JIRA used for marketing (besides IT)

Petr Anderle March 26, 2020

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone from this awesome community had any experience with JIRA being used not only by IT development teams, which is the usual usecase, but also by marketing teams to handle their (campaign) activities? And I mean multiple marketing teams, usually dislocated, etc., being set up the way IT dev teams typically work these days when following Agile. 

I understand JIRA Core is touching this topic a bit, however, comparing to, for example, Asana or Wrike, it's not as complex and marketing-processes oriented as is. Which is one of the reasons why marketing managers do not typically consider JIRA as the right platform for marketing operations when going through their selection process (unfortunately). And when IT dep suggests using JIRA as the platform (At least that's my experience being both on the IT development and marketing side for many years.

Does anyone have any experience regarding this topic? I would really appreciate hearing any insights, inputs, pretty much any information.  Thank you!

 

2 comments

Kat Warner
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
March 26, 2020

@Bill Cushard has written a book on this topic The Art of Agile Marketing: A Practical Roadmap for Implementing Kanban and Scrum in Jira and Confluence. The Kindle version is $3 - certainly worth picking up at that price whether you can be reimbursed by your employer or now.

@Poorvi Jhawar, who I work with, recently published an article Using Trello, Jira and Confluence for marketing

 

Both of these people are on Linked In and I'm sure they won't mind if you reach out to them directly. I have tagged them in this post which almost guarantees they will pop into this discussion to add their perspective.

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Petr Anderle March 26, 2020

That's great, thank you! I had read the article before, it's a good one. The question is how often you actually see marketing people use JIRA - and why not more when it makes perfect sense.

For some reason, marketing people tend to think that JIRA is just for developers and they go for other platforms (named in my initial post). Even though it would be much easier and faster simply to adopt JIRA which is already used in their company by their own IT dep. 

Bill Cushard March 26, 2020

@Petr Anderle Since we're marketers....I'll answer your question through that lens.

Atlassian sold Jira to software teams from the very beginning. They deliberately positioned Jira as software for software teams. It worked so well.....no one...who is not on a software team would ever think of Jira as something they can use. 

So, when you say that marketers tend to think that Jira is just for developers....I'd say that's the way Atlassian wanted it. "Our plan worked." 

This is what Geoffrey Moore would have told them to do. Go after that beachhead segment of the market. 

But now...Atlassian wants to grow throughout the enterprise......other IT departments. Business teams. Even us lowly marketing teams. :-)

Atlassian has had some success going outside the developer market segment. IT Support teams for one. 

But...It's hard to overcome good positioning. 

Said another way...Elvis was in more than 34 movies. But he is still the king of rock and roll. 

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Kat Warner
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
March 26, 2020

Elvis was in more than 34 movies. But he is still the king of rock and roll. 

 

I love this so I will steal it :)

Poorvi Jhawar
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
March 26, 2020

Hi @Petr Anderle 

It's great you're considering using Jira for Marketing. I run ALL my marketing using Jira, Confluence and Trello and the blog @Kat Warner  mentioned has some practical tips on how you can use these tools :) 

Some key points: 

  • The integration between these 3 tools makes all your work seamless
  • This is the process I follow: 

Trello: Use Trello as an 'idea board' when Plans aren't finalised and it's just a thought I may or may not want to act on. 

Confluence: Put in my research, I use marketing campaign templates to include information. 

Jira: Create fix versions, then Epics, Initiative, Story and then tickets for all my tasks

Again use Confluence, for the marketing 'output' like emails, blogs etc. 

The beauty of it all, You can create Jira tickets, link confluence pages or the trello board no matter which tool you're using. So all these platforms have updated information. :) 

Along with this, you'll need a CRM, depending on the size and nature of the business I'd recommend HubSpot or Salesforce, they both integrate with Jira :) 

  • I have used Asana too, the transparency Jira, Trello and Confluence offers is absolutely fantastic :)

Jira initially might seem complicated, but like @Bill Cushard said its a perception. It's easier to use than many other tools. If we approach the tools like perhaps Asana/ MS Planner, you will quickly find yourself never using anything else :) 

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Petr Anderle March 27, 2020

Firstly, thanks for getting back to me on this, much appreciated.

We have actually been using JIRA very, very heavily for marketing (thousands of marketers in different roles distributed all across the globe).  And the reason why I actually started this discussion was that after spending long hours searching the web, I could find only very, very limited amount of articles (like the ones mentioned by Kat) about JIRA used for marketing and not just for IT development. Which made me wonder what was the reason behind it - is it because I'm not as good at Googling as I thought I were? :) Or are there some technical limitations JIRA has which marketers simply cannot let slide? Or...?

I take that, as @Bill Cushard  excellently pointed out, it's mainly the product strict positioning of being a tool for IT project management. Unlike (for example) Asana, which is positioned much broadly, even though it has pretty much the same capabilities and features as JIRA... 

As for "But now...Atlassian wants to grow throughout the enterprise" - I could not find anything related to this plan and again, any pointers would be valued as gold by me. :)

Anyways, once again cheers to all for chipping in with your inputs!

Bill Cushard March 27, 2020

@Petr Anderle If you want to know Atlassian's plan.....go no further than their website. 

First: where ever you see the phrase "team" in use...that is Atlassian saying...."Our software helps all teams in your company." Atlassian hardly writes a single sentence without using the word "teams" these days. 

Screen Shot 2020-03-27 at 8.53.53 AM.png

 

 

Second, Under the Team menu item, Atlassian is telling you what teams need their products. Only one out of eight teams listed is a software team showing you Atlassian's expansion. 

Screen Shot 2020-03-27 at 8.54.12 AM.png

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Bill Cushard March 26, 2020

@Kat Warner  You are too kind. Thanks for the mention!!

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