Asana

Budget and pricing

Asana’s value depends on your team size and chosen plan. The Personal (free) plan supports up to 10 team members with basic views and unlimited tasks. This free tier is generous for small teams, but advanced features like custom dashboards and automation require paid plans. Starter (approximately €11 per user per month) adds Timeline and Workflow Builder, while Advanced (~€25) unlocks portfolios and advanced reporting. Costs can escalate as you grow: adding many users or needing higher-tier features will increase your spend. Evaluate if the productivity gains offset the per-seat cost. Many early-stage companies leverage Asana’s startup discounts or annual billing to manage budget impact.

Team size and scalability

Consider your current team size and how it may grow. Asana is frequently praised by small businesses and marketing teams for its structure. The platform scales well from a handful of users to enterprise departments you can start simple and layer on complexity as needed. If you’re under 10 users, the free version might suffice initially. As you add projects and colleagues, be prepared to upgrade to keep everyone coordinated. At a certain scale (hundreds of projects or very large teams), Asana can become complex to administer. Plan for training or admin support if you envision rapid growth, and make sure your workflows in Asana won’t become convoluted as more people join.

Ease of adoption

Asana is known for its intuitive interface, which helps with user adoption. Teams often find they can get started with basic task tracking quickly, thanks to Asana’s clean layout and straightforward navigation. Project managers like it because it feels familiar and logical, mirroring traditional project plans in a user-friendly way. However, if your team is completely new to project management tools, expect a learning curve for the more advanced capabilities. Features like custom rules, dependencies, or Agile boards may require some training. The good news is Asana’s user experience is generally praised as easy to grasp for everyday task management. Ensure you have someone to champion best practices internally so that team members fully adopt the tool rather than reverting to email or spreadsheets.

Integration with your stack

Check how well Asana fits into your existing tool stack. A big selling point is Asana’s expansive integrations: it connects with Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and 200+ other apps. This means tasks can link to documents, chats, or calendars your team already uses. If your marketers live in Google Sheets or designers in Figma, Asana can incorporate those workflows instead of replacing them. Smooth integration is crucial for B2B marketing teams that juggle multiple platforms. Before buying, list your must-have integrations and verify Asana supports them out-of-the-box or via Zapier. In most cases it will Asana’s ecosystem covers everything from file sharing to CRM updates. This reduces double work and makes Asana a central hub rather than an isolated system.

Use case alignment

Ensure Asana matches the type of work you need to manage. It shines for campaign planning, marketing ops, client projects, and general business workflows. If you’re coordinating marketing campaigns across channels, launching content, or managing agency client deliverables, Asana provides the structure to keep tasks and owners clear. Its flexibility allows both Kanban boards for creative pipelines and timeline views for launch calendars. However, some specialised scenarios might favor other tools. For software development or issue tracking, dev teams often prefer Jira, as Asana lacks native scrum charts or code integration. For very simple personal task lists, Asana could feel like overkill. Match your primary use cases to Asana’s strengths: cross-functional team projects with many moving parts. If those align, Asana will likely fit like a glove; if not, consider whether a more purpose-built tool would serve you better in that niche.

Collaboration and client access

Asana is built for collaboration, which is critical for B2B teams managing complex projects. Everyone on the team gets visibility into tasks, updates, and deadlines, reducing silos. You can assign tasks to teammates, tag colleagues with @mentions, and comment directly on tasks to keep discussions in context. Notifications and a shared inbox ensure no one misses important changes. If you work with external clients or contractors, Asana supports that too. In an organisation setup, you can invite clients as guests with limited access for free. They can see only the projects or tasks you share with them, enabling transparent client updates without giving away your whole workspace. This guest feature is valuable for agencies you involve clients in progress tracking without needing extra paid licenses. Overall, consider how much internal and external collaboration you handle. If keeping everyone aligned (and accountable) is a priority, Asana’s collaboration features are a strong asset.

