Whether you’re assigning a team to launch a new agency product or handling marketing campaigns for your clients, much of what agency teams do can be seen through the lens of project management. Strong project management methods can help you define and implement efforts, keep work within deadline and budget, and continuously improve your offerings.
If you want to enhance your ability to resell digital marketing assets or create and manage new marketing campaigns for clients, consider implementing project management for agencies. Discover some tips and resources for doing so below.
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Why is project management important for agencies?
Marketing campaigns can be seen as projects. Each comes with its own budget, goals, challenges, and limitations. Juggling all those components—often for numerous campaigns and clients—can be difficult if you haven’t honed the skills for managing them.
Effective project management can help you overcome those challenges and can even support positive outcomes such as boosted agency revenue as you’re able to streamline processes, get more done with less, and constantly improve deliverables.
Some common benefits of project management that can help you recession-proof your agency include:
- Improved efficiency: Project management methodologies focus on the efficient use of resources so teams can complete work by deadlines, even with constrained timelines.
- Enhanced client satisfaction: Clients tend to be happier when you implement strong project management methods because they improve communication and ensure deliverables are high-quality, on time, and within budget.
- Increased profitability: Project management is often associated with cost savings, which can drive up profits.
Project management styles and methods
Agency project management might lean on one or more existing project management methods. Test various approaches to find what works for your teams and clients, starting with a few favorites described below.
Waterfall
With the waterfall approach, teams divide projects into phases and complete them linearly. Work on each phase begins only once the preceding phase is complete, creating a cascading waterfall of work through the project timeline.
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Waterfall is a good approach if you want to create repeatable processes you can use with large marketing endeavors. Consider it when you build and launch new sites or manage content creation and publication.
Agile
Agile project management takes an iterative approach that breaks each project down into small stages that can be completed quickly. It also builds in feedback loops and flexibility, supporting change within the process as the project develops.
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Consider agile project management methods if you are bootstrapping an agency, working on boosting startup agency revenue, or working closely with an established client on a marketing effort that is new to both of you.
Scrum
Scrum is a specific agile framework that helps you put the project management philosophy into use in a more structured way. The framework includes values and principles that align project management efforts and involves scrum teams, including product owners and scrum masters.
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Consider implementing scrum for complex marketing projects that require fast-paced but carefully managed teams of skilled professionals, such as website development.
Project management tools for agencies
However you decide to implement project management for agencies, technical tools can help you support team and client communication, manage efforts, and increase positive outcomes when selling services online.
More than half of project management professionals say they face a challenge in collaborating effectively with others (Exploding Topics). Project management tools and white label resources that can enhance collaboration are important.
The functionality and ease of use of a project management tool are top considerations for most users (Techopedia). When choosing tools for your teams, look at whether they have the features to support success with projects. You can start your research with some of the options below.
Trello
Trello is a popular Kanban-style project management tool that lets you create a visual approach to project management. Create and assign project boards, cards, and tasks, and manage to-do lists and documents in the same view.
Trello can work well for small and midsize teams with specific workflows. It tends to get a bit messy for teams that scale beyond that.
Asana
Asana is a comprehensive project and task management tool with plenty of customizations. You can build automated workflows that ensure project tasks are pushed to the next phase and responsible party seamlessly, and integrated email and notification options keep everyone informed.
Making Asana work for you can take time and require building those custom workflows, though. This is a better option for agencies that can devote resources to managing Asana, while Asana helps them manage projects.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a collaboration tool that helps you break projects into a variety of to-do lists, which can then be viewed based on project or task type, due dates, or who they are assigned to.
Basecamp is a simple but powerful tool that can help you manage disparate teams, especially if your marketing projects rely on outside resources like freelancers.
Other project management tools
Some other tools you can use to bring project and task management to your digital marketing strategy include:
- To-doist
- Click-up
- Jira
- Wrike
- Smartsheet
- Moxie
- Podio
Project management processes for different types of agencies
Project management for marketing agencies doesn’t look the same across the board, and it’s important to adapt these methodologies and tools to meet your unique agency strategy. For example, the project management needs for a team working to develop a presence as a Google Workplace reseller differ from the needs of a team creating video content for clients.
