What is the Difference Between a Client Account Manager and a Project Manager?
If your agency is growing rapidly, undoubtedly so is your team. Congrats! As you find greater success, more clients will be looking for more help on more projects, which will ultimately require more employees to help with the process. Phew!
But how do you ensure that the team you build is one that will actually suit your agency’s needs? Which position should you hire to help you efficiently scale all while keeping your current clients happy in the process?
Two of the top choices for a growing agency are Client-facing Account Managers and Project Managers. Each position offers different qualities and strengths, and depending on your needs, one might be a better fit for your agency than the other.
To help you decide, we will clearly outline each role so you can determine which position would be the greatest asset for you and your growing team.
Project Manager
What Does a Project Manager Do?
A Project Manager, simply put, is responsible for overseeing and executing projects inside your marketing agency. They are responsible for overseeing a team to ensure that all elements of client projects are running smoothly and are completed on time.
Everyone in an agency plays a role in project management; a team works on their specific tasks to contribute to the project’s overall goals. But it’s only the Project Manager’s job to look at the project globally, ensuring that everything is getting completed on time and in the right order! They’re the one person equipped to communicate with all members of the team and have in-depth knowledge of what’s happening across a project at all levels.
What Are Their Specific Roles?
The extent of a Project Manager’s responsibility depends on your agency’s scope. At a larger agency, a Project Manager could have a more defined role of focusing on a single project only. At a smaller agency, a Project Manager’s duties could take on a broader Project Manager/Client Account Manager hybrid role, where they take on more client communication and management as well as Project Management. If they do both client-facing and project management, and do it well, their skill sets are quite robust (in our opinion)!
A Project Manager’s core responsibilities regardless of scope are the following:
Noticing What’s Slipping Through the Cracks: Project Managers have to quickly and efficiently identify red flags. Lagging timelines and missed deadlines are just some of the warning signs that a project is veering off course. A Project Manager is there to follow up, check in, and right the wrong so projects don’t lose steam.
Preventing Bottlenecks: It’s essential that a Project Manager plots the trajectory of a project to make sure all assets and deliverables are completed on time and in the correct order. For example, if the web team can’t get a client interview up on the website without the graphics, but the graphics team hasn’t received the interview yet from the marketing team, and the marketing team is still not done formatting and proofreading the interview yet to deliver it, a Project Manager would help to ensure that tasks are completed on time and in order to prevent any channels from getting clogged.
If your agency is on the smaller side, sometimes Project Managers can absorb Client Account Manager duties (which we’ll get into further below). What really differentiates which tasks are held by which role is really dependent on your agency's scope.
How Could a Project Manager Help You in Your Agency?
A Project Manager could significantly help your agency if you have a lot of projects running at once. Even if you trust your team to get their jobs done (and get them done right), if no one is ultimately accountable, as an agency owner, this burden falls on you. Having a skilled Project Manager takes the responsibility off your plate and allows for someone else to help manage tasks so you can focus on the big picture.
Client Account Managers
What Does a Client Account Manager Do?
For agencies with a larger scope, you can bring on a Client Account Manager (CAM) whose main goal is to keep all of your clients happy (and in our case, also do project management!). We see this role as a step above a project manager in terms of management— overseeing both the client relationship and the projects. The Project Manager would solely manage their assigned project and cease most, if not all, communication with the client. A Client Account Manager’s main objective is to regularly communicate, check in with, and update clients on the status of their project or across multiple projects, then relay that information back to the team.
What Are Their Specific Roles?
Proactive communication: Client-facing Account Managers check in with clients very regularly to ensure they are fully aware of project updates and communicate with the agency team to update them on where the client is at and how things are going.
Client meetings and reporting: Client-facing Account Managers are responsible for client meetings, calls, catch-ups, surveys, and client reporting.
Onboarding: Being the first point of contact for clients and bringing them on to the agency.
Task management: Although it’s the Project Manager’s job to oversee the project and all its components, it's the Client Account Manager’s job to make sure the Project Manager is overseeing tasks properly and that tasks are being executed well, in addition to bringing the Project Manager’s updates back to the clients.
How Could a Client Account Manager Help You in Your Agency?
If your agency is being significantly outnumbered by the volume of clients you're managing, a Client Account Manager would be the perfect next step. A Client Account Manager could help your agency with client retention and avoiding churn. With a roster of core clients, your agency becomes more stable and profitable as you’re not using resources for recruiting, networking, and onboarding.
Is your agency ready for an expertly trained Client Account Manager to handle your growing needs? We can help! Contact us today so we can discuss finding the perfect Client Account Manager for your team.