6 Productivity Hacks For Marketing Teams

You have wondered, right?

How you and your marketing team can be more productive.

What it really takes to get more out of each workday.

It is the million-dollar question marketing teams have spent years trying to answer.

Now:

We do not claim to have the be-all-and-end-all solution to your productivity problems.

But, what we do have are six productivity hacks to increase motivation and get more done.

Read on to find out more:

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1. Get The Fundamentals Right

Lifestyle plays a huge role in productivity.

Before you reach for a new tool, product, or system, it is important to check that you and your marketing team are getting the fundamentals right.

Are you:

• Getting enough sleep?
• Exercising regularly?
• Eating the right foods?
• Taking time to unwind?

Research published in the British Journal of Health and Psychology found a correlation between a healthy diet and productivity.

People who regularly ate portions of fruit and vegetables were happier, healthier, more engaged, and more creative. All of which have a direct impact on productivity.

Also:

45% of Americans report that lack of sleep impacts them at least once a week. Studies from Harvard estimate this costs companies $2,280 or 11.3 days productivity a year.

Promoting healthy lifestyle habits in the workplace could be exactly what you need to overcome your current productivity challenges.

However, that starts with your workplace culture:

2. Cultivate A Productive Culture

The best way to reinforce the fundamentals is to create a productive working culture.

Specifically, that means creating a psychologically safe environment.

A workplace culture where, without fear of negative repercussions, team members can:

• Share opinions
• Contribute ideas
• Make mistakes
• Take risks

When employees can share ideas and offer praise without being embarrassed or scared, they are more productive and more willing to contribute to the team’s greater work.

In fact:

When Google researched what factors influenced their most productive and effective teams, they found psychological safety to be the most important.

They write:

“Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics we found — it is the underpinning of the other four.“

Without psychological safety, productivity struggles to thrive. While it can exist, it is not able to reach its full potential.

You can also further empower your marketing team by promoting:

• Benevolence: have team members care for others on their team
• Fatigue management: ensure rest and time off are seen as positives

If you can build a strong foundation out of these last two points, every other tip, trick, and tool you will read about will be far more effective.

So, do not be afraid to invest time in getting the basics right.

Once you have done that, it is time to look at creating smart workflows.

3. Create Smart Workflows

Bottlenecks:

They are a one-way ticket to stress, tight-deadlines, and lost productivity. Especially if you are a content-focused marketing team.

Feeling time tick away as you wait for a colleague’s response or approval is enough to make you feel, well…like this:

The way to combat this productivity problem is by implementing smart workflows.

This is a system whereby all team members agree in advance:

• Who is responsible for what
• When the work needs to be completed

By doing this, you create a predictable environment with clearly defined expectations.

These workflows can be made even more efficient by using tools.

For example, our Loomly tool allows marketing teams and other departments to work together and communicate seamlessly, from an easy-to-use dashboard:

4. Put Your Tasks In Your Calendar

A common theme among highly-productive marketing teams is calendars.

Specifically, having a calendar that is:

• Planned well in advance.
• Heavily detailed.
• Geared to your most productive style of work.

Calendars are effective for several reasons.

Firstly, they allow you to prepare for the coming day(s) by showing you exactly what needs to be done. Although you may need to shuffle tasks at times, work rarely comes as a surprise.

Secondly, they create a sense of tunnel vision. If a task is not included in your calendar, it does not exist. And, in an ideal world, it will only be completed in its allocated time slot.

You can also use calendars to identify tasks that:

• Would be better delegated or outsourced.
• Take up more time than necessary.
• Do not contribute effectively to your current goals.

That is to say if you are constantly pushing a task to the next days – or outright avoiding it – you will be able to see this in your calendar and take action on it.

There are lots of free tools that allow you to create digital calendars such as Google Calendar.

5. Get Agile

Have you heard of agile marketing?

It is like a new operating system for marketing teams, an innovative approach that looks to improve productivity and deliver higher value to customers.

Agile marketing looks to eliminate roadblocks and increase execution by: 

• Promoting communication
• Empowering employees
• Responding to change
• Being open to collaboration
• Regularly reviewing data

Teams work in short cycles with a focus on high-priority tasks. Then, based on the data and insight collected, performance is reviewed and adjusted for the next cycle.

Marketing teams that implement agile marketing can see:

• Increased project success rates
• Improved morale
• Increase satisfaction, loyalty, innovation, and engagement

Reports also suggest that agile marketing teams are up to 87% more productive.

Here you can learn more about agile marketing and how it can benefit your marketing team.

6. Listen To Music

In the early 2010s there was a popular phrase:

“Headphones in, world out.”

It made for a pretty cool Instagram caption. But, research suggests it could also be an effective productivity strategy.

In studies of college students listening to music while working was shown to:

• Improve academic performance
• Increase focus and concentration

Wearing headphones and listening to music reduced distractions and increased cognitive performance. Both of these contribute to higher productivity.

It can also make repetitive tasks more enjoyable.

However:

The key seems to be listening to instrumental, rhythmic music. The kind you can listen to without, well… really listening to it.

Lyrics can create distractions and impact you in the same way voices in the office can do.

So, allowing your marketing team to wear headphones and listen to music while they work may help them to concentrate for longer, increase performance, and stay on task.

Productivity Hacks For Marketing Teams In A Nutshell

If you want to increase your marketing team’s productivity, there are six things you can do to help get more from each day:

1. Get the fundamentals right: ensure your team is getting enough food, sleep, water, and rest
2. Cultivate a productive culture: foster a psychologically safe environment where your marketing team’s work can thrive
3. Create smart workflows: reduce bottlenecks by using pre-approved workflows to get work done effectively
4. Put your tasks in your calendar: tasks do not exist until they are on your calendar
5. Get agile: use principles of agile marketing to create incredibly productive cycles of work
6. Listen to music: it can improve focus and make “boring” tasks more manageable

If you want to learn more about productivity, teamwork, and collaboration, you should subscribe to our Brand Success Digest.