Key features and limitations

Before committing, weigh Asana’s feature set against your requirements. It covers all core project management needs: task assignments, due dates, subtasks, file attachments, multiple project views, basic reporting, and even goals tracking on higher plans. For many marketing and operations teams, these tools bring welcome clarity. However, Asana intentionally leaves out certain functions. For example, it has no built-in time tracking if your team needs to log hours, you’ll need an integration or third-party app. Additionally, Asana enforces one assignee per task, reflecting the philosophy that each task should have a single owner. This can be a drawback if you prefer to assign multiple people to one task (you’d need to create copies or use subtasks instead). Some users also note that Asana’s abundance of features can feel overwhelming for very simple workflows. In other words, if you only need a lightweight to-do list, the extra options might be distracting. The best approach is to identify any “must-have” feature for your workflow be it Gantt charts, budgeting, resource management, or two-way calendar sync and confirm if Asana provides it natively. Most likely it does, or offers a workaround, but it’s wise to verify so you won’t be disappointed after purchase.

After running two agencies and now leading growth at a B2B company, I have spent countless hours in Asana and I’ve formed a clear opinion. In short, Asana is one of the most structured and user-friendly project management tools I’ve used, but it’s not without flaws. Its task-centric approach and polished interface instill a sense of order even in chaotic projects. I’ve tried many platforms, and Asana’s UX still stands out for its clarity: the layout of teams, projects, sections, and tasks just makes sense, allowing my teams to hit the ground running with minimal fuss. The ability to toggle between list, board, and timeline views for the same project is a huge plus it accommodates different working styles (my content writers loved boards, while account managers relied on timeline dependencies to map out client campaigns). In day-to-day use, Asana undoubtedly helped us stay aligned and know who was doing what by when, which is half the battle in marketing ops.

However, no tool is perfect. Over time we bumped into Asana’s limitations and quirks. One pain point was the lack of a built-in time tracker we had to integrate Harvest for tracking hours, which wasn’t as seamless as having it natively. Also, Asana’s decision to allow only one assignee per task caused some confusion in our agency setting. Often a designer and a copywriter were both responsible for a deliverable; Asana forced us to split that into two linked tasks or use subtasks, adding a bit of overhead. For the most part, these were manageable trade-offs, but they underscore that Asana isn’t a complete all-in-one solution. In fact, I eventually migrated our team to Notion, mainly because we needed an integrated knowledge base and more flexible content management alongside tasks. Notion gave us docs and databases in one place, something Asana couldn’t do (its project briefs and attachments are useful, but not the same as a full wiki). The switch wasn’t due to Asana’s project management failings it was more about consolidation of tools.

So, who is Asana ideal for? In my view, Asana excels for teams that thrive on organisation and clear responsibility. If you’re a marketing team juggling multi-step campaigns, or an agency coordinating client projects with lots of moving pieces, Asana provides an excellent backbone. It enforces good discipline in task ownership and deadlines, and its notifications keep everyone honest. The platform is especially strong when each task can be clearly owned by one person and the workflow benefits from a set process (e.g. content creation, review, approval). It’s less ideal if your work is ad-hoc or if you require heavy documentation and note-taking alongside tasks that’s where a tool like Notion might serve better. After years of use, I’d rate Asana very highly for its user experience and reliability. The structure it imposes is ultimately a positive, as long as it aligns with your way of working. Even though I’ve moved on to Notion for my current needs, I still consider Asana’s approach to project tracking one of the best, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to B2B teams that need to bring order to their work.

For founders and marketing leads juggling countless campaigns, client deliverables, and internal projects, finding the right workflow tool is vital. This section is an in-depth guide to using Asana in a B2B marketing context, covering practical use cases and honest insights. Whether you’re mapping out a multi-channel campaign or standardising your client onboarding process, Asana can act as your single source of truth to reduce the chaos.

Planning marketing campaigns with Asana

B2B marketers often manage complex campaigns involving content, events, email, and sales enablement. Asana helps you plan and execute these campaigns in a structured way. Start by creating a project for each campaign for example, Q4 Product Launch Campaign. Within this project, you can lay out sections for each phase or channel (e.g. Content, Email, Webinar, Social). Tasks under these sections represent key deliverables and to-dos, like Draft landing page copy or Design webinar slide deck. Asana’s multiple views shine here: in List view you see a straightforward checklist of tasks by section, which is great for an overview. Switch to Timeline view to map out when each piece is due relative to launch dates this Gantt-style timeline ensures you’ve staggered content creation, reviews, and launch events appropriately and no deadlines conflict. Many marketing teams use Timeline to identify dependencies (e.g. design tasks can be marked as dependent on copy tasks, so designers start only when copy is ready). Meanwhile, the Calendar view offers a familiar monthly calendar layout highlighting all campaign activities on their due dates, useful for spotting content cadences or gaps. This visual planning is incredibly useful for aligning with sales or external events: you might notice, for instance, that two webinars were unintentionally scheduled in the same week and adjust timing accordingly.

