A clear, color-coded visual can help you explain your ideas and inspire your audience, whether you’re working on a plan for an internal marketing project or an external presentation.
In this professional role, you can harness the power of the Gantt chart for marketing plan purposes, increasing both team synergy and organizational support for team initiatives.
In this guide, we’ll provide a detailed overview of how marketing departments can benefit from Gantt charts. We’ll also discuss monday.com as a resource for action-oriented planning, including plug-and-play templates that help you create Gantt charts and other visual formats. But let’s first address the main focal point of this piece.
What is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a visual tool that uses color-coded horizontal bars to show progress toward goals over time.
While it’s commonly used for project management, a Gantt chart for marketing plans can help organize your timelines and deliverables to support more effective results.The horizontal axis includes a timeline with the marketing plan start date on the left and the finish date on the other end. The tasks your team must complete first appear at the top of the Gantt chart, with long-term tasks showing up further down the list. Since each horizontal bar represents a separate task, you can see how they overlap with one another to better allocate time, labor, and financial resources.
Teams can manage marketing campaigns and effectively work toward their goals with this versatile resource. Unlike most charts and graphs, which measure key performance indicators after a project or campaign, Gantt charts give you progress data in real-time. This instantaneous feedback is particularly valuable for project planning in the marketing realm.
Building a Gantt chart is relatively simple once you know what you want to achieve, when, and how you’ll get there. Though your gantt chart will be unique for your needs, most charts share a few commonalities.
Here’s what you need when creating a Gantt chart for marketing plans
Every Gantt chart looks different, but each version uses horizontal bars to represent the schedule of a task within a project with milestones and tasks documented along the way. You can also use this visual to show how a marketing plan’s tasks depend on one another for successful completion, with cues such as lines or arrows to represent these dependencies.
The important aspects of every marketing Gantt chart include:
- Tasks: Actions that must take place for successful completion of the project plan
- Subtasks: Tasks attached to a larger task
- The task’s owner: The person or team that holds responsible for the task
- Schedule: The time it takes to complete the task, reflected by the length of the horizontal bar, shown in months, weeks, days, or even hours
- Milestones: Key benchmarks along the way to successful project completion
You can easily build a Gantt chart for your organization’s marketing plan with the intuitive Work OS on monday.com.
Our project management software includes a Gantt chart template you can customize for any marketing project with fast drag-and-drop functionality. You can set multiple task owners, statuses, milestones, and task dependencies with the click of a button — no learning curve required.
Bringing your marketing team together with a Gantt chart on monday.com
Making a Gantt chart is fast and easy when you start with a template from monday.com. When you log in, a pop-up window asks you to name your workspace and select the type of information you want to manage with your Gantt chart. Decide how you want to group your project tasks, such as by week or month, and then add a new line for each of your tasks.
When you click OK, you’ll be in your new customizable workspace. At the top of the page, click on Add View and select Gantt to instantly transform your notes into a full-fledged Gantt chart to share with team members and stakeholders.
In addition to building Gantt charts, you can connect with team members in the next office or across the globe with our suite of smart collaboration tools. Start with Canvas, a collaborative whiteboard where marketing teams can share ideas in real-time. When you need a seamless process with impeccable documentation, share requests with WorkForms. Hundreds of advanced integrations pair with the tools you already use, from Zoom to Google to Dropbox and beyond. These collaboration tools are especially helpful if your team transitioned to remote work and remains in far-flung locations.
Gantt charts are flexible enough to use alone, but they also complement countless other marketing tools you can use to strategize and achieve your goals. Besides for Gantt chart software, what other tools are important for managing marketing plans?
You’ll find a comprehensive suite of marketing resources to help your teams meet their goals with our marketing work management software. Organize and protect valuable multimedia files and deliverables with Digital Assets Management and effortlessly plan campaign content drops with The Editorial Calendar Template.
If your campaign includes live or virtual meetings, our event planning templates include registration forms, budget spreadsheets, and other necessities. The integrated Campaign Tracking dashboard provides an instant snapshot of budget spending and return on investment. With Creative Request Forms, you can easily assign tasks to team members to streamline workflow and ensure all goes as planned. After all, collaboration within and across teams is a must for marketing campaign success.
Browse our template center to find more tools that can help you manage marketing and business processes.
Are there any related templates you can use?
You can expand your project planning toolbox with our Marketing Strategy Template and Marketing Campaign Template. First, build out a detailed strategic marketing plan that captures all the relevant organizational knowledge in one central resource. You can view the plan as a Gantt chart or in one of dozens of other data visualization formats depending on your needs.
Once you’ve set up the Marketing Strategy Template, you can reduce tedious tasks by automating routine actions and connecting with your favorite apps. Need ideas? Try syncing project deadlines to your team’s Google Calendars or deploy your Mailchimp newsletter straight to subscribers without leaving your dashboard.
Our Marketing Campaign Template aligns project benchmarks, goals, and actions for transparent visualization. Marketing leaders can use this resource to make smart data-based decisions and pivot to a new approach when necessary.
Want more information on integrating Gantt charts into marketing processes? We’ve got a few more tips in the FAQs.
Gantt chart FAQs
What is the benefit of using a Gantt chart in marketing?
Gantt bar charts are perfect for everything from product launches to awareness campaigns. Your marketing teams can see progress at a glance and determine necessary actions to make it over the finish line on time and under budget. You can also impress internal and external stakeholders by visualizing progress toward organizational goals.
Is there a Gantt chart template in Excel?
Microsoft Excel does not include a Gantt chart template. If you decide to use Excel, you must download templates from external sources for use within the company’s spreadsheet software or build your own Gantt chart from scratch. You can also skip those steps and grab easy-to-customize templates from monday.com.
What is the first step in creating a Gantt chart?
To start your Gantt chart, define the important aspects of your project. As described above, these elements include timeline, tasks, subtasks, and task owners. Your timeline serves as the chart’s horizontal axis and you add a horizontal bar for each task.
Execute projects differently with a Gantt chart on monday.com
When you try this project management tool, you’ll understand why Gantt charts deserve a spot in your permanent marketing strategy. You can customize this approach for the way you work while driving real results for your team’s objectives.
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