Being an essential part of modern businesses, digital marketing can involve a variety of tasks. A digital marketer’s function may include preparing content for multiple channels and engaging with a company’s audience on different platforms, apart from coming up with campaign strategies. It’s easy to get caught up in a frenzy and miss critical points for improvement with a tight schedule. Ultimately, the key to improving productivity lies in getting organised — but where can busy digital marketers start? We’ve gathered 5 ways your digital marketing team can spend less time on execution, and more on building for growth.

Tip #1: Always Start with a Project Plan

A project plan helps you spend less time on a project by keeping you on track. Considering the possibility of revisions and day-to-day activities, having an effective plan helps set reasonable deadlines and keep your workload under control. For every project, write down a plan on a piece of paper, a document, or a worksheet – wherever it’s easier for you to keep track of things. Keep it simple. A good marketing plan consists of the following:

• User Profile – Helps you understand the customers you aim to serve. By refining your target users, you create a reference for any marketing activity you plan, ensuring each step is decided on with the right information.
• Objectives – It's easier to work with a goal in mind! For smaller businesses, business and marketing objectives are often the same, such as increasing revenue or improving conversions. However, not all objectives have to be financial. Many factors (such as engagement on social media) may not directly affect your bottom line but are important indicators of how your brand is doing. Including measurable and realistic objectives in your plan helps you track progress and plan for the next steps to take.
• Budget – Again, keep it simple. You don’t have to create a financial plan covering a full fiscal year. Enumerating the estimated costs associated with achieving your objectives is all you need. The costs may involve fees for outsourcing skills, publishing ads, to investing in tools you’ll need to adopt.

Tip #2: Setup Automation

In his book, Peak Performance, author and speaker Tony Robbins compares running a business to playing a piano. In both instances, the result is dependent on consistent, deliberate practice. If you’re a beginner at your craft, performing minor tasks repeatedly yields positive results. Once you’ve mastered the basics, however, it’s time to stop doing things manually and start automating systems to produce consistently positive results. This wisdom can be applied to marketers already looking to grow a business. Marketing professionals can benefit from automating minor tasks to be able to focus on other aspects of their responsibilities in a business. It saves time, money, and even creative juice; and it’s beneficial to consumers.Many digital marketers choose to automate social media activities by using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer. Automatically collecting email information from leads can also be set up in Google Ads and Facebook advertising campaigns, allowing you to populate your database for email marketing without doing the manual work. There’s plenty of automation tools in the market designed for different needs. To make the most of your time in a day, explore which activities you’re spending the most time on and see if you can automate the smaller tasks involved in each one.

Tip #3: Invest in Tools

Consequently, automating your tasks may involve subscription costs for tools you wish to use. Investing in tools may not be limited to automation—there are paid technologies that benefit customers more than marketers, such as chatbots and customer relationship management systems (CRMs). When considering investing in tools, remember that the cost of marketing should be weighed by the quality of the results users receive from it. Businesses that understand that providing an excellent customer experience at all points of the buyer's journey tend to generate higher profits and build customer loyalty. Having said this, it is worth investigating which aspects of the business could benefit from the integration of new technologies. For example, an eCommerce business could boost digital marketing efforts with an automated help desk like Zoho. This works in two ways. One, it allows customers to get the information they need even after working hours. Secondly, a tool like Zoho allows users to categorize inquiries, generating a summary of issues that the business can study to improve its products and services.

Tip #4: Collect and Analyse Data

One of the best ways to understand what consumers want is to analyse existing customer data. Amazon collects data from its customers through its app and website. This allows managers to understand how different promotions affect sales and customer loyalty. Furthermore, Amazon also collects data from suppliers and competitors to make effective decisions in business growth. We see efficiency in Amazon’s operations because it collects data from customers and makes sound decisions based on that data. Doing the same for your business or your marketing campaigns can also help reduce the time spent planning and executing, because data provides you with a clear starting point. If you’re just starting out on a project, make sure you have systems for collecting data in place. You can do this manually or you can integrate tools into your processes to generate actionable reports in seconds.

Tip #5: Outsource Skills

Outsourcing talent has enabled marketers to scale their projects quickly since they don’t need to hire and train additional staff every time they need something done. While outsourcing can be a difficult decision when considering quality of work against costs, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks when done correctly. Whether it’s graphic design or content writing that you need for a project, the key is to partner with a freelancer or agency with a good track record of working with clients in the same industry as yours. You’ll need a team that understands the common pain points experienced by similar businesses and has developed an effective approach to these issues. Another factor to consider when outsourcing skills is cross-functionality. On a limited budget, you might want to work with a freelancer with multiple skills to save you time and money. For bigger projects, pairing up with an agency could be the more practical option, as agencies can not only help you manage a project, but also employ teams of skilled workers in development, design, or writing who can pick up on any task with their experience.

Spend More Time Strategising and Less Doing

Digital marketing is a broad field that requires a lot of time and skills. To stay on top of all your marketing activities, it’s essential to get organised and seek help if you need it. Once you’ve mapped out your goals, consider outsourcing or investing in tools to pave the way for the next phases of your project. We hope this has been a helpful list of tips in digital marketing productivity! If you need more advice on enhancing your digital marketing efforts, drop us a message to speak to a specialist who can guide your first steps.