Collaboration is also crucial in campaign planning. In Asana, all campaign communications can live on the tasks themselves. Instead of long email threads, your team and stakeholders (like product managers or sales reps) can comment on tasks, ask questions, or upload files (images, draft copy, etc.) directly where the work is tracked. This keeps context intact when reviewing the Landing page copy task, you see the Google Doc link, the history of feedback, and the final approved text all in one place. Asana’s internal messaging (task comments and @mentions) reduces back-and-forth across Slack or email, meaning less “work about work” and more focus. For broader oversight, you might set up a campaign portfolio (available on higher plans) where you add each campaign project. This portfolio gives a dashboard view of multiple campaigns, showing status, progress, and key dates at a glance perfect for a Head of Growth managing many initiatives at once.

Beyond planning content and deadlines, Asana supports marketers in coordinating team efforts across channels. Marketing campaigns often involve cross-functional work: the content team, design team, and external agencies might all be contributors. In Asana, you can assign tasks to individuals in each team and they’ll see those tasks on their own dashboards (even if they don’t care about the rest of the project). The My Tasks view in Asana consolidates all tasks a person is responsible for across projects, so a designer working on five campaigns can manage her workload in one place. This ensures accountability each deliverable has a clear owner but still maintains a shared project view for the campaign manager. If something falls behind, everyone associated with the project can be notified via status updates. Asana lets you post Project Status updates (with a green/yellow/red status) to summarize progress or flag risks. Stakeholders who aren’t in the day-to-day (like the VP Marketing) can be added as project followers to receive these updates. This way, Asana helps keep both the core team and higher-ups on the same page about campaign progress.

A concrete example: imagine planning a lead-generation webinar campaign. You’d list tasks for creating the webinar content, advertising it on LinkedIn, sending email invites, preparing follow-up materials, etc. Each task gets a due date and an owner. Using Asana’s template library, you might even start with a campaign plan template that pre-populates common tasks (Asana offers a marketing campaign template with typical steps from brainstorming to launch). As tasks get completed, team members mark them off, and everyone sees real-time progress. If a task is overdue or at risk, it stands out in red and can trigger a conversation. This transparency is invaluable when coordinating a campaign there’s less chance something slips through the cracks because the tool makes omissions visible. By centralising campaign planning in Asana, B2B marketers can improve efficiency. In fact, companies have reported launching campaigns faster by using Asana to coordinate work. The key is to tailor Asana’s flexible structure to your campaign’s needs and keep all work packages tracked there.

Managing client delivery and onboarding

For agencies or B2B companies delivering work to clients, Asana can function as a client project portal. Each client or project gets its own workspace in Asana, keeping deliverables organised. In my agency experience, we set up a template project for client delivery that we copied for each new client. This template included sections like Kickoff, Ongoing Tasks, Reviews/Approvals, and Reporting. During onboarding, we’d populate key tasks: e.g. Client kickoff call schedule & prepare agenda, Gather client brand assets, Set up analytics access. Asana’s checklist nature is great for standardising these onboarding steps so nothing is missed. In fact, Asana provides a ready-made client onboarding template for this purpose, which outlines a sequence to “simplify handoffs, impress clients, and accelerate every stage of onboarding”. Using such templates ensures consistency every client project starts with the same thorough process, which boosts quality and client trust.

One powerful aspect is inviting the clients as collaborators on their project. As mentioned earlier, you can add client contacts as guest users limited to their project. This means clients can log in to Asana (without a paid account) to see progress, tasks, and due dates. They can even be assigned review tasks or asked to approve something by a certain date. For example, you might assign a task “Approve homepage design” to the client’s marketing manager with a due date. They get an email notification and can tick it off or comment with feedback in Asana. This level of transparency keeps clients engaged and reduces status update emails. They can always check the project themselves for the latest status. One of my clients commented that having that Asana access made them feel projects were under control nothing was hidden, and they could pull reports on demand. Of course, some clients prefer not to use a new tool, but many appreciate the option.

