Everything You Need to Know About the PMP (And Why Get Certified)

The PMP is the most globally recognized and respected certification for project managers, evidenced by the 16% higher median income of PMP holders across the world – 32% higher in the US.

But what does the PMP entail, and are there any benefits besides the possibility of a higher salary?

What is the PMP?

The Project Management Professional (PMP) is a certification that shows others – and yourself – that as a project manager, you’re at the top of your game. This includes your employers, future employers, clients and other organizations.

To get certified, you must have at least 36 months of experience managing projects if you have a university degree, and 60 months if not. Both groups of applicants must have had 35 hours of project management education/training or CAPM^® certification.

After meeting these requirements, all that’s left to do is take an almost 4-hour long (230 minutes to be exact) 180-question exam. Easy.

Well, if it was easy, it wouldn’t mean so much in the world of project management, or open so many doors and opportunities.

Here’s what you can expect if you take the exam to become PMP certified.

 Types of Exam Question:

• Situational – wordy questions that ask you to identify the best course of action in scenarios that could materialize in a project.

• ITTO – questions about the Inputs, Tools, Techniques and Outputs in project management, outlined in the 49 processes described by the PMBOK. You must select the correct ITTO for a given process in these questions.

• Definitions – select the correct definition for a given project management term (all outlined in the PMBOK).

• Formulas – you may be tested on any of the mathematical formulas displayed in the PMBOK guide and asked to calculate numerical value answers.

• Diagrams and flow charts – often used in project management, you will be asked to interpret flow charts/diagrams and select the correct interpretation from the four answers.

• Data based – when given a selection of data, you will need to interpret the meaning of data and answer questions e.g. related to project profitability and opportunity.

• Ethical – project managers are expected to follow an ethical code of conduct. These questions test your ability to handle difficult situations in line with this code.

How hard is it to pass?

 Though there’s no official statistic from the Project Management Institute (PMI) on the percentage of people who pass the PMP each year, most PMP prep sites quote a figure around 60-70%.

So, while it seems there are plenty of people who don’t pass, if you work hard there’s no reason why that should be you. The PMI recommends preparing for 2-3 months, though there are plenty of anecdotes of project managers preparing and passing in 30 days.

It all depends on the hours you put in, how well you know the PMBOK guide, and the quality of the PMP exam prep resources you use.

What are the benefits of getting the PMP?

As you know by now, getting PMP certified is a lot of work – not to mention, it’s pretty costly.

Here is a list of the benefits that make it worthwhile.

You’ll be a better project manager.

Though you’ll be familiar with many of the processes tested by the PMP, getting PMP certified forces you to become knowledgeable about skills you might have avoided developing – or processes you’ve never tried.

This is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and give you the courage to try out new processes.

Better communication within teams.

The more team members complete the PMP, the more consistent the knowledge base and language used to plan projects. The depth of knowledge gained with PMP certification also helps project managers to plan and communicate clearly what should be done.

Both effects improve efficiency and success when completing projects.

Widespread international recognition.

The PMP is the most respected project management qualification across the globe.

Whether you want to open new doors in your career, boost your earning potential, improve your project managing profitability, or impress potential clients with both your certification and your expansive knowledge, the PMP offers a ton of advantages globally.

Increased earning potential.

The deep and extensive understanding of project management gained by becoming PMP certified makes you an asset to your team.

You’ll be able to judge situations with even more wisdom than before and make the best decisions for a project, contributing to the project’s success and profitability. If you’re helping to boost the success of your company, there’s no reason for them to not give you a raise.

If, in the future, you decide to go elsewhere, just having the PMP gives you access to a 32% higher salary, on average, than someone without it. The PMP helps you to stand out against other applicants and secure the most coveted positions – with the best salaries.

How to Develop a Comprehensive Strategic Communication Plan That Aligns with Your Company’s Vision

Effective communication is critical to accomplishing the goals of any company – and consistent, effective communication takes planning.

From how your employees work together and perceive the company to how clients and investors feel about collaborating with your firm to how successfully you pull off projects, great communication is at the crux of it all.

With this being the case, developing a strategic communication plan that aligns with – and pushes your company towards – its goals are essential.

Here are the steps you can take to develop your communication strategy.

1. Outline your goals

For many reasons (not just communication), you should have clearly defined company goals and objectives and a clear vision for your company’s future.

This will impact everything from your internal communications with employees to how you communicate with customers and investors and carry out projects.

Outlining these goals will also help you ensure that the messages you convey are consistent and align with your company’s vision and values.

You should also define the purpose and goals of your communication plan more specifically.

