Mark Miller — August 15, 2017 — August 15, 2017
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With such a heavy inflow of responsibilities and tasks, it’s often easy to feel overwhelmed as a professional in today’s highly demanding marketing world. Sure you have a set agenda filled with routine things you have to get done but with common interruptions like meetings and e-mails, it can be difficult to prioritize your time and use it productively.
Improved productivity creates more opportunities for effective marketing. Learning to manage your time wisely is essential in driving desired results and valuable outcomes.
The best marketing recruitment agencies know the top marketers recognize the importance of time management. Being productive doesn’t necessarily mean getting as much done as you can in a period of time – it means strategically allocating your time and effort toward the right priorities as a marketer.
What the Best Marketing Recruitment Agencies See in the Most Productive Marketers Today
Good productivity is about finding the right balance where your efforts are the most successful in a timely manner. No one method is going to work for everyone so it’s key to find what works for you. Here are some habits we often see as a marketing recruitment agency in our top marketing talent that anyone can adopt to maximize their productivity in the workplace:
Create a Strategic Plan
Effective planning is effective marketing! Strategically planning out all of your tasks and objectives will help you better allocate your time toward your main priorities.
Make sure you set a clear strategy of how you plan on attacking your tasks at hand. Establish your objectives and how you plan on measuring the success of your efforts throughout the process.
A few unexpected interruptions may occur but you can always fall back on your plan to help you manage.
Taking advantage of tools and resources to help you organize your tasks and workload will allow you to better track how you performed and if you’re staying aligned with your objectives. Use tools like Any.do to manage your calendar and create to-do lists.
Photo: Any.do
Manage all of your projects and assignments in one location to minimize feeling overwhelmed. This will significantly help you organize and keep track of all of your tasks.
Manage Your Work in One Central Location
Along with utilizing tools to help you plan your tasks and projects, there are many resources out there to help you manage all of your work in one place.
Being disorganized can cause you to waste a bunch of time. Keep all of the projects you’ve been working on under one platform to make it accessible for you and your team if you have one.
Tools like Google Drive are a great place to store presentations, spreadsheets, and other documents. You can easily share files and collaborate with others using Google Drive – and best of all, it’s free!
Marketers should also take advantage of the growing suite of automation tools, content management systems, and CRM platforms to streamline their work and minimize the amount of manual work required to execute their responsibilities. For instance, Hubspot is a great place to manage your marketing efforts and a valuable CRM tool. Social media marketers can especially take advantage of this tool by managing various accounts through this one platform and tracking performance.
Photo: Hubspot
Tackle Your Biggest Tasks Early in the Day
Make an effort to tackle your biggest project early in the day. Rather than letting it cloud over your head, attack your major tasks first to ensure they don’t affect your productivity throughout the rest of the day.
Let’s be honest, you aren’t going to be more enthusiastic to take on any huge assignments later on in the day than you are in the beginning of the work day.
The best marketing recruitment agencies know marketers often stay late and work overtime to finish up their work. Avoid any late nights executing your top priorities first – you will feel so relieved when you’ve accomplished them. And the sense of accomplishment will only motivate you to be more productive throughout the rest of the day!
Focus on One Thing at a Time
Many marketing professionals pride themselves on being a great multi-tasker and being able to handle multiple tasks at once. However, you will find yourself much more productive if you set aside your time to tackle one assignment at a time.
Allot time blocks toward tackling each specific project on your agenda. You can use free time-tracking tools like Toggl to track how much time you spend on various tasks.
Multi-tasking and splitting your time between a bunch of tasks simultaneously is not only overwhelming but reduces the effectiveness of your efforts. Avoid wasting your time by prioritizing one task at a time – you will see a major difference.
Eliminate All Distractions
Whether it be your emails or internet browsing, stop doing things that get in the way of your work. It’s easy to get distracted with casual web browsing and to get carried away with it. Minutes of this throughout the day can turn into hours out of your whole workday.
It’s certainly acceptable to take a few breaks out of your day to refresh and recharge but be mindful of what you’re doing during that time and how much of it is deterring you from being productive.
Tackling all of your tasks one at a time and accomplishing them successfully will give you a big sense of relief. Whether it be your phone or laptop, eliminate any unnecessary things that distract you from getting things done. You may want to try cordoning off sections of your day to work without certain distractions; for instance, reserving a few hours in the afternoon when you’ll avoid checking your email or social media accounts.
Tools like RescueTime can help you track your activity on various apps and websites and what you spend the most time on.
Photo: RescueTime
Learn How to Say “No”
Today’s marketers are often approached to take on spur-of-the-moment tasks that can be hard to turn down. However, if these favors aren’t necessarily your responsibility and more of a burden, learn to say no.
If it doesn’t fit it with the primary objectives of your role, it should be acceptable to turn it down. Remember, you have priorities that are important for a reason. Focus on getting them done.
Don’t put off your main priorities to do someone else’s job but make sure you address it in a friendly manner. As a marketing recruitment agency, we know this can turn ugly. Explain why you can’t help someone out with a favor this time but offer help in the future when you have time.
Take a Breather
Far too often, marketers exhaust themselves from the stress of their heavy workload. We call this burnout and we unfortunately see this as a common thing that occurs in organizations.
Many professionals aren’t built to last a full 9-5 day without feeling drained which in turn affects their productivity and performance.
It’s important to take your eyes off the computer screen every so often and take a mental break. You don’t want to overload yourself so take some time to sit back and relax even if it’s only for a few minutes out of your workday. You will feel more recharged and prepared to tackle important projects with small breaks.
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