How to manage projects in HubSpot? A practical guide.

When project management happens "on the fly", even an experienced team gets stuck: incomplete briefings, lost versions, deadlines that turn into daily negotiations and approvals that never end.

The good news is that HubSpot can become your coordination center, combining organization, collaboration and marketing automation into a clear workflow.

The purpose of this post is simple: to show you how to adapt HubSpot CRM and Marketing Hub to manage projects and collaborate with the team, with practical examples for educational marketing (educational institutions and universities), but which work for any company that runs recurring campaigns and deliveries.

What you'll see in the post

Here's the roadmap of what we're going to build inside HubSpot, from the basics to operations.

• Why project management has become a prerequisite in marketing, including in educational institutions

• What you can do at HubSpot to organize projects and team deliveries

• How to represent a "project" as Deals, Tickets, Campaigns or customized objects

• How to set up pipelines, stages and SLAs so as not to depend on memory

• How to use workflow and marketing automation to reduce manual effort

• How to structure collaboration with comments, approvals and handoffs

• Three ready-made project templates to copy and adapt

• A final checklist to get the operation up and running without reinventing everything

The bottom line is: you don't need to turn HubSpot into "heavy" PM software. You need a minimal, consistent and auditable system so that the team can perform better.

You can use HubSpot for project management by structuring deliverables as records (campaigns, tickets, deals or projects), standardizing properties and automating handoffs with workflows.

In practice, HubSpot works well when you define a "project object", create a pipeline with clear steps, apply update rules and use marketing automation for reminders, tasks and status changes.

The expected result is less rework, more predictability and cleaner collaboration, because decisions are recorded in the context of the work, not in loose messages.

Happy reading!

Project management in marketing: why it's become a prerequisite

Marketing is no longer a "pile of parts" but a delivery operation: campaigns, content, pages, emails, media and events need to fit together like cogs.

Without project management, the team starts working in a reactive mode. And when this happens, the cost doesn't just show up in delays: it shows up in bad decisions, because nobody sees the whole picture.

In educational marketing, this tends to hurt the most. There are peaks in demand (entrance exams, re-enrolment, postgraduate courses, extension courses, enrolment weeks), dependencies on internal areas (secretariat, coordination, legal, IT) and a high level of responsibility for student information. A small deadline adjustment can result in a chain of rework.

If your operation already runs with a strategy, timetable and targets, project management becomes the link that keeps everything executable.

And HubSpot comes in as a "system of record" to provide visibility, history and governance, without you having to run the process through five tools.

Common pains: rework, lack of ownership, missed deadlines, "infinite approval"

These pains appear in different ways, but the root is usually the same: the absence of a single follow-up structure.

• Rework: the brief changes and nobody knows which version is correct. The designer works on something out of date. The team redoes it.
• Lack of ownership: everyone participates, but no one is responsible for the next step. The task "hangs in the air".
• Missed deadlines: there is no clear SLA for review, approval or publication. The deadline becomes an expectation.
• Infinite approval: feedback arrives in different channels, without criteria, and no one knows what has already been resolved.

Notice the pattern: it's less about "people" and more about process design. HubSpot can help here, because it allows you to centralize information, tasks and context around records.

A practical point is to start with a simple standard for creating and following up demands and, when it makes sense, use HubSpot's own Projects tool to create checklists and operational models.

Image: A simple visual to remind us of the purpose of this post: to organize deliveries, automate handoffs and gain predictability at HubSpot.

What you can do in HubSpot for project management

Before deciding "how", it's worth understanding "what". If your operation already runs HubSpot CRM applied to marketing, the advantage is to bring execution closer to the context of the funnel, without it becoming a parallel spreadsheet.

HubSpot is not, by nature, a dedicated project management site like Asana, Jira or Monday. Nevertheless, it offers components that, when combined, support project management for marketing in a very efficient way.

Project tools within the HubSpot ecosystem

HubSpot allows you to organize work and collaboration using features such as:

1. Records in HubSpot CRM (contacts, companies, deals, tickets and other objects) as a work control unit.
2. Campaigns in Marketing Hub to group assets and see everything that belongs to an initiative (grouping by campaigns is described in the Campaigns documentation ).
3. Tasks to standardize next steps, collections and reminders.
4. Pipelines and stages to visualize flow, bottlenecks and progress.
5. Workflows for marketing automation and operational automation (alerts, creating tasks, updating properties), according to the possibilities described in HubSpot's base on workflows.
6. Comments, mentions and approvals for collaboration in the context of the asset.
7. Reports and dashboards to monitor the execution and quality of the process.

