Do you run the day or does the day run you?

Typically, marketers have a lot on their plate at one time.

Campaign reviews. Rescheduled timelines. Looming deadlines. Reporting tasks. New content pressure. Lead generation. Conversion rates. Stakeholder buy-in. The responsibilities are endless.

Here are four changes you can make to your day that will make a big difference to your output.

4 Tips To Be A More Effective Marketer

1. Identify Your Productive Hours

Think about when you are most productive. It might be first thing in the morning, mid afternoon after lunch, or perhaps you're a night owl and your best ideas come to you late at night.

Identifying your high output hours will help you improve productivity because you:

• Redirect your energy to times that suit your brain power
• Can reschedule other menial tasks to less critical times in your day
• Will feel a higher sense of achievement and not end the day feeling like you have got nothing done.

For example:

• Move the Monday morning team meeting to Monday afternoon. Monday mornings should be high-energy, with a let's get cracking attitude that does not need to be overshadowed by a long-winded weekly team catch up.
• Write the content piece at the time you are firing with ideas. If you're bursting with inspiration after your third piccolo latte then start then!

Try realigning your schedule today.

2. Know Thy Enemy

What distracts you from getting on with things?

• Noisy or disruptive colleagues who side-track you.
• Facebook or messenger addictions where a simple 'just checking my timeline for a minute' saps 30 minutes of work time.
• Phone calls that can really be left unanswered because now is not a good time for you.
• Denial (of course I have time to watch write that report later even though I plan on leaving early today).
• A messy desk that makes you feel cluttered and disorganised.

Be honest with yourself and think about what will help you to maintain focus at work.

Manage your distractions, set boundaries for yourself and eliminate opportunities that give rise to procrastination.

3. Sleep Well

I love including this tip because it's so true. A good night's sleep will help you be your best the following day.

You need to know your limits and call it a day when you are no longer being productive, and are simply going through the motions.

No amount of caffeine or chocolate can help you perform well in the day-in-day-out churn-and-burn of marketing departments.

Be kind to yourself. Factor in relax and unwind time at the end of each day.

4. Set Goals

Use the SMART technique when planning your goals and marketing projects. It might be:

• daily, weekly, monthly to-do lists
• content planning
• strategic development
• data analysis.

If you're not using time management / project software then you can establish a guideline for all tasks using this principle.

It's perfect for marketers who need to be on top of tasks, every phase of a project, resources needed and wanted, skill sets and team proficiency.

BONUS: Resources To Help You Be More Efficient

If your business has the budget, here are some resources that will help you become a more efficient marketer.

HubSpot

HubSpot offers a full stack of products for marketing, sales, and customer relationship management: powerful alone, and even better when used together.

Best for managers looking for marketing automation solutions.

Teamwork.com

Teamwork.com offers a suite of online project management and collaboration tools designed to maximise your team's productivity, communication and overall customer happiness.

Best for marketing teams who want to eliminate emails and have an efficient project and task management tool.

Slack

Slack is a tool that brings all your communication together in one place. It's real-time messaging, archiving and search for modern teams.

Best for marketing teams who want to set up more focused team conversations in project channels, with the ability to text chat or video chat, drag, drop and share files easily.

Google Docs / Sheets

Google has made it super easy to communicate, collaborate and store documents in a secure setting. All for free.

For us, we find it best for our marketing teams who work remotely, to gain easy accessibility and real-time collaboration.