This sponsored post is produced by Workfront.
More than ever, marketers are under increasing pressure to do more, achieve more, and win more business, often with fewer staff and resources. Justifying every dollar spent and demonstrating a strong ROI has grown much harder with the shift from “pay-per” media toward more inbound, demand gen, content marketing, and social media. While very effective, these new tactics all require significant investment, yet are much harder to measure, making it difficult for marketers to prove their worth in the budget.
But, more than the shift in tactics, the biggest challenge for most marketing managers is simply keeping up. Staying on top of all the deadlines, project demands, and internal communication has become overwhelming because, as our work has grown in volume and velocity, for the most part, the tools, processes, and technology we depend on have not kept up to speed. That deficit forces marketers to work harder, dragging down productivity and hindering communication and efficiency.
Rather than spend another year trudging along in the trenches, for 2016, let’s plan to break the cycle of struggle, long hours, overwhelming workload, and mediocre results by making these your New Year’s Resolutions.
1. Cut the clutter
Do you feel like you’re always spinning your wheels, unable to get any actual work accomplished? Unfortunately, you’re not alone. According to the 2015 State of Marketing Work Report, marketers spend only 36 percent of time on their primary job duties. The rest is consumed by email, meetings, and interruptions, leaving very little time to actually concentrate and make progress.
Regain that valuable, productive time by using the right tools for the job. Instead of using email to manage projects and struggle with lost threads, missing information, and inbox clutter, use tools purpose-built for marketing work management that condense all project communication onto a single platform. This eliminates the distraction of an overwhelming inbox and hunting for the data you need by keeping all project communication in one central location. These systems also provide real-time visibility into the workload, staff capacity, and status of every task and project, which keeps project meetings to a minimum, freeing up numerous hours each week that’s now being wasted in status meetings, all of which helps your team get more real work done.
2. Reduce conflict
More than one-third of marketers say a lack of, or miscommunication, is a source of conflict between their organization and other departments or teams in the company. Confusion over the scope of work, a lack of strategic direction, and conflicting feedback on projects all lead to assumptions that, more often than not, put marketers in a tough spot with their colleagues. These problems cause rework, dozens of revisions, missed deadlines, and lots of frustration on both sides.
This year, reduce conflict by setting clear objectives for every project. Make it a policy to use creative briefs and to map every project to the company’s overall strategic direction to ensure they align. Use document-proofing tools that enable reviewers and stakeholders to collaborate on feedback, so you’re all on the same page, and no one is left playing go-between to mediate conflicts over revisions.
3. Dial back the overtime
If you feel like you’re always on the clock, well, it’s because you are. The State of Marketing Work Report also revealed that a whopping 90 percent of marketers work outside business hours on weekdays and 85 percent use weekends to get caught up and get a jump-start on work for the coming week. This is a huge problem, especially for creative minds. You need time to recharge, rest, and relax, and we’re betting you probably have some great family and friends who might like to see you again.
This is not life or death. It’s just marketing. Before you burn out completely, make 2016 the year you reclaim your personal time (and your sanity) by reducing communication clutter, distractions, conflict, rework, and confusion — and make a conscious effort to NOT check work email every five minutes. Your social life is calling. Get out there! With the right tools, processes, and technology in place, you can enjoy some free time again and still hit those deadlines, goals, and ROI.
To hit the ground running with a more productive, efficient, and successful marketing strategy in 2016, register now for the free TED-style webinar, “Planning for 2016: What Every Marketing Manager Needs to Know,” on Wednesday, Dec. 16 at 1 p.m. ET.
In this can’t-miss look-ahead into the biggest marketing trends for the coming year, strategic experts Jay Baer, Joe Staples, Ann Handley, and Mark Schaefer give their best tips and tricks for confronting and overcoming key marketing challenges in 2016.
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