Within your team, managing client deliverables in Asana helps coordinate internal work too. Take a digital agency delivering a website redesign to a client. The project in Asana might include tasks for design drafts, content writing, development sprints, QA testing, and launch prep. Each of these can be assigned to the respective internal specialist, but all live on the same timeline. If design runs late, everyone (content, dev, QA) sees the impact immediately. Asana’s Timeline view will show a cascading shift if one phase moves, prompting you to adjust downstream tasks. This is far superior to chasing updates in meetings. Additionally, features like Forms can be used for intake for example, you can give clients an Asana Form to submit new requests or tickets, which then arrive as tasks in the project automatically. Genesys’s marketing team in a case study used Asana forms to capture requests from internal stakeholders, eliminating random emails and chats. An agency could do similar for client change requests.

When delivering to clients, tracking milestones in Asana is useful. You can mark key dates (e.g. Website beta delivered, Go-live date) as milestones, which visually stand out in timeline and project progress. Asana can send reminders as those milestones approach. And for retainer or ongoing clients, recurring tasks can be scheduled (e.g. a task to Send monthly performance report repeats every 30 days, assigned to the account manager). This ensures those routine obligations don’t slip. Overall, Asana brings both the big picture and the granular tasks together, which is ideal for client work. The big picture: you see the entire project plan and deadline flow. The granular: every tiny to-do (like “Client sent logo upload to drive”) is captured so the team can divide and conquer. In my experience, using Asana in client delivery increased our on-time delivery rate and freed up time that we’d otherwise spend coordinating work in email threads. This aligns with reports from other companies for instance, a marketing team noted a 30% increase in on-time delivery after streamlining workflows in Asana.

Coordinating internal operations

Beyond campaigns and clients, Asana is effective for internal team coordination and operational workflows. B2B marketing teams don’t work in isolation they interact with sales, product, events, and leadership. Asana can serve as the connective tissue for these interactions. One common internal use is managing meeting agendas and follow-ups. Instead of a static agenda doc, some teams use an Asana project as a running meeting tracker. For example, a weekly marketing team meeting could be an Asana project where each meeting’s date is a task, and sub-tasks or comments under it are agenda items. Team members add topics throughout the week, and during the meeting you check them off or assign follow-up tasks right there. Asana even has a built-in meeting agenda template to guide this process. The benefit is every action item from the meeting immediately lives in Asana with an owner and due date, rather than being forgotten in meeting minutes.

For cross-department projects, such as a product launch involving Marketing, Product, and Sales, Asana provides a shared space so everyone knows what’s happening. You might have a launch project where product tasks (like Finalize pricing or Train sales team) sit alongside marketing tasks (like Publish launch blog). Each department only handles their tasks but can see the overall timeline. This visibility fosters accountability: Sales can’t claim they weren’t aware marketing needed something by a date if it’s all in the project. Asana’s permission settings let you include members from various teams while controlling access as needed. A practical tip here is to use Tags or Custom Fields to denote departments or priority. For instance, a custom field “Department” on tasks could be set to Marketing, Sales, etc., and each team filter tasks by their own department. It’s a lightweight way to collaborate without stepping on each other’s toes.

Within marketing ops itself, Asana is great for recurring processes and requests. Many marketing teams have internal service functions e.g. a sales team request for collateral, an HR request for employer branding posts, etc. You can set up an Asana project as an internal ticketing system. Colleagues fill out a Form (or you manually add a task when someone pings you) describing the request, and it lands in a queue project. The marketing team triages these, prioritises them, and tracks progress all in one spot. This approach ensures every request is logged and has an assignee. No more sticky notes or forgotten email asks. Also, Automation rules in Asana can help here: for example, an automation can assign any new task containing the word “urgent” to the marketing director, or move tasks to a “To Do” section when marked as approved. These little efficiencies add up, saving time on routine coordination.

From an operational perspective, using Asana for internal coordination can significantly reduce what’s often called “work about work” the overhead of managing work rather than doing it. When Asana is used as intended, teams spend less time in status meetings or updating spreadsheets and more time executing. A case in point: the marketing ops team at Genesys saved an estimated 140 workdays per year by streamlining and automating request workflows in Asana. They cut down on manual task triaging and duplicated requests, meaning the team could focus on actual marketing work. Even if your team is smaller, the principle holds: Asana provides a central, transparent queue for internal tasks, which reduces confusion and duplicated effort.

