4 Simple Time Management Habits You Should Adopt

Marketers can always improve their skills, their strategies and their tactics – but they can never add more time to their busy schedules. What they can do, however, is employ both new technologies and new techniques to automate and streamline some tasks, which will leave them with extra hours to work on the creative elements of the craft, which can not be farmed out to machine or software.

Automate Email with CRM Software

The article “Marketing Your Practice: Medical CRM Software Simplifies the Process” uses the example of marketing for health-care professionals to highlight the effectiveness of CRM software, but the same lessons and strategies could be applied to most industries.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is not often used to its fullest potential. CRM is an excellent tool for building and maintaining email databases. CRM excels at automating email reminders, thank-yous and holiday greetings for premier customers. When the software is fed clean data that is free of duplicates and outdated contacts, CRM can truly automate most functions related to your email list.

But don’t stop there.

Social Media: Think Outside the CRM Box

The ability to automate email may be CRM’s most powerful time-saving tool, but it can also streamline social media, which can be a major time drain, even for people who are proficient on different platforms. Reclaim lost hours by using CRM software to push updates to all the different networks where your business has a presence, from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn. Use CRM to schedule updates for the times of day when your followers are most active and automate updates about any conversations keywords related to your business.

Campaign Analysis: Use CRM to Measure Metrics

Recover even more squandered time by using CRM to measure how your campaigns and strategies are working. CRM can measure the rate of first-call resolution in the customer service department. It can also be used to track and measure customer LTV, or lifetime value. Don’t forget to measure the results of CRM itself. Make sure to analyze whether or not you have seen increased revenue or reduced costs to determine whether the ROI can justify the expenditure on CRM.

Hire Freelancers to Create Content

With each algorithm update that Google releases, the “content is king” cliche becomes more and more true. Content-based marketing not only drives traffic to websites, but that traffic consists of people who have already shown an interest in the subject matter that is relevant to the service you provide or the merchandise you sell.

Showcasing compelling, authoritative content – such as articles, infographics, images and videos – convinces both Google and the people who visit your site that you are a credible, trustworthy authority on the subject matter. But creating good content is a skill – and a time-consuming skill at that. However, freelancers of all stripes – from writers to graphic designers to video editors – are eager to handle these tasks for you for a fee.

With the proliferation of bidding sites like eLance and oDesk, as well as flat-rate sites like Fiverr, marketers can now get quality freelance content for a nominal fee. Focus on image-heavy content and videos, and keep the content you showcase separate from your sales material. Content should educate and inform, not actively attempt to sell.

The single most important step a busy marketer can take to reclaim lost hours is to automate the tasks that can be automated through effective use of CRM software. Use CRM first and foremost to streamline your email functionality. But remember that CRM can also make your social-media strategy more effective and less time consuming. Finally, focus on content – but develop a stable of a few reliable freelancers who can create it for you.

About Author: Andrew Lisa is a freelance business writer who covers social media and digital marketing.