4 Marketing Productivity Tips

NEW! Listen to article

Marketers must place an emphasis on bettering their productivity and organizational skills to ensure long-term success within the industry.

Being able to focus on the most important tasks of the day and spending as little time as possible on administrative items can help you attain goals and meet important deadlines.

By understanding how to use organizational tech tools to your advantage, you can focus your energy on projects, meetings, and discussions that are crucial to overall marketing success.

As hybrid and remote work become more prevalent, marketers are spending a larger portion of their time communicating through email and Slack. Both are great for communication, but the sheer volume of messages means things can easily slip through the cracks. Marketing productivity can be massively improved by using tools that allow you to keep both, while simultaneously keeping the human aspect and communication in focus.

One of the biggest hits to productivity that marketers face is meeting scheduling. Yet, you have to ensure the scheduling process stays both efficient and personable. You can do that by using the right tools to prioritize organization and time management.

Consider these four tips to optimize and value your time, as well as your colleagues', clients', and customers'.

1. Start the day before

At the end of each day, write down the tasks that you need to get to tomorrow. Then, prioritize the list in order of impact, not ease. If it helps, sort them into categories such as "have to do" and "nice to do." That way, when you start in the morning, you can hit the ground running.

Dedicate specific times for not only meetings but also administrative assignments to complete before the end of the day. Even if you are dedicating only 5-10 minutes to scheduling, agendas, etc. it is good to get into the habit of planning out what you'd like to accomplish throughout the workday.

2. Don't let scheduling and attending unnecessary meetings bog you down

Scheduling meetings should not be taking up chunks of your time when you could instead be focusing on more creative or strategic assignments. Sending back-and-forth emails to schedule meetings is not time-efficient. Start implementing smart tools that make it easy for both you and the people you're inviting to schedule meetings without the back-and-forth.

Tools that don't put all the work of scheduling on the person you're inviting are also a great way to keep work relationships on an even footing.

Prioritize your own time and take control of your schedule, even if it means blocking out sections on your calendar to be designated for meetings, projects, breaks, etc. That allows you to create necessary boundaries with your colleagues and clients, and to focus on tasks when it's the right time for you.

We've all sat through meetings that we don't need to be in, which is especially frustrating because you know there are things not getting done as a result. Ask for an agenda in advance of the meeting so you can make sure that it is a meeting that will be beneficial to your day, workload, and overall productivity.

It's also important to have a good relationship and mutual understanding with your colleagues, which will ultimately help navigate avoiding unnecessary meetings.

3. Pause or turn off notifications

We all get a ton of emails a day, leading to sounds, pop-ups, vibrations, etc. that disrupt our workflow. Each time you get distracted by a notification, it can take a few minutes to refocus. Pausing notifications allows you to block out outside noise and focus on what you have deemed important for the time being.

Temporarily pausing or turning off email notifications can be extremely beneficial to productivity. It allows you to stay focused on one item at a time and not get distracted by numerous incoming notifications and requests.

Unless the request is extremely urgent or time-sensitive, it is important to prioritize your own to-do list before tending to others'.

4. Identify your most productive time of day

Once you know when your most productive periods are, you can optimize your day accordingly.

You should plan on tackling analytical tasks that require focus and your full attention when you are most productive. Set aside administrative routine tasks that don't require much thought for when you aren't feeling as motivated.

Now that workforces are often hybrid, maintaining work-life balance is more urgent than ever. As people work from home offices, employees and employers alike are struggling to figure out what constitutes "work hours."

However, such arrangements also give you more flexibility to manage your energy levels and match them to the tasks at hand. Blocking off personal time or even pausing your inbox enables you to set clear boundaries and to be intentional about how you spend your time according to your level of mental reserve.

* * *

As communication between colleagues, clients, and customers continues to become ever more virtual, it is important to understand how to best organize your time.

Productivity is the key to success in any industry, but especially as a marketing professional. You must know how to dedicate certain times of day to various tasks. By using tools that can assist you in administrative duties, you'll save significant amounts of time that can be applied to other, more important items on your daily to-do list.