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The purpose of this paper is to place project marketing within the framework of organizational project management. There has been an ongoing discussion in the project marketing literature about whether project marketing is part of project management or project management is part of project marketing. Marketing is done by organizations to create a demand for products or services that have value for customers. The authors identify three types of organization involved in the management of projects, the project, the initiator and the contractor, and review current thinking on how they market their products and services, and create networks and dialogs to bring value to stakeholders.

The authors review the literature on project marketing, and develop new models based on an organizational perspective. The authors develop propositions as a basis for further research.

Marketing is done by three types of organization. The authors label these as marketing BY the project, marketing FOR the project by the contractor, and marketing OF the investment made by the project by the investor. The authors draw links with marketing theory, and introduce the service-dominant logic as a new perspective on organizational project marketing.

Traditionally, project marketing theory has taken the perspective of the overlap between project management and project marketing. The authors take an organizational perspective, and identify avenues for research into how the types of organization involved in the management of projects create dialog with their customers and stakeholders to exchange products and services that have value for them.

Project managers have not traditionally viewed project marketing as having relevance to them. The authors show that providing a service to stakeholders is an essential part of the management of projects.

The authors develop directions for research into project marketing as part of organizational project management.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the marketing practices adopted by contractors in project-based industries to win new business and maintain relationships with existing clients.

The authors interviewed eight such contractors, and used activity theory as a lens to analyze the results. The authors investigated project marketing activities at four stages of the project contract life cycle, and against four enablers of collaboration.

The authors have identified that the service-dominant logic pervades project marketing. Through the project contract life cycle the marketing activity starts with a strategic focus, becomes tactical, then operational and returns to strategic. Project marketing involves executive managers, marketing, client or account managers and project managers. Project managers have a key responsibility for project marketing. The four enablers of collaboration, relationships, communication, going-with and trust, support each other and the entire project marketing activity.

As a contribution to theory, the authors have identified the practices adopted by contractors in project-based industries to market their competencies to clients to win new work and maintain relationships with existing clients. The authors have identified practices throughout the contract life cycle, and practices to develop collaboration. The next step will be to explain these practices in terms of traditional marketing theory.

The results provide guidelines to contractors in project-based industries who wish to improve their marketing activity to achieve sustainable performance. Industry may also find it useful to train or coach their project managers to be conscious of their marketing role.

Previous work has been conceptual in nature and has speculated on the nature of the project marketing performed by contractors to win new projects, and set it against marketing done by the project. This research has empirically investigated the actual marketing practices adopted by project contracting organizations, shown how it varies through the project life cycle and shown how responsibility passes from senior management to the account team and then to project managers. It has also investigated the application of the four enablers of collaboration: relationships, communication, going-with and trust.