When you use these pieces intentionally, HubSpot becomes a "living dashboard" of what's in progress and what needs attention.

HubSpot vs. a dedicated project management site

This decision is often the watershed. The most honest advice is: use HubSpot when the project needs to be connected to the funnel, assets and customer history, and use a dedicated tool when the team needs in-depth PM features.

It makes sense to use HubSpot when:

• You want to link execution to results (campaigns, leads, conversions) in the same environment.
• Your biggest pain is lack of visibility and handoffs, not "advanced sprint management".
• You need to reduce tool switching and centralize decisions in the context of the asset.

It makes sense to use a dedicated system when:

• You need management of complex dependencies, multiple schedules and resources.
• Your team uses rigid engineering or operations methodologies with detailed backlogs.
• You need very specific functionalities (roadmaps, estimates, burndown).

A common and healthy middle ground: use HubSpot as a "coordination layer" for marketing and CRM integration, and keep a dedicated PM for technical squads. The key is to avoid duplication: define what lives where.

How to set up your "project" within HubSpot (step by step)

The question that decides success here is: what, within your operation, do you call a project?

In marketing, a "project" can be a campaign, landing page production, course launch, enrollment week, editorial calendar or even a one-off demand.

Below, you'll see four common ways of representing a project at HubSpot. None is "right" by definition. The best one is the one that respects your workflow, your permissions and your level of maturity.

Option 1: Project as Deal

Objective: to treat the project as an internal "opportunity" that needs to progress in stages until it is completed.

How to set it up in practice:

1. Create a specific Deals pipeline, for example "Asset Production".
2. Define stages aligned with delivery (briefing, production, review, approval, published, analysis).
3. Create control properties (deadline, responsible, priority) and make some mandatory per stage.

Risk/limitation: Deals have sales semantics. If your sales area uses Deals intensively, mixing "projects" in there can confuse reports and forecasts. The solution is to separate pipelines and standardize the nomenclature.

Option 2: Project as Ticket

Objective: to use Tickets as a demand queue, especially when the operation receives requests from several areas.

How to set it up in practice:

1. Create a ticket pipeline called "Marketing Demands".
2. Create an internal form (or a standard process) for opening the ticket with minimal briefing.
3. Use tags or properties to classify the type of demand (content, landing page, email, media).

Risk/limitation: Tickets are very good for "service" and requests, but can fall short for large initiatives with multiple assets. For large campaigns, you tend to need a layer above (Campaigns or Projects).

Option 3: Project as Campaign

Purpose: to organize assets for an initiative and track performance in Marketing Hub.

How to set it up in practice:

1. Create a Campaign with a clear name and objective (e.g. "Vestibular 2026.1 | Inscrições").
2. Associate assets: landing page, posts, emails, ads, forms.
3. Use tasks and a calendar to keep track of dates and deliverables.

Risk/limitation: Campaigns are excellent for grouping assets and measuring, but they are no substitute for a very detailed task board. In projects with many micro-deliveries, you may need to combine them with Tickets or Tasks.

See also:

• Marketing Hub Starter: how to create the best strategies

• Marketing Hub Professional: how to know if it's right for you

Option 4: Project as Custom Object (or Project object)

Objective: to create your own structure for projects, with tailor-made properties and associations.

How to set it up in practice:

1. Define what a "project" needs to store: course, campus, audience, fundraising window, hypothetical budget, main channel.
2. Create the object (or activate the projects object, if available in your account) and set up properties.
3. Create associations with campaigns, assets, contacts and tickets.

Risk/limitation: customized objects require governance. If you create without a standard, it becomes "just another place" for incomplete information. Start small: a few essential properties and clear rules of use.

Essential properties for any option

Regardless of the form you choose, you need a "minimum viable" set of properties. This set gives clarity, avoids rework and allows automation.

• Project status: open, in progress, awaiting approval, completed, paused.
• Responsible: a single owner for delivery.
• Deadline: target date for publication or delivery.
• Stage: where the work is in the flow.
• Priority: low, medium, high.
• Requester: area or person who requested it.
• Type of delivery: campaign, landing, e-mail, content, media.

The rule of thumb is: if your team asks these questions more than twice a week, it should be a property, not a conversation.

Creation and follow-up: pipeline, stages and SLAs

This is where project management stops being "a list" and becomes an operation. When you design pipelines and SLAs, the team stops relying on reminders and starts relying on rules.

