A global pandemic, SEM, Email Marketing, MQL quotas, drastic IOS and browser cookies updates… It’s no wonder why in a recent survey from Forbes, over 83% of marketers feel burnt out. Due to COVID-19, many marketing departments experienced a rapid, but necessary shift to digital marketing tactics, leaving many marketers with increased workloads and limited resources. During such a drastic reshaping of what standard marketing looks like, and with so many marketers questioning if they want to continue with their career path due to high-stress work environments, burnout is more prevalent than ever.
The good news is there are ways to reframe how you look at your marketing job to help reduce that burnt-out feeling. Continue reading to learn about the 7 tips that I have been using in my daily life to keep feeling motivated.
1. Set S.M.A.R.T Goals
Not knowing your goals or what metrics you should be tracking is setting yourself up for failure. It’s like trying to catch a movie target or finding a place that doesn’t exist. It’s exhausting and benefits no one. Yet, all too often, I hear a conversation between a marketer and their boss/client that starts with the marketer asking how many leads or sales they need to drive and the boss or client replying with, “as many as you can!”
That’s an incredibly unproductive conversation that too many marketers have daily. So how do you make a plan for this goal or create a budget? It’s important to push decision-makers to set SMART (Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant- Timely) Goals. Don’t just have a goal of getting more leads or sales, have a concrete goal to achieve in a given amount of time. This will help you feel accomplished and will ensure all internal teams are working towards the same thing.
When using the S.M.A.R.T goal structure, you will almost immediately experience the benefits including:
- Less anxiety over achieving success
- Increased focus on a common goal and being able to align our day-to-day efforts to complete each task
- More accurate assessment of tactic profitability
- Concise and clear client expectations
- Ease in planning critical financial information like conversion rates, CPA, ROI, EPC, and more
2. Use the 80/20 rule
The 80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of the cause. In plain English, you should prioritize your top task as they will most likely result in 80% of your desired outcomes (think sales!). When prioritizing your ever-growing task list, focus on the marketing avenues that make a significant difference for your organization because more likely than not, 80% of your customers are coming from that 20% of tasks. Find your 20% and hyper-focus your attention to that avenue. You don’t need to complete everything for everyone. You just need to drive results.
3. Make Use of Templates, Resources, and Tools
In the great age of technology, the internet can be a goldmine of free, easy-to-use, done for you, resources, or it can be an absolute time suck of cat videos and obscure fascinations like watching people cut down large oak trees. Okay, that last one might just be me, but you get the point, the internet is a double-edged sword. Learn to use it to your advantage. You don’t have to start every project from scratch. There are tons of resources and tools already out there to help you get a jump start. The best part is most of these resources are out there free of charge. Start a list of the most valuable resources so that you can reference that information from time to time. In the next few weeks, we will be curating a list of our favorite free digital marketing & data analytics resources, so stay tuned. This is a resource you don’t want to miss.
4. Learn to say ‘No’
We only have 24 hours in a day. We can’t do everything for everyone, but often as marketers, we’re answering to more than one person. For most of us, we feel compelled to help with every task given to us, and in most cases, leave very little time for ourselves. We have this irrational fear that if we say ‘No,’ we will be letting the other person down or even get fired. Most of the time, we say ‘yes’ and then spend hours stressing over how we will make an excuse to get out of our commitment. Be good to yourself and learn how to make time for what is most important to you! If you are interested in learning about how to say ‘No,’ check out the book, The Power of No by James Altucher.
5. Employ the Pomodoro Technique
Are you struggling to focus on one task at a time? You’re not alone, In this age of digital stimulation, it’s no wonder why goldfish have longer attention spans than humans. So how do you learn to refocus and make time for things that matter? This is where the Pomodoro Technique comes in. It is a time management method that breaks work sessions into intervals, usually 25 minutes in length, separated by a brief break, 2 – 5 minutes in-between each working session. Once you have reached 4 working sessions, you take a longer 15 – 30 minute break.
A key to this technique is to break tasks down as far as possible. If a task is taking more than four sessions it probably needs to be broken down further. During your break times, you can do something to let your mind wander, go for a walk, talk to a friend, don’t just sit there and look at your phone, use this time to let your brain stretch its metaphorical legs which allows us to think more critically when returning to the task at hand. And overall, short and consistent breaks help us to be more efficient.
6 steps to using the Pomodoro Technique:
- Choose the task that you will focus on (remember the 80-20 rule)
- Set your timer for your working interval (I recommend this chrome extension)
- Work on the task, remember to focus with all your effort, do not get distracted (its 25 minutes, you got this)
- Take a break when the timer rings, mark somewhere that you have completed a working session
- If you have fewer than 4 marks in an active session, take a (5-minute break) and begin working again
- If you have 4 marks in an active session, take a longer (15 – 30 minute break) and then start working again
Like anything at first, this technique will be hard for many of us to complete, but over time and with some practice, you will be a Pomodoro pro.
6. Block Your Time
Time-Blocking is the most efficient way to improve your life and stress level. It is a simple technique. You block out a period of time in your calendar to complete a task and then follow your daily scheduled calendar and complete your task as scheduled. This technique is so effective because it allows you to focus on a single task at a time and relieves stress as you know you have prioritized tasks to help you meet deadlines. Other great benefits of this technique include viewing your task and deadlines in a calendar view, the sense of accomplishment when a task is complete, allowing you to schedule urgent requests easily without having to panic and figure out when you will have free time. The major challenge of this technique is estimating how long a task will take you to complete (when I first started, I was almost doubling or tripling the time that I provided myself in each block). However, with a bit of practice, you can quickly pick up this skill. I like to complete my time-blocking in the evening so that I can wake up the next day and get to work immediately.
7. Hire a Helping Hand
Digital marketing is a diverse, rapidly-changing industry that has developed a need for specialists dedicated to mastering a specific craft within the industry. Long gone are the days of the ‘Full-Stack Digital Marketers’ who would work on SEO in the morning and finish their day by completing a programmatic ad buy. The industry as a whole has moved away from having digital marketers trying to do everything and anything. Shouldn’t you? At the end of the day, when you look at your to-do list, and it seems longer than when you first started, maybe it’s time to begin thinking about getting extra help. From agencies to interns and everything in-between, there are tons of cost-effective solutions for providing your organization with extra support. When outsourcing work you gain the benefit of splitting your workload, added expertise, and additional efficiency within your organization. There are various benefits that come with hiring a helping hand, but there are also many pitfalls to avoid. Make sure that you do your research. Picking the right person for the job is crucial.
Feeling overwhelmed? Is your marketing’s check engine light on? Let our team at Well-Oiled Marketing help. Click below to set up a call for us to discuss your marketing strategies and goals!
