RACI in a marketing project: who is responsible for what

A marketing team is working on a product campaign. Content is ready, creative assets approved, landing page published. A week before launch, it turns out nobody established who approves the budget for paid campaigns. Two people assume it is the director's role, and the director assumes the decision belongs to the specialist. The campaign launches a week late. Nobody made a substantive mistake. What failed was the division of responsibility in the project, which is exactly what the RACI matrix organizes.

Where RACI in a marketing project breaks down

In marketing projects, the problem is rarely about whether someone can complete a task. Far more often it is about who has the authority to say "yes, we are sending this to the client." In B2B companies we work with, three situations keep repeating:

• Everyone is responsible, so no one is. The brief lists "marketing team" as the task owner. The result: the task stalls because everyone assumes someone else will close it out.
• The decision happens at two levels at once. A salesperson approves the offer content while the marketing department publishes it in parallel. The versions drift apart.
• Informing confused with approval. Someone gets a message saying "let me know if you have comments" and treats it as a formal approval step. The project sits in an inbox for two days.

Each of these situations costs money. It is about the sum of small delays that eat up weeks of work over a quarter. In projects where marketing budgets reach hundreds of thousands annually (based on observations from projects we have worked on), this friction is one of the most frequently overlooked costs.

What the RACI matrix is and what its letters mean

The RACI matrix is a table that assigns four roles to every task in a project. The name comes from the first letters of the English terms:

• R - Responsible (doer). The person who actually performs the task. There can be several, but the fewer the better.
• A - Accountable (answerable for the outcome). The person who is answerable for the final result and approves it. For a single task there should be exactly one such person. This is the most important letter in the entire matrix.
• C - Consulted. The person whose opinion is needed before the decision. Two-way communication: we ask, we listen, we come back with the decision.
• I - Informed. The person who learns about the decision after the fact. One-way communication.

The value of the RACI matrix comes from the conversation that precedes filling it in. Before someone writes the letter "A" next to a specific task, they must answer the question: do I really want to be answerable for this outcome. That question rarely comes up in the daily rush.

The classic approach to the RACI matrix comes from project management practice and has been described in, among others, the PMBOK guide (Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge) and in studies devoted to responsibility matrices (Smith, Responsibility matrices in project management). RACI brings that same logic down to the level of a single task in a marketing project.

How to build a RACI matrix in six steps

The process below usually takes a single team meeting, provided the task list has been gathered beforehand. It is worth doing it properly once instead of revisiting the topic every quarter.

Step 1: list tasks, not roles

Start with the list of tasks in the project: brief, research, strategy, creative, production, publishing, reporting. Do not start with names or job titles. If you start with people, the table turns into a description of job scopes rather than a project management tool.

Step 2: assign exactly one "A" to each task

Once the task list is ready, the hardest moment arrives. If a single task has two letters "A", the matrix does not work. In practice this means there is an unresolved dispute over authority in the company. It is better to settle it now, at the table, than in the middle of a campaign.

Step 3: limit the number of "C" entries

Every person in the "C" column is an extra stop in the process. If five people are consulted on a task, delivery time grows and the decision becomes blurred. A practical rule: no more than two people consulted per task.

Step 4: check whether "I" is pretending to be "C"

The most common mistake. Someone is listed as informed, but in practice expects their opinion to be taken into account. It is worth asking directly: does this person have veto power. If yes, they belong in the "C" column. If not, they stay in "I" and need to know that.

Step 5: move the matrix into a tool

A table in a spreadsheet is not enough. The RACI matrix should live in the system the team uses every day: in a project in the task management tool, in the brief template, in the publishing checklist. That way roles are visible at the moment a task is created, not only at the quarterly review.

Step 6: revisit the matrix after the first cycle

After a campaign or a quarter ends, it is worth checking where the roles drifted. The recommended frequency is an update after each project cycle or once a quarter, depending on how often tasks and team composition change. Usually two things come up: tasks nobody anticipated, and people who actually made the decisions even though they were not listed as "A". That is material for correction.