Example of a pipeline (briefing → production → review → approval → published → analysis)

For an educational marketing team, this pipeline usually works well because it reflects the actual delivery cycle.

1. Briefing received

• Entry criteria: minimum briefing completed (objective, audience, channel, date).
• Suggested SLA: screening within X working days (define internally).

2. Production

• Deliverables in progress (copy, design, dev, automations).
• Suggested SLA: depends on the type of asset. Use history to calibrate.

3. Review

• Quick checklist: review brand, CTA, links, compliance rules.
• Suggested SLA: short and consistent, so as not to bottle things up.

4. Approval

• Who approves and in what order.
• Exit criterion: "approved" recorded in the asset, not just "ok" in the chat.

5. Published

• Actual publication date recorded.
• Prepare monitoring.

6. Analysis

• Capture learnings: what worked, what failed, what to adjust.

Basic reports for follow-up

You don't need to start with advanced BI. A simple dashboard goes a long way.

• Items by stage: where the stalled volume is.
• Delays by manager: not to punish, but to see capacity.
• Average time per stage (hypothetical example): to calibrate SLAs and expectations.
• Projects by type of delivery: to scale the effort.

If you represent projects as Tickets or Deals, this type of report tends to be more straightforward. If it's Campaigns, the focus can be more on performance and less on flow.

Advanced dashboard with Custom Report Builder (for higher maturity)

If your team uses HubSpot Professional or Enterprise, you can evolve from the "tracking dashboard" to more predictive management using the Custom Report Builder. The idea is to measure, for example, the average time between steps and identify bottlenecks before they become crises.

How to do it (practical overview):

• Define which transitions matter (e.g. Production → Review, Review → Approval).
• Create date properties to stamp entry at key stages.
• Use workflows to fill in these dates automatically when the record enters the stage
• In the Custom Report Builder, create reports with filters by delivery type, responsible party and time window.

Risk/limitation: this only works well if the team respects the milestone update rule. If the status becomes "decorative", the report becomes a misleading average.

How to implement project management at HubSpot? Operational framework

To get out of the conceptual and into the "setup", the table below summarizes a lean implementation, with the minimum structure to work in educational marketing teams and also in other companies.

The idea is to use it as a basis and adjust it to your level of maturity.

Table: Operational framework for implementing project management at HubSpot

In practice, pipelines and properties give visibility, workflows protect the process and the weekly routine sustains the habit. If one of these pillars is missing, project management becomes an effort with no return.

Workflow and marketing automation to reduce effort

Automation is not about "sophistication", it's about protecting the process. A good workflow prevents a stage from being stopped for lack of a reminder, or a deliverable from being published without being reviewed.

Workflows that are worth more than they seem

The following are examples of marketing automation and operational automation that tend to have a rapid impact, even on small teams.

1. Bursting SLA alerts

• Objective: to warn before the delay becomes a crisis.
• How to use: when the stage changes to "Review", start counting and notify the person responsible and the leader if the deadline passes.
• Risk/limitation: if the team doesn't update status, automation becomes noise. First standardize updates.

2. Automatic creation of tasks when the stage changes

• Objective: to turn handoff into a concrete action.
• How to use: when moving to "Approval", create the task "Approve asset X" assigned to the approver.
• Risk/limitation: too many tasks leads to blindness. Use clear queues and criteria.

3. Event-based step change

• Objective: to reduce manual labor in repetitive routines.
• How to use: when the landing page is published, update status to "Published".
• Risk/limitation: not every event is automatically trackable. Choose only those that you can measure consistently.

4. Standardization of mandatory fields per stage

• Objective: to prevent the record from moving forward "empty".
• How to use: make "Deadline" and "Responsible" mandatory when moving to "Production", for example.
• Risk/limitation: if you demand too much, the team will take shortcuts. Demand the essentials.

Governance: update rules and standardization

Governance is what prevents "the tool" from becoming a mess. Without it, any tool becomes just another place to update.

• Who creates the record: by default, the requester opens it and the team validates it.
• Who updates the stage: the project owner, not "everyone".
• How to record decisions: comment in the asset or note in the record, always with context.
• How to close: only close with a minimum checklist (published + link + date + final status).

A good rule of thumb: if it's not in the log, it doesn't exist for the process.