Asana vs other tools: Notion, ClickUp, Todoist

It’s worth understanding how Asana compares to some popular alternatives, especially if you’re weighing what fits your workflow best. Notion vs Asana: Asana is primarily a project execution tool, whereas Notion is an all-in-one workspace blending documents, databases, and wikis with basic task management. If your focus is rigorous task and project tracking for a team, Asana has the edge it offers advanced workflow tools, dependencies, multiple views, and robust integrations specifically geared towards project management. Notion, on the other hand, excels at things like real-time document collaboration, note-taking, and creating a knowledge base for your company. Many marketing teams actually use both: Asana for managing projects and tasks, and Notion for campaign briefs, content calendars, and documentation. In fact, I moved to Notion for its rich text and database capabilities (creating a bespoke CRM and wiki), but I did miss Asana’s easy task oversight and automation. In summary: choose Asana when you need structured project management with clear accountability; choose Notion (or complement Asana with it) if you need an internal wiki or flexible database alongside your tasks.

ClickUp vs Asana: ClickUp is often pitched as an “all-in-one” solution that includes tasks, docs, chat, and more in one platform. It offers a breadth of features (time tracking, mind maps, even CRM-like capabilities) that Asana doesn’t include natively. For a B2B team that wants everything tightly integrated, ClickUp can be attractive for instance, you can write a document or SOP inside ClickUp itself, whereas in Asana you’d link out to an external doc. ClickUp also allows highly customizable task hierarchies and multiple assignees. However, in practice I’ve found (and many users report) that ClickUp’s strength is also its weakness: it’s very complex to configure, and not every team needs all those bells and whistles. Asana’s philosophy is a bit more opinionated, which can result in a cleaner, more straightforward user experience day-to-day. If your team struggles with tool complexity, Asana might actually yield higher adoption. But if you have power users who want every feature under the sun and don’t mind a steeper learning curve, ClickUp could be a fit. One notable difference is pricing: ClickUp’s free plan is quite generous (unlimited users, many features), whereas Asana’s free tier, while excellent in its own right, is limited to 10 users and lacks some advanced views. In short, ClickUp might win on feature checklist, but Asana often wins on day-to-day usability and focus. The decision could come down to whether you need those extra integrated features or prefer a more focused tool that plays well with dedicated apps (like Asana + Slack + Google Drive combo vs. trying to do it all in ClickUp).

Todoist vs Asana: These two serve different audiences in many ways. Todoist is a superb personal to-do list app I use it myself for my non-work tasks but it’s relatively lightweight for managing complex team projects. Asana, as discussed, is geared toward team collaboration and multi-step projects with many collaborators. Todoist has introduced some team features (you can share projects and assign tasks), yet it remains streamlined and minimal by design. This simplicity is Todoist’s selling point: it’s very easy to use and not at all overwhelming. If your needs are just to track personal tasks or you’re a very small team that finds Asana overkill, Todoist could suffice. In fact, some users leave Asana for Todoist because they “didn’t need 90% of what Asana had to offer” and wanted a simpler interface. However, for anything beyond basic task lists think project timelines, multiple dependencies, sprint planning, comprehensive reporting Todoist will fall short. It lacks Kanban boards (until recently), has no timeline/Gantt view, and offers limited integration depth compared to Asana. In essence, Todoist is fantastic for individual productivity and small-scale task tracking, but Asana is better for collaborative project management where you need that extra structure and visibility. B2B marketers managing campaigns or content calendars will likely outgrow Todoist quickly, whereas Asana can scale with those needs. So if you’re deciding between them, assess the complexity of your workflow: for a solo marketer or a two-person team focusing on simple tasks, Todoist might do the job; for a team with multiple projects and cross-functional contributors, Asana is the more appropriate choice.

Strengths of Asana for marketing teams

Asana has several standout strengths that make it well-suited to B2B marketing and operations environments. First, its user interface and experience are frequently praised it’s modern, intuitive, and clean, which encourages team members to actually use it. This matters because a tool is only as good as its adoption. We found new teammates could get onboarded to Asana quickly, ticking off tasks on day one without feeling lost. The ability to visualize work in multiple ways (lists, boards, calendars, timelines) is another strength; it caters to different preferences, which is useful in a diverse team. For example, our social media specialist preferred the Calendar view to schedule posts, while our project lead lived in the default List view for an overall snapshot. Asana seamlessly keeps these views in sync, so no data is siloed.