Is it important to have a plan in place to mitigate crises? What types of crises do you need to plan for? Is it a top priority to cultivate trust between yourself and your clients/within your team? Is it vital to keep investors interested in your company?

Answering these questions will help you to follow the remaining steps to build a successful strategic communication plan.

2. Define your target audience(s)

Before you decide what to say, you must know who you’re saying it to. After all, the right message to send to one stakeholder might not be appropriate (or relevant) to send to another.

So, it’s important to list the audiences you intend to communicate with; giving them a rating in terms of priority is also good practice. If your clients/customers are your number one concern, it’s a good idea to put them at the top of the list.

If you’re more concerned about your company’s reputation as an employer – maybe your top concern is attracting the best talent into your company – then employees and the media might be higher on your list.

3. Conduct audience analysis

Once you’ve identified key stakeholders, it’s time to learn more about them. This will enable you to tailor messages that are appropriate and relevant and will achieve your most important communication and company goals.

There are many ways to conduct audience analysis, including distributing surveys, using customer/client feedback, conducting sentiment analysis, and using online analytics, among others.

You can use several tools to gather and manipulate quantitative and qualitative data to identify patterns and trends. From here, you can find out what kind of people comprise your audiences, including information about their preferences, values, and the communication channels they typically use.

4. Craft key messages

Now that you’ve defined your target audiences and gotten to know these stakeholders better with audience analysis, you can craft key messages that appeal to – and are appropriate for – your audiences.

You should tailor key messages to each stakeholder group and for the situations that warrant crafting specific messages. For example, in a crisis, you must prepare unique key messages to disseminate internally to your employees, the media, investors, customers, and more.

If one of your company goals is to improve transparency and build trust with your employees, this will require different messaging. If one of your goals is to keep investors engaged, you’ll want to decide on the kind of information you want to share with them and how often.

Not only do you need to decide on the content of your key messages, but when these messages should be distributed and in which situations.

5. Identify appropriate communication channels

Now that you know what your messages will be, you need to decide where they should go.

As we’ve alluded to, different audiences are likely to spend more time on – and be more receptive to – different communication channels. Based on your audience analysis research, you should decide which channels to disseminate the right messages to your target audiences.

These channels might include:

• Email
• Social media
• Collaborative work platforms
• In-person and/or online meetings
• Online news outlets
• Mainstream media like TV, newspapers

6. Measure the effectiveness of your campaigns

The only way to know if your strategic communication plan is working is to measure the effectiveness of your communication campaigns using KPIs.

Make sure you decide on each communication goal’s most significant key performance indicators. These can range significantly from the number of new clients you attract to the number of views on blog posts and media articles you receive to the sentiment held by the public about your company.

Of course, to do this, you also need to employ the right tools. These might include:

• Sentiment analysis software
• Social media listening tools
• Online analytics tools
• Surveys/client feedback

7. Assign owners

A comprehensive strategic communication plan needs more than one person to disseminate and monitor each communication campaign.

For this reason, it’s good practice to assign owners to each campaign – a person (or team) to oversee the distribution of these messages, monitor their performance, and report back on their findings.

8. Adjust and improve

After monitoring the effectiveness of your communication campaigns, you’ll be able to see which of your communication campaigns were most successful and what components contributed to their success.

These might include the communication channels that reached your audience most effectively, the messages that generated the most positive engagement, and other elements of your communication strategy that impacted your KPIs.

From here, you can hone future campaigns using the most successful elements from previous ones to push your company closer to its goals.

How to Facilitate Effective Communication with Stakeholders to Maximize Project Success

Engaging effectively with stakeholders throughout a project is critical to project success.

A stakeholder is anyone who impacts – and will be impacted by – your project and its outcome. For example, your project team, the client(s), the contractors you use, and the top management within your company.

The most influential stakeholders within your project are your project team and your client, who play the biggest role in the project. Here’s how to facilitate effective communication to engage key stakeholders and achieve project success.

1. Create a communication plan
   The key to good communication is planning for it. Here, you can read about facilitating communication and boosting employee engagement with the project management process.
   
   In addition to fostering great communication within your team, it’s just as important to create a plan for how you’ll engage with clients throughout the project process. After all, the project is for them. If you don’t check in with your client at various points throughout the project, the finished product may be wrong for them.
   
   

   Even if you check in, but infrequently, the client may have to request backtracking and significant changes that alter the project timeline and budget. This, in turn, can decrease the satisfaction of your customers with your work. By predetermining points in the project timeline in which you’ll engage with the client and how you can avoid greater delays.

