How To Manage Multiple Marketing Tasks and Implement Your Marketing Plan Using Trello

So you have created a killer marketing strategy, but now you need to figure out how to hold yourself (and your team) accountable, stay on track to hit your milestones and goals, and define a clear plan of action to implement your marketing plan. In this article I’ll share the #1 tool I use to manage marketing plan implementation, how to use it, and a free template to get you started.

Your marketing strategy is only as good as its execution. The goals you have identified, the objectives you have, and the action plan you put in place are only good if you avoid the squirrels and shiny objects that can lead you astray.

After creating your marketing plan, you might be wondering how to manage your marketing campaign or how to manage multiple marketing tasks at once.

How do you do that? Meet Trello.

Many business owners, who need a way to organize their marketing plan, find Trello to be the perfect, easy-to-use project management tool for their marketing tasks.

What exactly is Trello?

Trello is an interactive project management and team collaboration tool. It organizes your projects by putting them into simple visual boards. It tracks what is being worked on, who’s working on what, and the status of each project.

Who needs Trello?

The bigger question is, who doesn’t need Trello? Well over 35,000 companies are using Trello to keep up with their project management. The largest industry segments being I-T and software services and marketing and advertising. The majority of the companies using Trello are small (<50 employees) to medium-sized.

What are the pros and cons of Trello?

First, the pros.

• Simple setup
• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop features and seamless interface
• Gives you and your team a clear view of both the status and progress of projects
• Kanban style/lean management method
• Additional resources available (e.g., blog posts, webinars, e-books)
• 4-pricing tiers (free option available)
• Works great for remote teams

Now, the cons.

• Needs Wi-Fi and good data access (airplane mode means no Trello)
• Cards/tasks are limited to only one board/project
• No Gantt (project bar chart)
• Limited email integration
• Keyboard shortcuts and keyboard productivity usage is limited
• Storage limited to 10MB (can be upgraded to 250MB with a Gold subscription)
• More suitable for smaller projects versus larger ones

How to join Trello?

Signing up and starting with Trello is easy.

1. Visit the Trello site.
2. Click or tap “Sign-up” and fill in your information to begin creating your account.
3. Create a Trello account.
4. Create your first board by clicking the “+” button next to your name and select “Create Board.”

That’s it!

How to Use Trello to Manage Multiple Marketing Tasks

So, you have a plan for your marketing strategy. Great! That’s step one. Step two is making sure that you have something to hold yourself accountable and stay on track while implementing your marketing plan.

Even if you aren’t familiar with project management tools, just like the registration process, using Trello to handle your marketing plan is also simple.

1. Create a new board for your marketing plan.
2. Add team members if applicable.
3. Create your lists.
4. Add cards to your lists.
5. Assign cards and give them due dates (and due date reminders!).
6. Add labels to your cards.
7. Search your cards with shortcuts.
8. View your tasks on a calendar (or use other “power-ups”).

Main features of Trello to use

Trello has a handful of main features, some of which are unique to its user-friendly platform.

• Easy, drag-and-drop editing
• Card records archive
• Simple upload (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and local devices)
• Easy organization with labeling, tags, and comments
• Progress meter checklist
• In-line editing
• CRM
• Power-ups
• Templates

Best Practices for Using Trello to Implement Your Marketing Plan

Tips to set up effective Trello boards

• Make them user-friendly. At first glance, will your team members be able to figure out what is going on? Use clean visuals and keep them organized.
• Assign accountability to each board. Assignment of accountability can be done on a weekly basis, switching the person responsible from week to week. The person in charge is responsible for card housekeeping. They follow up on cards that haven’t been moved in a while and make sure new cards are in place.
• As processes change, adapt your board. Don’t be afraid to tweak or change your board. The perfect place to start is a basic framework and as time goes on, adapt your board to what’s best for your team.
• Not sure? Use a template. By using a framework from the Trello Templates gallery or the Trello community, you have a solid starting point. From there you can customize it to fit your marketing plan and workflow.

Time-Saving tips

• Save time with templates.
• Use Trello’s extension, app, power-ups, and add-ons to save time in a number of your project management-related tasks.
• Take Trello with you wherever you go. It has its own Google Chrome extension, Gmail add-on, and Windows or Mac application.
• Use keyboard shortcuts. Trello has a handy list of key-stroke-saving tips.
• Convert emails into Trello cards. If you have all the details in an email, you can forward the message to any Trello board, and with the touch of a button, it becomes a new card.
• Copy and paste from spreadsheets. You don’t need to enter spreadsheet entries manually. A few clicks transfer the spreadsheet entries to Trello, which turns the cells into cards.

Trello Pricing Plans in 2023

With four different levels of pricing, there is an option to fit everyone.

FREE $0.00

For individuals or teams looking to organize any project.

Standard $5.00/user per month

Best for small teams wanting to manage work and scale collaboration.

Premium $10.00/user per month

Ideal for teams that need to track multiple projects with several boards needing timelines, calendars, etc.

Enterprise $17.50/user per month

A must for organizations that need to connect work across teams and require more security and controls.

Ways to Use Trello to Manage your Marketing Plan

Trello shines in its ability to help you tackle the entire content portion of your marketing strategy.

1. Setting goals and defining target audience. Using Trello to create well-defined boards, lists, and cards to help define and record your ideal audience, tone, and result expectations.
2. Brainstorming ideas. Here, you and your team can use the boards to assign analysis tasks, classify ideas, collaborate on topics, and simple messaging.
3. Build an editorial calendar. Create a board named ‘editorial calendar’ or ‘content planner’ and use it to document when and where you are looking to publish content.
4. Work assignments. Assign tasks to all the team members and set due dates.
5. Social media management. Trello offers a wide range of ways to schedule and submit your content. From uploading your content to your CMS to scheduling, publishing and content sharing on social media, it makes it extremely simple to share your content. Thanks to the ability to integrate with other social media management tools like bridge24, you can create customizable reports to analyze with your team to measure your content reach and monitor the effectiveness of your strategy.

Expert tip for creating your marketing plan Trello boards:

Start off with one simple Trello board for your marketing plan. As your marketing plan becomes more robust, create new sub-boards.

For example, initially you may start out with a simple marketing plan Trello board, entering in all of your goals and tasks for the year. Eventually you might need to create an additional Trello board, one that will handle the management of your content marketing strategy (for blogs, emails, and social media).

Finally, you may need to create a separate Trello board for each: one for planning your blog content for the year, one for your email marketing strategy and campaigns, and one for your social media marketing plan.

The key is to start simple and expand to more Trello boards when needed. Your initial marketing plan Trello board as your “master marketing plan board” and all additional boards will be “sub-boards” of it.

If you are a small business owner looking for an uncomplicated way to manage your marketing plan and its multiple marketing tasks, Trello may be the perfect tool.

Here, take a peek.

We have created a FREE social media planner Trello board. This time-saving template has detailed instructions, topic cards complete with proven marketing tips and definitions, and a collection of great ideas to help you get and stay organized.

Natalie Krul Digital Marketing Consultant

Natalie Krul, founder of Klever Strategies, is a seasoned digital marketing consultant who specializes in lead generation and marketing automation for the service-based B2B sector. She excels in crafting bespoke marketing strategies, including email marketing systems and conversion funnels, aimed at consistently generating high-quality leads.

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