Marketing takes up a great deal of time, doesn’t it? Do you find that there are too many tasks? Do you keep running out of time? Here are some marketing time management ideas which may help.
* Consider the time you have available for doing marketing tasks or managing them. Even if you are a full time marketer, this will not be 100% of your working time. If marketing is part of what you do, work out what you want to achieve and then allocate a certain amount of time per day / per week / per month for marketing. For example, I spend two hours a day on marketing activities, five days per week. The rest of the time is spent with clients.
* Is copywriting part of what you do? You may be writing blogs, website pages, a newsletter or a book. I suggest that you write early in the morning, before you answer emails and when your mind is fresh. Getting stuck into emails is, for many of us, the start of the working day. As soon as you do this, you will be thinking about work related issues that arise from emails. A clear mind is helpful, when it comes to writing.
* Put key marketing tasks in your diary. For example, blogging might be daily or weekly, so put it in the diary. Just like you would for a meeting, scheduled phone call or video conference call.
* Plan for learning time. In a fast changing world, you need to keep up to speed with software and different ways of doing things. This may equate to reading time and attending seminars.
* Use a time management system or methodology. Stop getting interrupted the whole time. Manage emails and phone calls better. Include an end time as well as a start time, for meetings. I recently attended a time management seminar which was run by Smarter Not Harder which was very helpful.
* Delegate, delegate, delegate. You can’t do it all yourself. You should delegate the stuff that you hate doing to someone who loves doing it. I realise that this will depend on your circumstances – however – marketing is of critical importance to your enterprise and you need to focus on it.