   So, create a communication plan specific to your client, starting with a kick-off meeting to iron out the details of the project and include plans to re-engage with the client in the project timeline to minimize backtracking. You can also check out how to manage change requests here and implement this into your communication plan.

2. Decide on your communication channels
   Depending on the nature of the project and who you’ll be communicating with throughout, you should decide on the communication channels you’ll use and when.
   
   For example, it might be best to hold in-person meetings with your team and clients at key points in the project. At more regular intervals – and when you just need to check something small with the client or your team – you might use email, social media, or a collaborative working platform to keep the project running smoothly.

3. Plan for the eventuality of conflict
   A key element of successful communication is being able to navigate conflict effectively. To do this, you should assume conflict as inevitable and develop a conflict-resolution plan to combat problems peacefully.
   
   Make sure to come up with a plan to navigate conflicts both with clients and with your team. Each plan should include a list of potential conflicts that may arise and a standardized approach to dealing with them.
   
   That way, you can act in the way you and your team have predetermined is best rather than exacerbate any problem by acting in the heat of the moment.

4. Manage expectations
   A good way to reduce conflict in the first place is to set expectations early with your client. If you think there are any misalignments between the suggested project scope and their timeline and budget, be upfront about this from the start so you don’t disappoint your client later.
   
   Take them through the change management process and ensure they know that significant project scope changes will likely affect the timeline and budget. Lastly, agree on a communication protocol that suits both parties and ensures your client feels informed enough at important milestones along the project.
   
   That way, no one is uncertain about how the project process will go, and your client is less likely to be surprised (in a bad way) by anything that happens along the way.

5. Foster strong relationships
   Project management is a people-driven process; the project’s relative success depends on the people, including how well they communicate and work together.
   
   So, make it a priority to foster strong relationships between team members, perhaps including opportunities for bonding outside of work and to build a strong culture of respect, transparency, and communication.
   
   With your clients, communicate respectfully and work with your client’s best interests to build trust and strengthen your professional relationship. Like with your team, you can also try to build a relationship outside of the office with a client you hope to work with on a longer-term basis, with activities like coffee meetings or even a round of golf.

How to Effectively Draw Attendees to Your Event

Events are a great way to connect with potential customers clients or to network with valuable connections. They can help boost brand awareness, enhance brand loyalty, introduce new products to your target market, bring in revenue, and much more.

The right people need to attend your event to achieve any of these things. This makes a stellar event marketing and promotion strategy essential.

Here are the 12 steps to market and promote your event and entice your target audience to attend.

1. Outline your event goals
   Before you start thinking about promoting your event, you need to figure out your event’s goals. Is your aim to introduce a new audience to your brand and/or products? Is it to build relationships with existing clients? Is it to bring in additional revenue?
   Whatever your goals are, they will inform your event marketing and promotional strategy, from the marketing channels you lean into, to how much you spend and where you spend it.
   For example, if you want to reach new audiences, then you might focus on paid ads more than email marketing to your existing customers. However, there are many ways the goals of your event may influence the minutiae of your event marketing strategy.

2. Define your target audience
   You need to figure out who they are to attract the right people to your events. Are you trying to draw a particular age group or gender? What kind of interests does your target market have, and what kind of events do they usually go to and why?
   After answering these questions, you can build a marketing strategy that specifically appeals to your target audience, allowing you to reach them on the channels where they typically spend their time.

3. Figure out the ‘why’.
    In other words, you need to be able to answer the question: Why would your target audience want to come to your event?
   This answer will involve your event’s USPs. Maybe you have a coveted speaker coming to your event or live entertainment that your target audience would enjoy, or perhaps attendees will get to try a new technology they’re excited about.
   Your ‘why’ will guide all marketing messaging within your promotional strategy. Suppose you know what your target audience will find exciting about your event. In that case, you can write messages that tap into this and make them more eager to buy a ticket, from writing exciting email subject lines to social media posts and paid ads.
   Understanding why your target audience would want to buy tickets allows you to tailor messages that appeal to this desire.

4. Choose your channels and allocate budget.
    Now that you know who to target and with what messages, you can begin strategizing where to allocate your budget.
   If you have a younger target audience, most of your budget should probably go toward social media, where this demographic spends their time. In contrast, middle-aged and older people spend more time on traditional media channels.
   Different ages and genders have certain media preferences, too.
   
   Instagram is a great place to target Gen Z and millennial women. In contrast, having a gaming YouTuber promote your event through their video will appeal to teen boys and men in their early twenties, while boomers are more successfully targeted on Facebook, TV, or via newspapers.
   Think about where your target audience will likely spend their time online and off to make the most of your event marketing and promotion budget.

