Jessica McGreal reveals tips, tricks and even cheats that can make your working life that little bit easier
If there’s a shortcut that could possibly make our lives easier then we would probably be inclined to take it, right? This is true in both our personal and working lives, as time poor professionals attempt to jam-pack their already busy schedules.
Lack of time at work is a consistent problem across a range of industries, and marketing is no different. Research by AtTask proves this point: nearly one in four marketers are now working more than 10 hours on an average day, 40 per cent blame this on manual tasks or unexpected projects. Lack of time has resulted in practitioners becoming multitasking masterminds, with 82 per cent of professionals admitting they have at least six applications or tools open on their desktop at once.
To make your weekdays that little bit easier we are sharing some B2B marketing life hacks. Not sure what a life hack is? Well, Google defines it as: ‘a strategy or technique adopted in order to manage one’s time and daily activities in a more efficient way.’ Simply, a life hack is a new quicker way of doing a task – for example did you know Bitly had an internet browser extension? The button sits next to the address bar allowing users to shorten the URL of their current webpage in one click. This saves visiting the company’s website every time you want to post a new link on social media.
So here’s a selection of our favourite hacks that will ensure you manage to get to the end of your to do lists in 2015:
Basic hacks
Getting back to basics might sound pretty obvious, but it’s worth it. If we’re not staring at a desktop, we’re tweeting from our tablet or checking WhatsApp on our smartphone. So get out of your chair, exit the office and go for a walk. Yes it is January and that means it’s pretty chilly, but going for a short walk refreshes the mind and boosts energy levels which means you’ll end up getting more done.
To do lists are a great way to ensure you are productive with your time. Creating a list might sound straightforward, however it’s sometimes difficult to make time for organisation. Write a daily, weekly and monthly list with the objectives you want to achieve. This will help you prioritise and ultimately be more efficient.
Jill Pinner, chairman and founder of experimental agency Fizz, reinforces: “It sounds simple but make sure you are on top of your to do list. You should go through this weekly, and anything that transfers across from the old to the new list should be brought to the top and put in bold. You should never have any item on your list for more than two weeks. This will ensure that those tasks you always find a reason to put off actually get done.”
However, to do lists are not the only thing you should have close to hand; James Trezona MD of Rooster Punk suggests keeping A3 doodle paper under your keyboard or laptop. “Sounds ridiculous, but I tend to have a sheet of A3 under my keyboard – to doodle, make notes and sketch out thoughts,” he explains. “It’s very easy in this digital world to start in the digital space when writing, but research shows that our brains are more creative with a pen and paper and our heads in ‘drawing mode.’”
Computer hacks
Meanwhile, to speed up your digital day download Evernote. This simple organisational app allows users to access their work across all devices. The search functionality allows you to quickly scan everything saved, from blogs and webpage clippings to handwritten notes and photos. There’s also a business version that allows colleagues to share their ideas and collaborate easily.
Evernote is not the only helpful app. Col Skinner, owner and digital consultant at Profoundry, recommends downloading free text editor Metapad. “Several times a day you will subconsciously find yourself manually changing the sentence case or format of text,” says Skinner. “Use Metapad, a free tool that is Notepad on steroids. It lets you paste in text and instantly change its case among other features.”
Meanwhile, Google offers a range of helpful products. For example, Saphia Verdiglione, marketing manager at Woocom, says Google Alerts allows her to stay current: “With Google Alerts I can set up specific news items that I want to stay on top of and Google does all the hard work for me and sends me an email on a daily basis with relevant alerts.” No longer will you spend hours sifting through search engines, news sites or social media.
Campaign hacks
You may be happy with your productivity levels, but are your campaigns up to scratch? Is there a simpler, easier and better way of doing things?
Recycling content is one thing, but ensuring you make full use of content creation opportunities is another. When hosting an event, note down interesting quotes and facts from speakers on the day. You can then use this information to build a post-event infographic. The graphic will drive further web traffic and social conversations while highlighting the event and adding to the collateral for next year’s activity.
Michael Horrocks, digital marketing manager at Expert Market, offers another content life hack: anytime you hold an event or work with a photographer take a selection of additional photos to build up an internal image library. He explains: “When we do this at Expert Market we try to think of all the different things we may need images for in the future. These could be shots of different departments having fun at a company party, or your CEO giving a presentation.” As it grows this library will become an invaluable resource, photos can be used to illustrate news stories or to promptly deal with media enquiries.
In addition, Simon Morris, director, demand marketing EMEA at Adobe, offers a tip for marketers planning their paid search campaigns in more than one country, which makes reporting and management challenging. He explains: “To solve this challenge the Adobe team has established an extremely methodical way of labeling campaigns (country| programme| segment| tier| keyword theme| search engine| Language). This really helps us to sort the group campaigns for reporting and editing and saves a lot of time in the long run.”
Finally, lead generation is an area that many marketing departments struggle with. According to Forrester, only one per cent of leads turn into a customer for the average company. Consequently, Dave Rigotti, head of pipeline marketing at Bizible, urges marketers to ditch their lead goal for just a revenue goal to get on the same page as sales: “Companies focus too much on driving leads as a goal and not driving customers and revenue. Adopting a goal on revenue means you’ll optmise your marketing for the outcome you really want and you’ll be 100 per cent on the same page as sales.”
Launching ‘live chat’ on your website is a great way to ensure more leads convert and enter the sales funnel. This feature allows you to interact and nurture a prospect at the earliest chance possible. Rigotti reinforces: “We found leads from live chat contribute to 25 per cent of our new monthly revenue at Bizible, making it our number two sales channel in terms of revenue. In addition, lead to opportunity conversion is 50 per cent higher than average.”
These are a selection of our favourite hacks, but there are tonnes more out there that can make your working life easier and days more productive. So we’re calling all life hackers to divulge their secrets. Tweet us @marketingb2b with the hashtag #B2BLifeHacks to be included in our ‘life hacks’ Twitter wall.
