PUBLISHED ON
Productivity has always been a topic of interest to me, and recently the amount of content on how to be more impactful seems to be growing exponentially. Countless strategies are documented, from sleeping more, to exercising, to breaking up work into shorter time blocks, but what specific strategies should us digital marketers use to get the best performance possible?
The best way to increase productivity is to focus on those tasks that will have the greatest impact on performance. It can be easy to start your day with emails and find yourself heading to lunch without having achieved anything. Instead, consult your objective-based KPIs to determine which ones are having the largest negative impact on business performance, or which ones have the greatest underutilized potential for improvement, and start with these.
For example, addressing poor-performing ROI by better leveraging existing client relations may be much more valuable to your organization now than spending time trying to increase campaign impressions across a number of social channels, although of course this too could potentially lead to a higher future conversion rate.
Even if your task count may be lower by focusing on the big tasks instead of multiple small ones, by analyzing these problem areas, testing creative solutions for them, and making data-backed decisions you’ll see a much larger impact on goal attainment.
Do you find yourself switching back and forth between Excel and countless social media, analytics, ad server, social listening, campaign (…etc.) reports?
You may believe you’re spending time wisely by creating important organizational reports, but really you’re just finding another way to procrastinate when an automated dashboard solution could automatically integrate these for you. Surely you could have a much larger impact on business outcomes by using your analysis, strategic or creative skills to solve problems and find opportunities for growth?
If you have a short period of time available, or are simply finding it hard to concentrate on a given day, stop thinking and start acting. You’ll be surprised at how strong the psychological impact of actually completing something can be.
We’re not suggesting taking large-scale action just to get started, but mapping out some ideas for campaigns, testing some ideas on a small sub-subsection of your target audience or simply sharing some concrete comments based on your analysis with your colleagues could be all you need to get you out of your unproductive flunk and get the ball rolling.
Once you start to measure the results of the actions you have taken, receive some feedback from colleagues or see your work on paper, you will start to see the meaning and value in your work. Intrinsic motivation should take over to keep you engaged and productive in your work.
Are you struggling to complete a task because you simply don’t have the expertise or experience necessary to be able to do so successfully?
It can be easy to feel like you are burdening your colleagues by asking for some help in this day and age where time is so precious. This culture must be turned around, however. Although in complex organizations we all have unique and specific objectives, we should never forget the larger goals of the organization.
Every team member is most likely specialized in one area and has a peculiar set of skills which is valuable to the organization, but no individual alone can cover all the needs of the company. If your colleague’s skill set is better suited to completing a task more efficiently than you can, why not delegate it to them? This total time spent on this task will be lower than if you attempt it yourself, and you never know when your colleague will request a favour back to leverage your own skills.
Although collaboration isn’t always the answer, and useless meetings can waste significant amounts of time, working together with colleagues on some projects can help you to increase speed of execution and improve decisions made.
If you find yourself stuck on a problem, having the creative input of your team members can be invaluable in helping you to get started. If you’re able to reach an impactful decision faster through the use of collaboration, it has most definitely increased your productivity. Furthermore, where the positive impact on outcomes based on the ideas of the group is higher than it would have been based on an individual decision, the value of collaboration cannot be discounted.
Do you have any other tips for increasing productivity within your data-driven digital marketing team?
VP of Business Development for Sweetspot. Responsible for strategic brand development, marketing and business development. BA/BComm graduate from the University of Melbourne. My passion lies in finding creative solutions and encouraging collaboration.
Not Another Dashboard.
Add a comment