Being a better marketer isn’t just about learning the right skills. It’s about how well you use your time.
Here are a few ways you can boost your time and be a better marketer.
1. Prioritise everything that lands on your desk.
Before you hop to it… think about whether it’s urgent. What impact will it have on the business? Assess the time it would take vs potential gain and it’ll help to prioritise which tasks to do.
2. Delegate.
Do you really need to do it? Pass on the love if it’s appropriate and refocus.
3. Learn to say no.
Sometimes, having it all just isn’t possible. This one can be hard for people-pleasers but it’s liberating and allows you to focus on what’s really important. If it still needs to be done, schedule it for another day.
4. Set time for small wins.
If we only ever spent time doing the ‘big things’, we’d never get any of those niggly small things done in life. Put some time aside in your diary each week to take care of the small things. After all, we get to tick those small bits off quickly right?
5. Set yourself daily goals.
Whatever way you choose to plan your time, make sure you set yourself daily goals for what you’re going to do. As well as a challenge, it can help to focus your efforts to know exactly what you need to achieve that day.
6. Turn your email notifications off.
Emails are distracting – do you really need to know when each email comes in and read it there and then? It can distract your train of thought so turn them off if you can.
7. Have power hours.
Set yourself regular targets to write an article, finish a brief or get to a certain part in your project within an hour. If you set your mind to it, you’ll find that you’ll get it done. With an infinite amount of time, projects can drag as you edit then re-edit, looking for perfection. But it often doesn’t need to be perfect. Okay, it should be good, or great, but perhaps not perfect. That’s what testing is for!
Setting a clear hour to dedicate to a project really helps to focus your mind and get it done. If it helps (and if you can), tell people that you can’t be disturbed for this hour.
8. Make time to think.
Sometimes we’re so invested in a project that it’s hard to find the time to think about the bigger picture. Put some time in your diary to think or to learn and you’ll find that you always have a clear direction.
9. Measure EVERYTHING.
Measuring how well something has gone is vital in order to know what’s working and what’s not. Before starting a project, or investing in a new channel work out how you’re going to measure if it’s successful. What would good look like? Whether the investment is time or funds, it’s important to know what channels are working best and what could be tweaked and make sure that every channels is pulling it’s own weight.
It goes without saying that if you’re planning on measuring how well it’s going, make sure that you plan regular washups at a time interval that suits the project – for example an exhibition may have a wash up directly after the event, a month after, 3 months then 6 months due to the enquiry lag.
10. Kill your marketing ‘babies’.
As a marketer, we get heavily invested in the work that we do. Whether that’s writing new articles to draw more SEO visits to investing in a channel that we’re sure will work for our business. We take great pride in our work after all that investment.
But?
If it isn’t working and you’ve already tried options to boost it… it may be time to kill it off. It’s not a failure. Instead it’s an opportunity to learn from why it didn’t work and to find something that will work better.
11. Celebrate success.
No marketer is an island and it can feel demoralising to just jump straight into the next project without celebrating the last. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Send an email to your team to say “Hey guys, I’ve just finished this and I’m pretty proud of it”
- Create a team notice board to add a competitive edge to how many positive actions you can get by the end of the month to work toward a common goal
- Have a team ‘yay jar’ where the team adds positive moments to that you can review on a regular basis