Permission management (security) to avoid accidental changes

When you bring internal flows into the CRM, the risk of someone moving a step, editing a deadline or "completing" a project by mistake increases. To increase the maturity of the implementation, it's worth combining process + editing restriction.

The goal: to protect critical properties and prevent the pipeline from becoming a dashboard that anyone can change, without context.

How to set it up (practical overview):

• Restrict editing of sensitive properties (e.g. Status, Stage, Deadline, Priority) using access control by property, as described at restrict-viewing/editing-property-access.
• Define access to records by team and by owner property, when it makes sense, using the options at ssignaccess to records.
• For pipelines (Deals/Tickets/Projects/custom objects), limit who can edit the pipeline and apply step rules with pipeline rules and, where necessary, control access per pipeline, as described in limit access to your HubSpot assets.

Risk/limitation: too many permissions can slow down the operation and create "outside shortcuts" (spreadsheets and parallel messages). So start by restricting only what really breaks the process: step, deadline and person responsible.

Team collaboration: handoffs, comments, approvals and visibility

Project management without collaboration becomes a pretty picture and a stressed-out team. The aim is to reduce dependence on loose messages and increase communication in the context of the work.

How to organize communication without relying on loose messages

A pattern that works well:

• Decisions and feedback stay in the asset (comments) or project log.
• Operational questions become a task with a responsible person and a deadline.
• Scope changes become property updates (e.g. "Briefing change: yes").

The advantage is simple: anyone can enter the log and understand the history without "chasing conversation".

Comments and mentions to speed up handoffs

Within HubSpot, you can comment on assets and mention people to draw attention to the right point. Use this feature to:

• Tag the reviewer when the draft is ready;
• Tag the course owner when there is a question about information;
• Tag the coordinator when the final email is being approved.

Risk/limitation: mentions only help if permissions are correct. If someone doesn't have access to the asset, you shouldn't rely on that path.

Approvals: when it's worth formalizing

Approval becomes a bottleneck when there is no rule, and a risk when there is an "informal" rule.

It makes sense to formalize when:

• The asset has a legal or institutional impact (regulations, grants, contract);
• Communication needs to reflect official positioning;
• The institution's reputation is at stake (e.g. re-registration message).

At HubSpot, approvals can be used to bring clarity to "who approves" and "at what point".

Integration with e-mail/Slack

If you use integration with email or Slack, stick to one rule: the integration should take people to registration, not replace registration. Notification is great. Deciding in the channel and not registering is the road back to chaos.

Project templates: 3 ready-made templates to copy

The templates below are a starting point. The idea is that you copy them, adapt them and make them your team's standard.

Before implementing, choose a single format (Ticket, Deal, Campaign or Projects) so as not to duplicate the process.

Template 1: campaign project (fundraising, entrance exam, post-graduation)

When to use it: campaigns with several pieces and a defined advertising window.

1. Briefing

• Campaign objective
• Audience (e.g. candidates, parents, graduates)
• Offer (course, registration, event)
• Channels

2. Asset production

• Landing page
• Forms
• Emails
• Media creatives
• Social posts

3. Approval and publication

• Institutional review
• Brand review
• Checklist of links and UTMs (if applicable)

4. Monitoring and analysis

• Track conversions and lead quality
• Record learnings

Template 2: landing page + inbound (page, automation and conversion)

When to use: when the focus is on conversion and nurturing.

1. Planning

• Main CTA
• Offer (material, registration, guided tour)
• Form fields

2. Construction

• Page and form
• Required: tracking (pixel, events)
• Required: confirmation e-mail

3. Automation

• Nutrition workflow
• Follow-up tasks (where applicable)

4. Publishing

• Test complete
• Publish and monitor

Template 3: recurring content (editorial calendar)

When to use: blog, social networks and ongoing content.

1. Monthly planning

• Topics by intention (doubt, comparison, decision)
• Priority topics

2. Production

• Agenda briefing
• Writing
• Proofreading
• On-page SEO

3. Publishing

• Scheduling
• Distribution

4. Post-publication

• Content update
• Performance recording

Practical tip: if your team already has an editorial calendar or a content planning routine, turn these templates into a "standard template" and stop starting from scratch.

Benefits of effective project management (examples of impact)

You can't promise universal results, because each operation has its own maturity, team and context. But it's safe to say that well-designed project management creates better conditions for execution.

Predictability, reduced rework and better execution of digital marketing strategies

When you have a pipeline, minimal properties and simple automations, it tends to happen:

• More predictability: you see bottlenecks early and adjust capacity.
• Less rework: decisions and versions are recorded in context.
• Better execution: the team spends less energy "coordinating" and more energy "delivering".

