How to manage your time in Marketing

Do you ever find yourself struggling to manage time efficiently?

As a marketing manager, you know that time is of the essence, and every minute counts.

You can’t afford to waste hours a week on one task that doesn’t really benefit your overall marketing strategy.

Instead, you need to learn how to effectively manage your time in marketing. 

Don’t worry, we’re here to make this a reality.

Read through this guide, and you will find a host of time management tips to help you breeze through your daily schedule and get more done. 

What is time management in marketing?

Time management is highly valuable for marketing professionals juggling numerous projects and deadlines.

Whether you’re a marketing manager or an assistant, you will need to plan your time to achieve peak productivity and efficiency every single day. 

The right time management strategies will let you reach specific daily goals, feel less stressed at work, and improve your reputation within your field.

Certain concepts – like the Eisenhower Matrix and Pomodoro Technique – will improve time management by prioritizing important tasks and helping you avoid distractions. 

What are the benefits of good time management skills for marketing professionals?

Okay, you know what time management is, but why should you care about it?

We’ve already touched upon a few possible benefits, but here are the main reasons to work on time management: 

• Improve your daily output – Managing your time efficiently will help you improve your daily output. In simple terms, you will get more done in a shorter space of time. Instead of spending the whole day working on one task, you’ve managed to get numerous tasks done and have ticked multiple things off your to do list. 
• Reduce your daily stress – We mentioned this earlier, but stress and time management go hand in hand. There’s nothing worse than looking at a long to do list and not seeing anything crossed off. In fact, only 20% of people feel that their work is under control every day. That’s a shockingly low percentage, and time management strategies will change that. Getting on top of your work means you feel more in control and have fewer things to worry about!  
• Achieve better marketing outcomes – Timing is everything in the world of digital marketing. For example, if you’re creating social media posts, you need to know when to post them for the best impact. Poor time management can mean you spend too long coming up with ideas for the posts, so you miss the peak times to get them out there. Utilizing time management strategies and ideas will ensure you get things done on time, every time. As such, you achieve better outcomes as your marketing material is out when it needs to be. 
• Stop doing work at home – You’ve worked yourself to the bone in the office, but you didn’t manage to complete your to do list. A lack of time management has hurt you again, meaning it’s another late evening at home finishing things off. Did you know that 26% of work ends up being done outside of office hours?! Why should you spend huge chunks of your personal time doing work? Learning to eliminate distractions and prioritize important tasks will help you get through your daily schedule and avoid working overtime at home. 

Evidently, managing your time in marketing is very important.

Not only will it improve your life at work, but it will also improve your personal life and mental well-being.

All that remains is one big question…

How to manage your time in marketing

In this section, we’ll go on a journey looking at the different time management tips and time management skills you can call upon.

Some strategies may work better for you than others, so it’s worth trying them all out and seeing which one is the best. 

We’ll start with something simple: 

Create a to-do list

The first step in achieving better time management is to create a to-do list.

This list will show all the different tasks you need to complete.

It’s a great way of visualizing what lies ahead of you while ensuring you don’t forget about something important. 

Of course, this is just one step in an overall process.

A to-do list on its own can help you be more productive, but you need to learn how to get the most out of it. 

Prioritize important tasks

When looking at your to-do list, how do you decide which tasks to complete before others?

You’ve got multiple phone calls to make, loads of stuff to manage on social media, and tons of content marketing things to handle.

It’s very overwhelming, but some tasks should be done before others. 

This is where something called the Eisenhower Matrix comes in handy.

It’s a time management strategy that helps you make sense of a to-do list by figuring out which tasks are more important than others. 

Effectively, you organize your tasks by urgency and importance, so you end up with four quadrants like this: 

Tasks that are Important and Urgent should be done first.

Ones that are Important and Less Urgent need to come second, followed by ones that are Less Important and Urgent.

Finally, you do the Less Important and Less Urgent tasks when all others are complete. 

There’s actually a really handy video below that dives into this in more detail if you want to learn more: 

The underlying purpose of the Eisenhower Matrix is to fit your tasks into these categories so you improve your workflow and daily routine.

It’s the first step in making sense of your long to-do list and ensuring you don’t end the day with crucial tasks still to do. 

Set time limits for each task

One reason marketers struggle with time tracking and time management is that they spend too much time working on a single task. 

Let’s paint a picture for a second.

You’re a marketing professional working in social media.

What sort of tasks are you doing every day?

You may have to manage Facebook Updates, create posts for Twitter, deal with customer complaints or messages on different social media channels, create even more content for new campaigns, etc. 

