analytics in one tool reduces tool sprawl. But some teams prefer best-of-breed tools for each function. Comes down to whether you value consolidation or specialization.
Pricing is mid-range, around $12 per user per month for full features. Free tier exists but is limited.
Hive works well for marketing teams that want tight collaboration features and don't mind a moderately complex tool. The chat integration is either brilliant or unnecessary depending on your existing workflow.
6. Teamwork
Best for Agency Work
Teamwork is specifically built for client work and agency operations, which makes it perfect for marketing teams working with external clients or managing campaigns for multiple internal stakeholders.
Client access and permissions let you give clients visibility without overwhelming them. They can see campaign progress, approve deliverables, provide feedback, track budgets, all without accessing your internal planning or seeing other clients' work. This transparency builds trust and reduces "what's the status" emails.
Project templates for repeating workflows save massive amounts of time. If you run similar campaigns for multiple clients, build the workflow once (discovery, creative brief, design, revisions, approval, launch), then replicate it with one click for each new client. Adjust dates and assignments, you're ready to go.
Time tracking and budgets are core features. Track hours per task and project, compare to estimates, see if campaigns are profitable. Generate time reports for billing or internal analysis. Budget tracking shows spend vs plan in real-time.
Milestones and dependencies help manage complex campaigns with multiple phases. Design phase must complete before development starts, development must finish before QA begins. Teamwork visualizes these dependencies and alerts you when delays will impact downstream work.
File management keeps all campaign assets organized by project. No more hunting through Google Drive folders or email attachments to find the right version of a creative brief. Everything lives with the project it belongs to.
Custom fields track campaign-specific data. Add fields for campaign type, channel, target audience, expected ROI, whatever your team needs to track. Filter and report on these fields to get insights.
Automations reduce manual work. Recurring tasks for ongoing campaigns, automated notifications, workflow triggers. Not as powerful as ClickUp's automations but sufficient for most marketing needs.
Reporting features generate professional client updates. Campaign status, time spent, budget utilization, upcoming milestones. Export or share directly with clients.
Collaboration tools include comments, file proofing, notifications. Real-time updates keep everyone aligned without constant meetings.
Integrations cover major tools: Slack, Google Drive, HubSpot, Salesforce, Harvest for additional time tracking, Zapier for connecting other apps.
The interface is professional but not particularly modern. Functional, occasionally clunky. Teams focused on substance over style won't mind, but if you love beautiful interfaces, Teamwork might feel dated.
Pricing is competitive at around $10 per user per month for most features. Free tier exists for very small teams.
Teamwork excels for marketing agencies, in-house teams managing multiple internal clients (product lines, business units), and any team that needs detailed time and budget tracking. If client transparency and billing are priorities, Teamwork deserves a close look.
Which marketing PM tool should you choose?
Alright, which one should you actually pick? Depends on your team's specific needs and how you like to work.
For all-around power with excellent creative proofing, Wrike is hard to beat. The visual markup and approval workflow alone makes it worth considering if your team handles lots of design work. Yeah, there's a learning curve, but you get a lot of capability once you're past it.
Asana wins for teams that want something approachable and well-balanced. Not the most powerful tool here, not the simplest, but it hits a sweet spot of capable without being overwhelming. Great for product marketing teams coordinating cross-functional work.
ClickUp makes sense if you want maximum flexibility and don't mind investing setup time. Can do pretty much anything, but requires configuration and learning. Best for teams with someone who enjoys diving deep into tool optimization (every team has one of these people, or should).
monday.com fits teams that think visually and want something colorful and intuitive. The board-based interface clicks for people who struggled with more abstract tools. Good for teams coordinating with external agencies or contractors.
Hive works if your team wants chat and project management unified. Reduces tool sprawl, keeps conversations and tasks connected. The resource management features are solid for preventing team burnout.
Teamwork is the move for agencies and teams doing client work. Client portals, time tracking, budget management, these features are core, not afterthoughts. If you bill clients or need detailed project profitability tracking, Teamwork probably fits best.
Pricing-wise, most tools land in the $8-15 per user per month range for full features. ClickUp is slightly cheaper, monday.com can get expensive at scale. Most offer free tiers for small teams to try before committing.
Integrations are pretty similar across tools - they all connect to Slack, Google Drive, and major marketing platforms. Specific integrations might tip the balance if your team is heavily invested in particular tools.
One thing to consider: does your team prefer structure or flexibility? Asana and monday.com are more opinionated about workflows. ClickUp and Wrike give you more rope to build custom processes (and potentially hang yourself if you overcomplicate things).
Key features for marketing teams
Let's talk about what features actually matter for marketing project management, beyond the generic stuff every PM tool claims to do.
Creative proofing and approval workflows are essential. Marketing teams produce tons of visual content: ads, social posts, landing pages, email designs, videos. Being able to comment directly on designs, track revision rounds, and get approvals without email chains saves hours every week. Wrike and Asana have this nailed. Tools without dedicated proofing features force you to bolt on something like Frame.io or ziflow, which works but adds complexity.
Campaign calendar views help you see the big picture. What's launching next week? Next month? Are you about to have three major campaigns overlap and overwhelm your team? Calendar and timeline views make these patterns obvious before they become problems.
Custom fields for campaign tracking let you add metadata that matters to marketing: campaign type, channel, target audience, budget, expected ROI. Then filter and sort by these fields to answer questions like "show me all social campaigns launching this quarter" or "which campaigns are targeting enterprise customers."
Automation for repetitive workflows prevents busywork. New campaign request comes in, automatically create tasks, assign team members, set deadlines based on templates. Content gets approved, automatically move to next phase and notify the design team. Small automations compound into significant time savings.
Reporting and dashboards keep stakeholders informed without manual updates. Marketing leaders need to show what's in progress, what's at risk, how resources are allocated. Good tools generate these views automatically instead of requiring someone to compile status updates every week.
Intake forms and request management help wrangle incoming work. Instead of campaign requests scattered across email, Slack, hallway conversations, use forms that capture requirements and automatically create projects with all context included.
Goal tracking connects campaigns to business objectives. Track not just "did we finish this campaign" but "did this campaign contribute to our Q1 signup goal." Shows impact, not just activity.
Resource management prevents burnout. See team workload, identify when someone is juggling too many campaigns, redistribute work before people hit breaking points. Particularly important for small marketing teams running lots of campaigns.
Template libraries speed up project creation. Most marketing work follows patterns: blog post production, event promotion, product launches. Build the workflow once, reuse it dozens of times.
Collaboration features that actually work: real-time editing, threaded comments, @mentions, file attachments, notification management. Sounds basic, but plenty of tools get this wrong with clunky interfaces or notification spam that trains people to ignore updates.
Making the final call
Marketing project management tools exist because marketing work is inherently complex: multiple stakeholders, creative iteration, channel coordination, deadline pressure, constantly changing priorities. The right tool doesn't eliminate complexity, but it makes the chaos manageable.
For most marketing teams, Asana or Wrike are safe choices. Balanced, proven, good support for marketing workflows. You won't go wrong with either.
If you're an agency or do client work, Teamwork's client features and time tracking make it worth the slightly dated interface. If you love customization and have time to invest, ClickUp can become exactly the tool your team needs.
The tool matters less than actually using it consistently. Pick one, set it up properly, train your team, build it into your workflow. A basic tool that everyone actually uses beats a perfect tool that half your team ignores while continuing to manage their work in spreadsheets and email.
Start with templates, automate repetitive stuff, keep your campaign data updated, review regularly to improve processes. The goal isn't perfect project management. It's shipping campaigns on time without everyone burning out or important details falling through cracks.