Another strength is collaborative transparency. Asana creates a single source of truth for projects all conversations, files, and progress live in one place accessible to everyone involved. This dramatically reduces miscommunication. I recall before Asana, chasing a status update meant trawling through email chains; after Asana, it was a matter of opening the project and instantly seeing what’s done and what’s outstanding. It fosters accountability too, since each task has an owner and a deadline visible to the team. Features like real-time notifications and the Inbox ensure that nothing falls through the cracks when changes happen. For B2B marketers who coordinate with multiple stakeholders (sales, clients, execs), this transparency is a lifesaver everyone can self-serve information on project status without constantly asking for meetings or email updates.

Integration and extension is another strong suit. Asana doesn’t try to do everything natively (no built-in video calling or design tool, for instance), but it plays very nicely with others. We integrated Asana with Slack to get notifications in our team channel when high-priority tasks were completed. We also used the Google Drive integration so that attachments in tasks were always the live Google Docs we were collaborating on, not outdated file versions. For a growth team experimenting with many tools, Asana’s ability to connect with our CRM, calendars, and even our automation via Zapier was invaluable. It meant Asana could sit at the center of our workflow without needing us to abandon other specialised apps we loved.

Lastly, Asana’s scalability and reliability deserve mention. Over three years, our team grew from 5 to 30 and our Asana usage grew with us. We started with simple task lists and eventually managed complex multi-team initiatives in Asana. The tool held up we didn’t hit performance issues, and new projects or users were easy to onboard. Asana is cloud-based and we rarely experienced downtime. Plus, the permission controls allowed us to scale safely: we created private projects for leadership topics, and public ones for general team visibility, tailoring who sees what as we expanded. In short, Asana’s strengths lie in bringing order and clarity to collaborative work, which for a pressured marketing team translates to saved time, fewer errors, and a more proactive workflow.

Limitations and things to watch out for

No review would be complete without highlighting Asana’s limitations. For all its capabilities, Asana can introduce some challenges depending on your needs. One notable limitation is the lack of a native time tracking feature. Many B2B teams might not require this, but if you bill clients hourly or want to track time spent on tasks for capacity planning, Asana alone won’t do it. You’ll have to integrate a separate time-tracking tool (like Harvest, Everhour, or Clockify). This adds a bit of complexity and potential cost. It also means time data isn’t automatically tied to tasks unless you make that extra effort with integrations. So, if tracking effort is crucial to your operations, plan for an add-on solution or consider an alternative tool that has it built-in.

Another limitation is Asana’s one-assignee-per-task philosophy. As mentioned, it’s actually a strength in terms of clarity only one person is responsible but it can be a hurdle when collaboration on a single task is truly needed. The workaround is usually to create subtasks or duplicate the task for each person, which can clutter projects if overused. Some other tools allow multiple assignees, which is more flexible but arguably less clear. Just be aware that Asana enforces this structure; you’ll want to design your tasks accordingly (perhaps break what you’d consider one big task into two smaller tasks so each can have an owner). In our team, we ultimately appreciated the rule, but initially we had to adjust how we scoped tasks.

Email notification overload is a minor gripe that new users often have. Asana tends to email you for many events (task assigned, task commented, etc.) by default. This can lead to a flooded inbox until you fine-tune your notification settings. The good news is you can customize or turn off these emails and rely on the Asana Inbox and mobile push notifications instead, which are more efficient. It’s something to keep in mind during onboarding: spend a few minutes with the team adjusting notification preferences, so Asana updates are helpful, not noisy. Similarly, Asana lacks a global “dark mode” or heavy UI customization beyond reordering and trivial theme changes. Not a deal-breaker, but for a tool you stare at all day, some users wish for more personalization to reduce eye strain or just preference.

One limitation B2B marketers might encounter is with reporting and overview on lower-tier plans. Asana’s Universal Reporting and Portfolios (for multi-project tracking) are only in the Business/Advanced tier and up. If you’re on the free or Starter plan, getting a holistic view of all projects or a dashboard of metrics isn’t readily available. You’ll be limited to project-by-project status or external tools. For a Head of Growth, those roll-up dashboards are extremely useful (I used Portfolio views to glance at all our ongoing campaigns’ health in one screen). So budget permitting, you might consider the Advanced plan if you need that birds-eye program management. Otherwise, you might export data to spreadsheets or use third-party reporting tools as a workaround.