There are loads of jobs to be done, and you can use the previously mentioned technique to prioritize them.

Cool, but what if you spend hours doing the first task?

Suddenly, there’s not enough time left in the day to deal with all the other tasks on your list! 

How can you stop this from happening?

Enter, The Pomodoro Technique. 

This is one of the greatest time management strategies in existence and it was invented by an Italian student in the 1980s.

The technique is simple: 

• Choose a task from your to-do list
• Set a 25-minute timer (this is called a pomodoro)
• Work until the timer goes off
• Take a five-minute break
• After four pomodoro intervals, take a longer break (up to 30 minutes)

The idea behind it is that you work in short bursts of focused concentration.

Knowing you have a short break helps you remain focused on the tasks you’re doing. It also plays a huge role in avoiding burnout as you can regularly get up, clear your mind, move around, and then get back to work. 

There was actually a very interesting case study that showcased how an entrepreneur managed to finish 40 hours of work in under 17 hours using this method.

It’s worth reading if you’re interested, and the entrepreneur basically explains that he was spending 25 hours time dedicated to work, rather than multiple hours where most of the time was spent doing nothing.

In short, if you want to stop wasting time, try the Pomodoro Technique. 

Avoid distractions

Distractions are the bane of your life as a marketing professional.

You’ll be working on social media activities for the day, then all of a sudden be sidetracked by something.

It’s one of the reasons the Pomodoro Technique is useful; most of your work time is wasted by being distracted by something else. 

Avoiding distractions will help you focus on every task, so you can complete them faster and move on to the next one.

Here are a few basic ideas to limit distractions while you work: 

• Turn off notifications for all non-essential apps on your phone
• Put your phone somewhere you can’t see it
• Listen to concentration music or white noise to block out sounds and focus
• Avoid multitasking – stick to one task at a time until each task is complete

Extra time management tips for marketers

The four points above are the main things to focus on: 

• Create a list of things to do
• Prioritize the tasks in the list so you have a daily routine
• Set time limits to help you be more productive
• Avoid distractions to focus on your work

If you follow these ideas, your time management skills will drastically improve.

However, we have a few extra time management tips that will help you do all of those things and be even more efficient: 

Use marketing automation tools

Marketing automation is the art of getting things done automatically for you.

It’s an absolute lifesaver if your time management skills are terrible.

The great news is, there are loads of different tools or software you can use to streamline your daily marketing tasks. 

At Optimo, we have a host of free marketing tools that will save time every single day.

If you’re struggling to conjure up ideas for a social media marketing campaign, our Social Media Posts Ideas generator will do it for you.

Simply describe the industry and topic, and you’ll get 10 social media post ideas in seconds. 

What if you need to create a 500-word blog post as part of a content marketing strategy?

It could take chunks out of your day when done all by yourself. Instead, our Blog Post Generator will give you a 500-word piece to edit and post with just a few prompts. 

There’s even an AI tool to respond to angry customer emails, so you aren’t wasting time dealing with them instead of focusing on more important tasks. 

Automated marketing doesn’t stop there; you have apps that help you schedule social media posts or send bulk emails to customers.

Using technology like this will speed up your day by dealing with all of the mundane and repetitive tasks.

Thus, you can focus on the important and urgent tasks that require a bit more human involvement. 

Save time with a password manager

A password manager is a simple tool that saves valuable minutes each day.

Here, you simply keep all of your passwords in one place, meaning you never have to remember them.

Something like LastPass is great as it’s extra secure; you just find the website/app you need a password for and it’s ready to copy and paste. 

Right away, you can devote more time to your work, rather than frantically trying to remember the login details for all of your social media accounts. 

Put all your work in a task manager

Writing a to-do list on a piece of paper or in a Google Doc isn’t going to be optimal for productivity.

Instead, you want to get everything in one place where you can clearly see what needs to be done, and by when. 

Using a task manager like Todoist is a fantastic idea because you can see all of your projects, tick them off the list, and categorize them by order of importance.

It just helps you make sense of your daily schedule so you feel more on top of tasks. 

Use our time management tips to improve daily productivity!

If your you’re constantly behind on your work, you need to take action ASAP.

It starts with a to-do list, followed by prioritizing each task so you know what to do first.

Then, set time limits and avoid distractions so you’re more focused.

Regular breaks will help you avoid burnout and return to tasks with more gusto. 

Of course, don’t forget to use as many tools as possible to make your life easier.

Feel free to check out the full range of Optimo AI tools for marketers, so you save time on daily tasks and achieve more every week.