This strengthens your digital marketing strategies because execution respects timing, messages and priorities, rather than being dominated by urgency.

Impact on educational marketing teams

For educational institutions, here are some practical examples of where this tends to appear:

• Recruitment: entrance exam campaigns with more consistency between landing, email and media.
• Post-graduation: more stable cadence of content and marketing automation for nurturing.
• Re-enrollment: better coordination between communication and customer service, with less noise.

When project management is clear, you also improve alignment with sales and customer service. The record helps give context to the team that talks to the student.

If you work with recruitment, it's worth having a project standard that always connects the campaign to an enrollment funnel structure.

Checklist for putting project management into practice

If you're just starting out, don't try to implement everything at once. Focus on what changes the game in two weeks. The checklist below is deliberately short.

• Define the "project object" (Ticket, Deal, Campaign or Projects) and use only one
• Create a pipeline with a maximum of 5 to 7 steps
• Create 6 to 10 essential properties and standardize names and options
• Define one owner per project and a weekly update rule
• Create 2 workflows: SLA alert and automatic task creation in the approval stage
• Standardize collaboration: feedback in the asset, decisions in the log, tasks for handoffs
• Create a simple dashboard with volume per stage and delays

If you do just that, it gets better: the team has a single place to look, update and charge, and you reduce the invisible cost of coordination.

To evolve from here, the next layer is: connecting project and result. For example, standardize Campaigns in the Marketing Hub and create reports that link execution to performance.

This is also a good time to review your marketing automation architecture and the design of your workflow between marketing and internal areas.

What are the most common questions about project management at HubSpot?

Does HubSpot have a native "projects" feature?

Yes, depending on the subscription and configuration, HubSpot can offer a project tool (with tasks and templates) and also a project object in the CRM. The key point is to define how this fits into your process.

Is it better to use Tickets or Deals for projects?

It depends on your context. Tickets work best as a "demand queue" and internal support. Deals work best when you want a visual picture of stages, but you need to be careful not to mix them up with sales.

How do you prevent the team from stopping updating the status?

With two things: simple rules (few properties, few steps) and useful automations (SLA alerts, automatic tasks). If updating is a lot of work and doesn't generate any benefits, the team will abandon it.

Can you do approvals inside HubSpot?

In some scenarios and plans, HubSpot offers approval features for assets, especially within Marketing Hub. Even without a "magic button", you can standardize approvals with tasks, comments and decision logging.

What changes for educational marketing?

The volume and risk change. In an educational institution, many deliverables depend on official information and fixed deadlines. That's why it's worth formalizing stages, responsible parties and approvals more rigorously than in smaller operations.

Where do I start if I already have everything spread out in project tools?

Start by integrating context, not duplicating tasks. Bring into HubSpot what needs to be linked to the funnel and assets (campaigns, landing pages, marketing automation) and keep the tool dedicated for advanced management, if necessary.

How do you prevent someone from moving stages or completing projects by mistake?

Use governance + permissions. Restrict editing of critical properties (status, stage, deadline, priority) and limit who can change pipelines, keeping the "project owner" responsible for movements.

Can you create advanced reports on bottlenecks and time between stages?

Yes. In Professional or Enterprise accounts, you can use the Custom Report Builder to measure average time between stages and track bottlenecks by type of delivery, responsible party and period. The main thing is to make sure that the team updates the stages consistently, so that the data doesn't become distorted.

How do you evolve after organizing your projects at HubSpot?

If you've made it this far, you've probably realized that HubSpot can act as a "backbone" for execution, as long as there is a clear workflow, one owner per delivery and simple rules for updating.

The most important gain, on a day-to-day basis, is to get the team out of fire-fighting mode and into a predictable rhythm.

The next natural step is to connect this internal management to what happens after the campaign is on air: customer service, demands, questions and requests that come in through multiple channels.

In educational institutions, this tends to come up strongly during recruitment, enrollment, re-enrollment and post-graduation periods, when the volume increases and any noise becomes a waste of everyone's time.

To close this cycle, it makes sense to look at the Service Hub as a layer for organizing service and operations, with tickets, SLAs, queues, automations and visibility between areas.

This path is detailed in HubSpot's How to Successfully Implement Service Hub, with a step-by-step guide that helps turn "tickets and requests" into a real process, without relying on loose messages.