5. Start early
    A popular maxim in marketing is that it takes customers an average of seven exposures before they purchase.
   While there isn’t much research that indicates this specific number as the sweet spot, it’s a fact that most customers need to see a message multiple times – and at different points in time – to think about spending money.
   In the customer lifecycle, this is called the ‘awareness’ stage, and it’s an essential step to moving customers towards the ‘buying’ stage of their journey.
   It’s a huge advantage to start marketing your event early – even before you have all the details finalized – to sell more tickets. Consider announcing the upcoming event on your social media and website to kickstart the awareness stage of your event marketing strategy.

6. Create an event website
    Once you’ve created some buzz around your event, people need somewhere to find out more and buy tickets.
   Your event website should contain all the information potential attendees might want, from the entertainment, activities, and guests at the event to pricing, time, and dates. It should also be incredibly easy to find and buy tickets on your site; the less resistance there is on the journey to purchase, the more likely a potential attendee will buy a ticket.

7. Use a ticketing platform(s)
   If you’re selling tickets to your event, it’s a good idea to delegate a proportion of your tickets to a ticket platform and sell them on your event website.
   By working with the right platform, you may benefit from some extra, free marketing since many ticketing platforms push the events of tickets they sell.
   Ticketing platforms may be able to reach an audience less accessible to you. People often trust these platforms more than event sites, especially if they’re less familiar with your brand.
   This makes collaborating with ticketing platforms a great way to boost event attendance.

8. Make the most of social media
    Social media is one of the most powerful tools to promote your event.
   You should create an event page on social media and make it shareable to get real-time updates on how many people are interested in – and planning to attend – your event. When people share your event, this is a free way to get it in front of new eyes (the social media followers/friends of those who share it).
   Make sure to post your event’s teasers on your event page and across your brand’s social media to stay in your audience’s consciousness until the big day.
   Posting media like images, videos, and polls is a good idea to pique viewers’ interest. Consider posting clips of speakers or influencers you’ve invited talking about the event or perhaps holding polls about the kind of entertainment your audience wants to see. Focus on posting anything likely to increase engagement and get people talking about your event.
   
   Lastly, most of your online paid ad budget should go towards social media.
   For those who aren’t likely to come across your event page – but are still in your target demographic – social media allows you to target the people most likely to be interested in your event with their paid ads. Create an add that excites and entices viewers to find out more.

9. Leverage influencers
    Aptly named, influencers can be pivotal in making your target audience come to your event with pre-event promotion.
   Not only can influencers spread the word about your event so that more people are made aware of it, but an influencer’s audience often wants to emulate aspects of their lifestyle and trusts their opinions – including on the events they should attend.
   So, if an influencer promotes your event, their audience will see it as a must.
   What’s more, after inviting influencers to your event, you can expect them to post about your event and brand on their social media, promoting awareness of your brand.
   Their audience – which can span thousands or even millions – will associate the incredible event they saw on the influencer’s social media with your brand and be more likely to interact with your company in the future.

10. Use psychology
     Most people get FOMO. In other words, Fear of Missing Out. By using messaging that indicates others’ excitement for the event, that there are limited spaces thanks to its popularity, and highlighting other reasons why this event is not to be missed, you can increase people’s urgency to attend your event.
    You can also invoke social proof psychology by using media captured at previous events in your marketing. Showing event attendees having a great time with images or videos proves to your target audience that your event is worth attending since others had a great time.

11. Engage with sponsors
     Working with a sponsor can help you to build an even better event – thanks to the extra funds you’ll have to play with – and reach a greater span of people with comarketing,
    In return, your sponsor’s branding and/or products will be associated with the event, which may even improve your event experience. Sponsorship represents a symbiotic relationship between your brand and another that benefits both sides.

12. Create a buzz with UGC
     Another way to spread awareness about your event to a greater number of people is to encourage the creation of User Generated Content (UGC). In other words, content created by your customers/the public a.k.a. no one who works for your brand.
    You can do this by running a contest or giveaway – the terms of which should include sharing info and/or creating content about your event/brand – or simply creating a trend that people want to contribute to, using a hashtag that connects people’s content to your trend and your brand/event.
    The more content is created and shared, the more opportunity people can find out about your event.

With a comprehensive event marketing and promotion strategy, you can use events to reach new customers, re-engage old ones, encourage important connections and much more. Follow the above steps to ensure your event’s success and achieve your company’s goals.