Here are some quick tips for developing the right project management process for various agency types:
- Marketing agencies: Consider the scale of your content needs and whether you need a project approach that supports editorial tasks. Waterfall works well here, and you can customize the approach with digital tools to automate parts of the process.
- Digital ad agencies: Because ad management can be an ongoing task, consider developing a project management workflow for building new campaigns before passing them on to regular business process workflows.
- Design agencies: Choose project management tools that support your team visually, such as Gantt charts and kanban cards.
- Software development agencies: Since agile and scrum methods are created with technical dev teams in mind, start with an existing approach and build in customizations for your team from there.
Project management tips for agencies
Whatever approach you take to project management for your agency, consider implementing some of the best practices below to get the most out of your investment:
- Communicate clearly: Avoid using project management terms that clients won’t understand, and be transparent about how you complete work for them. While you don’t need to dig deep into details about white label vs. private label for clients, it can be helpful to walk them through your processes so they understand how you manage projects and what their role is.
- Set realistic goals: Review data and results from earlier projects so you can make accurate predictions about budgets, completion deadlines, and what you can provide.
- Manage client expectations: Under promise (within reason) and overdeliver. Be upfront with clients about where challenges might occur and offer proactive plans for dealing with them.
- Use good collaboration tools: Leverage project management, task management, and communication tools—Slack, Microsoft Teams, and even Vendasta’s own suite of tools can help you collaborate more effectively with agency staff, partners, freelancers, and clients.
- Allocate resources intelligently: Use resources in a way that makes the most sense. Don’t task your in-house team to struggle under the weight of resource development if it makes more sense to partner with outside vendors, for example. Check out our guide to white labeling for help in adding resources without scaling your staff.
Agency project management FAQs
1. What is agency project management?
Agency project management refers to the process of planning, executing, and monitoring client or internal projects within a marketing or creative agency. It ensures campaigns, deliverables, and product launches are completed on time, within budget, and to client expectations.
2. Why is project management important for marketing agencies?
Effective project management helps agencies coordinate multiple clients, campaigns, and deadlines efficiently. It prevents miscommunication, streamlines workflows, improves client satisfaction, and boosts profitability by reducing wasted time and resources.
3. How does Vendasta help agencies improve project management?
Vendasta helps agencies manage projects more effectively through automation and collaboration tools. With Vendasta, agencies can centralize client communications, automate task tracking, and streamline workflows across sales, fulfillment, and reporting—all from one unified platform.
4. What are the best project management methodologies for agencies?
Popular methodologies for agencies include waterfall (ideal for structured campaigns), agile (best for flexible, iterative work), and scrum (perfect for fast-paced, team-based projects). Each method can be adapted to your agency’s workflow and client needs.
5. How can agencies choose the right project management tools?
Agencies should choose tools based on team size, workflow complexity, and preferred project style. Options like Trello, Asana, and Basecamp offer different strengths—from visual organization to advanced automation and collaboration capabilities.
6. How can Vendasta’s platform complement project management tools?
Vendasta complements tools like Asana or Trello by giving agencies a single source of truth for client data, reporting, and task automation. It simplifies project delivery, client updates, and team coordination, helping agencies scale operations without losing control.
7. What challenges do agencies face in project management?
Common challenges include scope creep, poor communication, and unclear task ownership. Without proper systems, agencies risk missed deadlines and dissatisfied clients. Strong project management processes and tools help mitigate these issues.
8. How do agile and waterfall differ in agency project management?
Waterfall is linear and structured—ideal for repeatable processes like website builds. Agile is flexible and iterative, making it better for creative or evolving projects like marketing campaigns. Many agencies blend both methods for optimal results.
9. Can small or startup agencies benefit from project management systems?
Absolutely. Even small agencies gain structure, clarity, and efficiency from using project management systems. These tools help teams deliver consistently high-quality results and scale faster without increasing overhead.
10. How can agencies use automation to improve project management?
Automation reduces manual work by streamlining repetitive tasks such as client reporting, task assignments, and communication. Platforms like Vendasta automate campaign tracking, fulfillment, and reporting, helping agencies save time and focus on strategy and growth.