RACI in marketing: four roles that get confused most often

In marketing projects certain pairs of roles get mixed up especially often. It is worth looking at them separately, because that is where most of the friction comes from. Before we go into the details, though, it is worth answering the question directly: does the RACI matrix work in B2B marketing. Yes, especially in companies where many people work on a single project: salespeople, content, design, external partners. RACI helps establish who approves materials, who produces them, and who is merely informed about publication. In small teams it is worth starting with 10-15 key tasks so the table stays useful rather than overwhelming.

Accountable versus responsible

The person accountable for the outcome (A) does not have to perform the task. In fact, they should not if there are many tasks. In practice this is often blurred: a content specialist is both the doer and the person approving their own text. The result: nobody looks at the text from a distance.

Consulted and informed

The difference is simple: a consulted person has influence before the decision, an informed person finds out after it. In companies where communication happens mainly on chat, the line gets blurred. Someone writes "I'll take a look," and the author of the text waits three days. It is worth setting a fixed consultation window: if there is no response within 24 hours, the task moves forward.

The role of sales in marketing projects

In B2B, sales is usually the key source of information about the client, but it should rarely be the person approving marketing material. Its role is most often "C" on the brief and "I" on publication. If sales is listed as "A" on every creative piece, the project slows down.

The role of an external partner

An agency or external specialist is usually "R" on execution tasks. The approval decision stays with the client. This distinction is worth writing into the contract or brief, because in practice it varies. We cover more on how to structure cooperation with an external partner in our article on interim marketing.

The most common mistakes when implementing RACI

The RACI matrix is simple in principle, but easy to break in practice. Below are four mistakes we see most often.

• Treating the matrix as a one-off document. The table is created in a workshop, lands in a folder, and nobody returns to it. Two months later, roles are unclear again.
• Too many tasks in the matrix. If the table has 80 rows, nobody will use it. It is better to start with 10-15 key tasks and expand as needed.
• No single "A" person on cross-functional tasks. Tasks like "preparing the strategy" often have no owner because they involve many departments. That is exactly where one person accountable for the outcome is needed.
• Confusing RACI with hierarchy. The matrix does not describe who reports to whom. It describes who is responsible for what in a specific project. Two different things.

A separate problem is the situation where a RACI matrix exists, but nobody has the mandate to enforce the roles. Then the table becomes decoration. That is why implementing RACI is worth combining with work on a B2B marketing strategy, which defines who makes decisions at the level of the entire marketing function, not just a single project.

RACI and an interim marketing manager

In companies where the marketing department is small or still being built, there is often no one to fill in the RACI matrix. There is no one to look at the project from the outside and say: "this task has no owner". In these situations, an interim marketing manager works well, an experienced specialist who joins the company for a set period and is accountable for results.

Their role in the context of RACI is usually threefold. First, they audit roles in existing projects. Second, they help establish who should be "A" for key tasks. Third, they implement the matrix in the tools the team already uses, instead of adding another system. You can read more about this collaboration model on the interim marketing manager.

One thing is worth emphasizing: RACI does not replace business decisions. It organizes them. If there is no agreement in the company about who is responsible for the marketing result, no table will fix that. The matrix will only show exactly where the dispute lies.

Conclusions

The RACI matrix is a tool that works only when it is used regularly, not just on special occasions. Below are the most important conclusions from working with it on B2B marketing projects.

• Every task should have exactly one person accountable for the result (A). If there is more than one, the matrix does not work.
• The number of people consulted (C) should be limited to a maximum of two per task. Each additional person lengthens the project.
• The RACI matrix must go into the tool the team uses every day, otherwise it will remain a document in a folder.
• It is worth revisiting the matrix after each project cycle or quarter and correcting roles based on what actually happened.
• In small teams or when building a marketing department from scratch, external support can be helpful to look at roles from a distance.