In today’s fast-paced digital world, advertisers who work at agencies have their hands full.
You’ve got to learn how to juggle, and juggle well.
Businesses are strapped for cash in the current economy. That means they generally put a lot on the plates of each of their employees, and advertisers are no different.
This means you’ve got to be efficient. Because when you’re efficient, you’re productive. And that makes you extremely valuable to your ad agency.
With that in mind, here are 10 tips to bolster your productivity:
1. Spend time in the morning to organize the day.
It can be a challenge to juggle lots of high-priority clients, especially if you’re working for a small ad agency – in which case all of your clients are high priority. But by building a schedule of what you need to accomplish every particular day, you’re much more likely not to forget any of your clients and to begin the day with a stronger sense of clarity and ambition.
Whether you need five minutes or 30 minutes to devote to organization, taking time to get organized in the morning could save you tons of time later in the day.
2. Divide the day, giving each client specific chunks.
It’s virtually impossible to plan your day down to the minute, but you should try to figure out a way to allot certain amounts of time to various clients throughout the day. This will allow you to focus on one project, one industry, and one ad plan at a time. By working on client plans in chunks, you’ll be better at avoiding distractions and managing your workload.
3. Repurpose digital advertising when possible.
A huge amount of advertising is devoted to the online world nowadays. So if you have to create a video for a client’s next ad campaign, why not write a blog post to go along with it? And why not pull statistics from that blog post for social media ads while you’re at it? Not only will you be creating great ad content for your client, but you’ll be doing it in a highly efficient manner.
4. Clean out your inbox each day.
At the end of the day, it’s important you spend some time cleaning out your inbox so that you don’t come into work the next morning only to be greeted by a deluge of messages. Remember, clutter causes fatigue.
Create an organizing system for all of your emails if you don’t have one already. Create labels or folders for your emails and categorize them by client, industry, or priority.
5. Leverage modern technology.
Rather than having your staff run across the office to ask each other questions, tell them to use a service like Skype or Gmail to instant message one another. If you want, you can also invest in a unified communications technology to facilitate those conversations.
6. Collaborate regularly.
Pick your co-workers’ brains from time to time. It’s very possible you will have ideas for one another that can be helpful for a variety of clients.
Too often, people view collaboration as “asking for help” and feel that it is a personal weakness on their part. But being open to other co-workers’ ideas is one of the best traits an ad professional can have. Nurture collaboration among your employees, and you’re likely to see an increase in daily productivity.
7. Build to-do lists.
At the beginning of each week, you might want to build to-do lists so that you know what’s on tap for that week. It’s important that you don’t miss any deadlines or neglect any clients, so visualizing what you have to do can be helpful for remaining on-task.
8. Conquer to-do lists.
It’s one thing to build a to-do list. It’s a whole other thing to cross off each task every week. Make sure you actually complete the work that you set out to do. This can mean knowing when to say "no" to new projects, or maybe even new, potential clients, if it could jeopardize the completion of a current client’s ad campaign.
9. Minimize your Internet surfing.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time on the Internet knows full well how many proverbial digital black holes there are out there. So keep your internet surfing to a minimum, and remain focused on the tasks at hand.
10. Listen to music.
You like your coworkers. But a loud office can be distracting. Listen to music when you’re working so that you can focus on your work. Try listening to classical music, so you don’t get distracted by song lyrics throughout the day, or try Focus@will.
Any other tips you can think of to boost productivity? Let me know in the comments below!