Lastly, be cautious of over-complicating Asana. It offers custom fields, dependencies, dozens of project templates, and more which is powerful, but if you turn everything on, a simple project can become unwieldy. The irony is that a tool meant to streamline work can itself create “work about work” if misused (for example, spending more time updating task statuses than doing the task). I’ve seen teams fall into the trap of creating very granular sub-tasks, custom fields for every nuance, etc., and then struggle to keep it all updated. It’s important to keep a balance: use the features that genuinely add value to your workflow and simplify your life, and ignore the rest. In practice, we kept our use of custom fields lean (just a priority flag and an effort estimate) and avoided the temptation to make a task for absolutely everything (some quick one-off actions we just did without tracking). Asana’s own guidance and community often echo this: simplicity wins in the long run. With a bit of discipline, you can avoid the common pitfalls and enjoy Asana’s benefits without the bloat.

Leveraging Asana’s template library

One of Asana’s underrated assets is its extensive template library. For a busy marketing or operations team, templates can be a lifesaver they give you a starting structure so you’re not reinventing the wheel for each new project. Asana offers dozens of free, pre-built templates for common workflows, and you can create your own custom templates as well. The library covers everything from marketing and sales to HR, IT, and personal productivity. For example, in the marketing realm, you’ll find templates like Editorial Calendar, Product Launch Plan, Event Planning, and Campaign Management. These templates come pre-populated with sections and tasks that reflect best practices. The Campaign Management template, for instance, might include stages like Planning, Assets Creation, Launch, Post-mortem, each with sample tasks or tips. Similarly, the Editorial Calendar template lays out content pieces with fields for status, channel, and target publish dates.

From my perspective as a Head of Growth, a few templates stood out as particularly useful. The Client Onboarding template, as mentioned, helped us standardise how we kick off new client engagements it ensured we always set up the necessary accounts, gathered requirements, and scheduled initial meetings in a timely manner. We tweaked Asana’s default version to fit our agency’s specifics, but it saved a ton of time versus starting from scratch for each client. Another favourite was the Marketing Project Plan template, which Asana notes is designed to guide teams from strategy to tactics to results. It provided a solid blueprint for running a marketing project, reminding us to define goals and KPIs upfront (which we sometimes overlooked when rushing into execution). We also made heavy use of the Content Calendar template by adapting Asana’s editorial calendar to our content marketing process, we managed to track content ideas from brainstorm through publication in one place, with custom fields for content type and platform.

Asana’s templates aren’t just static checklists; they often include instructional text and even integration suggestions. They are curated based on how successful teams use Asana. And if none of the built-ins suit you perfectly, you can create custom templates out of any project you’ve fine-tuned. We did this for our quarterly marketing plan once we developed a project format that worked (sections for each channel, tasks for key initiatives, etc.), we saved it as a template. Next quarter, it was one click to spin up a fresh project with the same structure. This encourages continuous improvement: each time we used the template, we refined it slightly then updated the template for the future. It’s worth noting that template projects can also contain example tasks with assignees or dates which you then adjust. Asana will prompt you on instantiation to shift dates relative to a start or end date, which is magic for project planning. For example, our event planning template had tasks due X weeks before the event, Y days after, and so on when we created a new event project, we entered the event date and Asana automatically scheduled all tasks backward from it.

If you’re new to Asana, I highly recommend browsing the Asana templates gallery relevant to your team. It’s accessible directly within Asana (or on their website) and categorized by function (Marketing, Operations, Design, etc.). Even if you don’t use a template verbatim, it can spark ideas for how to structure your own projects. Many templates also highlight features you might not otherwise use: for instance, the Business Model Canvas template shows how you could use Asana for strategic planning, which might not be obvious at first. And templates like Work Request Forms demonstrate setting up an intake system with forms and automations. All these can be adapted to your needs. In a fast-paced B2B marketing environment, having a repository of proven workflows to draw from is incredibly helpful. It’s like having process documents, but alive and actionable. My advice is to pick a couple of templates to pilot, import them into your Asana, and see how they fit. You can delete or modify anything, so there’s no downside but you might find that they surface a more efficient way to run a process that you hadn’t considered.

To wrap up, Asana’s template library and custom template feature are about not starting from zero. They embody best practices (often learned from thousands of users) and can significantly shorten the setup time for any recurring project. For a growth leader or marketer, this means you can focus more on the content of your campaign or project and less on figuring out how to organise it. Over time, as your team develops its own optimised workflows, you contribute back to this library by saving your templates, making onboarding new team members or scaling processes even easier. In sum, leveraging templates is a smart way to accelerate Asana mastery and maintain consistency across your projects.