Yesterday, I sat down with JP and Josh about what were some of the problems that the marketers they talk to face everyday. They both provided me with some context about some things that marketers want more of, but the top problem they both mentioned multiple times over was that marketers simply do not have enough time.
I’ve looked over my own to-do list, metrics I need to keep track of every day, and other tasks I need to monitor…an immediate overwhelming sense takes over because there are just so many things to do. Ironically, I don’t have enough time to worry about the number of things that surround TrackMaven, so I just prioritize and grind through tasks.
Unfortunately for marketers, you can’t go run out to the store to buy time to manage more of your marketing tasks.
For the past year I have been a one-woman marketing show/machine/department/team (changes day-to-day ;) ) and there are more people coming on board; however, I know exactly what marketers face. Here’s how I’ve managed ours and hopefully some ways to manage your marketing tasks.
1. Automated Lead Nurturing and Scoring
Sometimes I feel like I could be the poster child for marketing automation because I always sing praises on how every marketer needs it. Most of the marketers we interact with have that covered and some may just skim the surface of it’s capabilities.
One of the skimmed over capabilities is automated lead nurturing.
This is something I will always be working on, but since it is something that is automated where I can optimize each individual email to make sure my leads are getting the attention they need and are sent the right message at the appropriate time.
Lead scoring is the second portion of marketing automation that could get buried under landing pages, email lists, and contacts, except it also is one of the most important factors in managing your marketing. Lead scoring allows you to assign a score to a lead based on behaviors they take or your principle qualification factors. It is automated and can become quite helpful with huge pools of contacts.
If you have both of these things in place already, when was the last time you took a look at them? It may seem a little counter-productive of me to tell you that you need to check-in with these things regularly, but they help manage a load of other tasks that you would have to do manually.
2. Analytics and Alerts
There has been a slight improvement on the amount of marketing projects using analytics, but the percentage of projects using analytics is at a stark 32.5%. I stress every day the importance of using data and analytics to add success into your marketing tasks. Sometimes adding another tool into your marketing set can be viewed as daunting and disruptive, but how will you know if something is working? How will you prove to you CMO or CEO that you should do more of something successful?
Maneuvering to a more proactive state is essential and you can automate the analytics reports you receive. I get updates every evening from our marketing automation every evening to tell me where our leads are coming from in the day. The entire team also gets reports about our sales pipeline every week. Automate, so the painful work is gone and so nothing slips through the cracks.
I try and set time in my calendar to export reports from TrackMaven as well. Sometimes the time is inconvenient, but I know setting aside the time helps to keep my marketing tasks in perspective to show if they are on the right track or not backed by data.
Another feature of TrackMaven that I rely on are the alerts. I have always been a fan of Google Alerts, until I got my first TrackMaven alert. They are faster and more reliable giving me exactly the content I want to hear about.
If you are using TrackMaven…set up alerts on yourself when you get a press mention or when you have an effective tweet. It cuts down on constantly having to check the progress of a marketing endeavor every minute of the day. If you aren’t using TrackMaven, stick to those Google Alerts, but try and add some more criteria to the functions so you aren’t missing out on something. If it gets too noisy you can always delete the alerted email or delete the alert itself.
Having alerts and analytics set up ensures you aren’t in the dark about what’s going on in your marketing. You won’t need to wait for the IT department to send you over reports anymore.
3. Curate and Queue
Content creation and promotion are two of the pieces of the content trifecta with the last piece as curation. Every successful marketer reads up on the latest marketing happenings. It can become an easy habit to read an article and then move onto the next one without any type of curation process.
When you’re reading a great piece of content, before you end the piece mark it down somewhere.
We use a number of tools for curation with Feedly, inc, Icebergs and TrackMaven. Then we queue it up with Buffer to share on our social media channels. I use Icebergs and inc to curate articles to share with the team or ones that I only managed to read the first paragraph of. That way I have a nice queue to go through when I need something to read.
Another way I curate content is through TrackMaven, I use the sometimes forgotten starred and shared function.
I love the endless scroll function on the Activity Feed…but I also do not like to end my scrolling until I’m well and done. So, when I see something interesting in the middle I star the content to save for later. Or if it’s really great I click the share button to share it with Allen or to mark the link down so I can add it to my content library immediately. I also can see in TrackMaven how effective that content really was to help determine if the piece is a diamond or just a plain piece of cubic zirconium.
Marketers with libraries of information have a huge advantage on the knowledge front and can provide their audience more context other than their own brand’s voice.
4. Your To-Do List and Adaptable Priorities
I have paper to-do lists and I’ve tried every to-list app on the App Store. There are only two things that have worked for me. First, I keep open over a dozen tabs on Google Chrome open to monitor analytics (on TrackMaven and through Google Analytics) and with all of the tasks I need to accomplish. As soon as the task is done, I exit out of the tab.
The next thing that helps manage my marketing to-do list is a Chrome plugin I use called Momentum.
Momentum is right in front of me every time I open a new tab presenting a beautiful nature image and my to-do list on the side.
Everyone has a different to-do list and there isn’t a formula that works for everyone, but figuring out exactly what you need to accomplish in that day or hour can alleviate the stress of the mountain number of tasks.
Secondly, Everyone has different marketing priorities in the hour, day, month, and year. These priorities have varying levels of time-sensitivity and seem a little rigid. But, just as marketing changes, these priorities must change too.
Every week I meet with Allen to discuss what is going on in marketing during the week and one out of the many things we go over is in Trello. My relationship is always hot and cold with Trello, but the capabilities to help me determine what priorities are higher than others. I visualize in my head these tasks as well, when something needs to move up I simply drag it up the list moving the other things down.
Marketers have to prioritize, or we face drowning in the wave of tasks we need to complete. My imagery and words may be put a little too simply, but they actually function in that way. If my priorities aren’t adaptable, then it just causes a mess.
5. Repurpose Your Content
When I’m creating a huge piece of content, I then think about all of the other ways I can use that piece of content.
What if you have a surprisingly successful Facebook post and it had an image in it? You know you can then use it as a pin and then a tweet with an image. Or you could use that image in a blog post as well. Save time by repurposing content and to then replicate it’s effectiveness across other channels.
Our Instagram Report is a good example of this or our Marketing Dictionary. With both I can create even more blog posts, pin images, and schedule various tweets to keep feeding the content beast. I created the Marketing Word of The Week and that helped develop Facebook graphics and tweets. I can then pin all of these images as well. It just so happened that this week’s word is Instagram and I can also have a post on Instagram for it as well. One piece of content…repurposed over four different ways.
Managing and creating a brand’s marketing is such a huge task in itself that it can almost feel as if you are drowning in data, content, email, tweets, posts, etc. However, knowing the right priorities, adapting to the different channels, and setting up a firm foundation in automation adds an instant life vest to save you from drowning.