Marketing ProjectsBy Olivier Mesly

Marketing is about placing a new product or service into the market. Projects are about delivering new products and services. The merger of these two fields holds great promise for delivering value to organizations and their clients. Project managers can serve many markets ranging from investors who fund projects to that of clients who use new products and services. Marketing Projects is a guide for helping project managers have projects funded or deliver value to end users. It is also a guide for marketing managers new to the world of project management.

The book begins by presenting the basics of both marketing and project management and highlights the aspects that are unique and relevant to both areas. It then explores marketing project feasibility and presents tools for assessing feasibility, which include the 6Ps of project management strategy:

The project 4Ps: plan, processes, people, and power

PRO: pessimistic, realistic, and optimistic scenarios

POVs: points of vulnerability

POE: point of equilibrium

POW: product, organization, and work breakdown structures

PWP: work psychodynamics

This book illustrates how to use these tools to market new projects to potential sponsors and investors. It then explores marketing projects to end users. Crucial to the success of projects are the relationships between project managers and clients and the way marketing experts implement their strategies. This book explains how project managers can develop meaningful relationships with clients to foster trust and have positive interactions.

Project managers excel at managing the processes for delivering new products and services. Marketers are keenly aware of latent, or unconscious needs, as well as those developing and emerging, and can provide project promoters and managers with exciting ideas. This book will help improve the mutual understanding between marketing and project managers, an effort ultimately benefiting end users, whether they be investors or customers. A better work atmosphere and a closer fit between marketing and project management objectives can only serve the interests of investors and end users, for whom marketers and project managers conceive and realize projects, one way or the other.