“Everything has a price, but not all prices appear on labels.”
– Morgan Housel
Do you ever find yourself at the end of a packed day and wonder how you managed to stay so busy without scratching the surface of your core priorities? In a world where we’re always connected and are prey to the latest fire drill to torpedo our day, it’s not uncommon to feel that we didn’t use our time with enough intention and purpose. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, tells us that 20% of our efforts produce 80% of results – meaning that we spend 80% of our time on activities that don’t deliver real impact.
Net net – we’re wasting a lot of time, leading to decision-making processes that undermine our business’ growth potential.
Time Is Our Most Precious Resource, But We Undervalue It
“It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.” – Seneca
We won’t try to tell you how to spend time in your personal life – you don’t always need to be “on”…sometimes downtime is needed. But, at work, wasted time can translate into lost opportunity. Whether by passively answering trivial emails, surfing the latest social posts, or allocating an hour or more for a Zoom call that really only requires 5 minutes – it’s too easy to lose focus on what’s really important to drive the business.
This behavior can be especially risky for marketing organizations. Marketing professionals are under immense pressure to drive demand and spend money efficiently – hence the often short tenure of CMOs. Regardless of the size of your marketing budget, marketers need to demonstrate and account for – especially in a turbulent market – the impact and efficiency of their investment choices. Inattention to the value of time as an asset can heighten the risk of making bad decisions under pressure. Below are some actionable ways marketers can learn from past performance and optimize those learnings to make sure we spend our time (and our money) efficiently.
The New Paradigm: Nimble, Adaptive Marketing
Stop debating and start testing. As marketing has become more agile, the sooner you start testing and iterating on your go-to-market strategy, the quicker you can validate assumptions, evaluate metrics and customer feedback and course-correct if necessary. This approach helps marketing teams de-risk approaches to drive customer acquisition and retention before placing bit bets.
Accept imperfection. Failure is part of learning. Risk-taking and failed experiments can provide valuable insights. Avoid getting frozen in analysis paralysis in the pursuit of perfection. Not only will it hamper your ability to be agile, you’ll also lose out on gaining essential learning that can make your marketing more effective.
Socialize the insights. Many organizations suffer from information silos. Marketing is often on the front line of gaining customer and market insights, and it’s critical to share those learnings with other teams, such as Product, Sales, and Customer Success.
Diversify your budget. You’ll want to allocate a specific budget for doubling down on efficient activities and a budget for exploring the next new thing (audience, campaign, etc.). View your budget like a diversified portfolio. It’s smart to keep a reserve ready in order to hit the gas when you find a successful strategy to drive growth.
Take Control!
In summary, you can gain control over how to best use your time simply by being aware of how you’re spending it and applying clear intention to decisions on time management – down to the smallest decisions you make each day. Treating your and your organization’s time like a precious asset will put you on the road toward using your time more efficiently and effectively.
Get Expert Insights On Optimal Time Management For Marketers
If your organization could use help with time management, 621 can help put effective processes in place to increase efficiency. Please contact us today at info@621consulting.com to learn more.