5 Examples Of Projects You Should Streamline

What are the routine projects that you and your team complete each week, month, quarter? Have you considered the most efficient ways to run them? Would you like to have more time marketing, and less time managing?

At Mojo, we're always on the lookout for new tools or processes to achieve work life zen—whether that's a better project management system or an entirely new method of delivering services.

Recently, HubSpot gave us a sneak peak at their brand new product called Projects, "a productivity tool designed to help you and your team meet deadlines, achieve goals and learn new skills."  Not only is it a project management system, it is a "learn by doing" system that helps streamline your work, and trains you how to do it properly.

Included in the tool are dozens of templates designed by HubSpot experts. We'll walk through five examples of projects you can streamline using these templates.

1. Conducting a Monthly Performance Review

Every month, we put together a performance review for SpinWeb and for our digital marketing engagement clients. We like to tailor these reports to the client, so if someone wants to focus more on traffic sources or social media, we will include those things in their report. The nice thing about the templates in Projects is that it gives you step by step tips for what metrics to look at, and how to analyze them. 

You can copy this template and start to customize it. Let's look at the steps that HubSpot outlines for conducting a monthly performance review.

You can see that for each task, you can click into the task and get tips for how to do that step. For example, this first step is Assess sources of site traffic. Then, the tips for that step give you guiding questions to ask so you understand the context of site traffic sources, or how to analyze or interpret the data that you're looking at. 

Who could use this? Train your new assistant or marketing coordinator to run these monthly reviews. Not only will he or she get the basic steps to know what data to pull, they can absorb some basic training in marketing principals, how to use HubSpot, and tips for interpreting the data.

2. Creating a Webinar

Most people who produce webinars (or webcasts, as we like to call them) run them on a regular schedule. Use a project workflow to streamline this process. For each webcast, basic set-up rules remain consistent from event to event. Projects lets you create a template that you can use over and over again, so you don't have to replicate your efforts when you need to create a new webcast project.

I chose this particular project for two reasons. First, webinars are complex and involve many tasks from start to completion. Second, a webinar is the kind of event you might host at least three to four times a year—if not every month, depending on your organization. You'll see in the following screenshot what I mean about this being a complex project (31 separate tasks and subtasks!).

I need to customize this template, so I go ahead and add it to My Projects. From here, I can start making it my own. Change the name, edit the task names, start assigning tasks and setting deadlines.

You can communicate with team members on each task, attach documents or screenshots, and add comments. 

Once you've determined your webcast process, steps, and who is responsible for each task, you can streamline this project and boost the efficiency of your team.

3. Re-engage Blog Subscribers

Contact list hygiene is one of those things that can fall between the cracks and get neglected. This template tells you exactly what to do, so you have no excuse for skipping this regular maintenance routine (I'm talking to myself here, too)!

One of the features of the Projects templates is the "estimated time to complete." This examples estimates two hours to complete. Let's see what HubSpot recommends for streamlining this project:

This project is just seven steps. Sometimes we fail to start a project because we don't know where or how to start. The template doesn't just stop at "Identify your inactive blog subscribers." It describes how to do this and lays out some rules of thumb for what makes a subscriber inactive.

Now, this is something that as a digital agency we provide as guidance to our clients, or we will complete this kind of task ourselves as part of the engagement. But, at SpinWeb, our philosophy is not just to do the fishing for our clients and serve up a tasty fish dinner. We want to teach you how to fish, and help you understand why we're fishing in the first place!

These templates offer a great way to collaborate with our clients, as well as our team members. We can assign project tasks to clients, as well as help them to peek behind the curtain to see the how and why of a marketing project.

4. How to Set-up Lead Scoring

Your sales team wants to contact the hottest leads first, so make it easy for them through lead scoring and automation. Help your BFFs in Sales to close more deals and feel like the hero that you are.

How do you score a lead? What IS lead scoring? Where do I even begin? This template gets you started and shows you, step-by-step, how to complete each task.

You'll find a "learn more" link at the end of each task to get best practices from the experts.

5. Launching a Content Offer Campaign

Building a great inbound or digital marketing campaign is more than just creating high-quality content and slapping it on social media. You need a fleet of supporting tactics and assets—optimized landing page and thank you page, effective CTAs, targeted email campaigns, related blog posts and social media posts, just to name a few.

Bonus: Fast Start for Marketers. If you're curious about HubSpot and thinking of starting a free trial, this project is for you. You'll be introduced to inbound tactics that drive traffic and generate leads for your company.

Want to start one of these projects today? Get in touch.