5 Ways to Improve Productivity in a Digital Marketing Environment
Most companies strive to do better and be more productive. There will always be tasks that take time and resources. However, there are also solutions to make these everyday projects more profitable in the long term. In a digital marketing environment, there are many areas to consider throughout all client projects. An agency may cover all aspects such as email marketing, SEO, content creation, and digital strategy under one roof. When this happens, unless you have suitable resources available, individuals may need to take on more work than is possible.
Teams cannot always be in all places or cover everything, and inadequate resource availability may mean that some areas are stretched thinly. To avoid this issue and improve productivity, there are several ways to boost your operations and the time taken to complete mundane tasks.
Take a look at some areas that will improve your overall productivity and profitability:
1. Delegate effectively
There will be a range of experts in your in-house teams that can complete projects more speedily and accurately than others in the department. That’s not to say the others in the group are not valuable. However, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and you need to find out where they are to delegate tasks effectively.
In smaller digital agencies, there may not be adequate resources to carry out client projects, so outsourcing may also be a sound option. This is another form of delegation and frees up your staff to continue with projects they have expertise in. There are several options for outsourcing, including specific tasks and entire project delegation. You will also find a range of specialist agencies and freelancers than can assist.
2. Use tools to speed up processes
One of the main issues that companies face is the time taken to process information to get the desired results. However, if you use expert tools to eliminate this, this time will be reduced to focus on other more profitable areas. For example, if your digital agency focuses on content creation, you will understand that the entire process involves planning content, researching trends, creating copy, proofing, and outreaching. If you could take one of these aspects out of the equation, such as the proofing part – there are tools such as the ProofHQ alternative, Ziflow that speeds up the whole process and provides automation within the activity. This automation frees up time for the team to focus on other aspects of client projects.
3. Schedule time to plan and focus
Many businesses are buzzing with projects and general tasks that these eat into your day with little time left to evaluate and plan your next move. If teams feel they are under constant pressure to get things done, projects can often fall foul of errors and misjudgments due to time and resource constraints. In any company, there should be time scheduled in to plan and effectively focus on tasks. There’s no point in having meetings for the sake of meetings. This time has to be used with intention. So, leaving mobiles and laptops at desks is crucial to get individuals focused and engaged in the entire process.
4. Identify and analysis results
In the marketing world, it’s not enough to think about projects in isolation. Each part of the process has a knock-on effect on a range of other things, and it’s vital to ensure you are kept in the loop. Completing a project doesn’t mean it’s finished, and you got the results you wanted. Looking at where your most profitable areas lie is also essential. Drilling down into the finer detail and splitting time taken and profitable tasks is a valuable way to establish where you should focus your efforts. There will also times where you need to take on the jobs that are more hassle for less profit. However, it’s judging how often and how to avoid these situations that will lead to more profit and improved productivity across the company.
5. Know when to scale your agency
Hiring more staff doesn’t mean you will get a similar effect in results or profit (at least not straight away!). The dynamics of your teams will change, and this will need to be factored in to determine how successful scaling up maybe for your company. Planning when to scale your agency is crucial and should be done when projected benefits outweigh the losses you could face in the short term. In the meantime, outsourcing could help you scale up temporarily to meet higher demand.