7 Tools, Tips and Tricks to Make Your Marketing Job Suck Less

Throughout my entire professional career, I’ve been a marketer. Other than odd jobs throughout high school and college, that’s all I’ve ever been. Needless to say, I like marketing and my job doesn’t really suck. In fact I thoroughly enjoy being the marketing manager for OverGo Studio.

But bad days still roll around, unproductive moods strike, and even the smallest tasks become overwhelming. Fortunately I have an arsenal of tools that make those things suck a lot less. The main tool I use is my amazing team that I can lean on for advice, ideas, back up, and suggestions.

But other than a great team, we have some hacks, mindsets, and apps to use that alleviate some of the suckiness for all the marketers in the world. So let’s dig in!

Efficiency Hacks

1) "Dictating" a Blog

If you’re someone who doesn’t like to write or someone who doesn’t like when they have no blogs to post from their team then this efficiency hack is the one for you. If you’re the person who hates writing then get someone to listen to you speak about the topic, take notes, and write up the blog. If you’re the person who has no content to post then be the one taking notes while someone else speaks.

How it makes your job suck less

Pretty simple, if you’re the one who hates to write then this hack still lets you contribute to your company’s content without lifting a pen (hypothetically of course). It also means you don’t have to waste time staring at an empty word document and that will make any marketers job suck less.

2) Repurposing Content

This goes along with the content theme we have in this section. But I think the biggest problem I have as a marketer is consistently having content to promote. Well, repurposing content will definitely help with that.

You can take an eBook you created and cut it up into little teaser blog posts which will not only help you promote the piece of content but it will ensure you have consistent blog posts on a week when you’re short one or two.

You can also grab a blog post and have your graphic designer turn that into an infographic. After all, most folks prefer visual content over reading a 2,000 word blog article.

How it makes your job suck less

You no longer have to wait around for people to write those pesky blogs that they may not love doing for you every single week. Because saying “hey, I didn’t get that blog from you this week, I guess you just forgot to email it to me when you were done?” gets pretty old pretty fast. It also gives you some content to use for those down weeks when a new piece of content got delayed or pushed back due to another round of edits.

Mindsets to Adopt

3) Strategy Before Implementation

When I first came on as an intern, I did a ton of project work. Most of the time I wasn’t even aware of the overall strategy behind what I was doing, I would just post a blog because it was part of my job description. I had no idea that the blog was part of the campaign around a new ebook.

Things are no longer like this (thank goodness) and our inbound marketers are fully emerged in the strategy and informed of the bottom line goals. Creating a solid strategy and informing all key players as to what you’re working on is extremely important in order to make execution cohesive and avoid unnecessary rounds of edits.

How it makes your job suck less

I love nothing more than crossing tasks off my to-do list, but I save that thrill for weekend chores. As far as work is concerned, here at OverGo we firmly believe in building a strategy and carrying that strategy out through campaigns rather than just doing projects to increase traffic or generate leads.

So yes, the landing page is complete but I don’t cross it off a list and forget about it. It’s still part of my strategy and something I constantly go back in to assess and change. This makes my job suck a lot less when reporting time comes around and bossman asks how that campaign we launched months ago is doing.

I get to say “glad you ask bossman, as I was just assessing that page the other day and I have the numbers right here.” A lot less fumbling and mumbling about and a lot more getting stuff done and not looking unprepared makes my job suck a lot less.

4) Transparency

I feel like this is a big buzz word recently. Everyone is preaching about being transparent in their marketing but what does that even mean? Does it mean I need to put up pictures of me taking shots at my favorite bar so everyone can see that I’m able to let my hair down? Nah, probably not. What about tweeting from my business account that I’m at the Miley Cyrus concert? I guess that’s not appropriate either, huh. Well, then what are we supposed to be transparent about if it isn’t our social lives?

Transparency in your marketing means you’re telling your audience what you’re going to do and you’re actually doing it. With social media being such a huge part of marketing it opens doors for transparency because people will be talking about you whether you like it or not.

How it makes your job suck less

Although transparency seems hard to manage, you can use it to your advantage to make your job suck a lot less. How? By marketing your company in a transparent way, you spend less time convincing prospects how awesome you are because they can already see your culture and read great reviews and know that you’re good people. It's not easy to build, but a transparent marketing strategy can really pay dividends and make it easier to earn trust from your target customers.

Apps

As marketers we get bombarded with various new apps, products, features, upgrades, etc. and write some of them off because hey, who really needs another app? But after I share the use cases of the following apps, maybe you’ll see them in a new light in terms of how to use them as a marketer.

5) Boomerang

Boomerang is like a friendly scheduler and follow-up reminder service that lives inside your email system. You can use it to schedule emails to send at a certain time or to remind yourself to send an email following up with someone if they have not replied to the email by a certain day and time.

How it makes your job suck less

How many times have you heard yourself say “Oh man I forgot to follow up with them on that piece of content.” or “Shoot, I said I was going to email my graphic designer again this morning to check in on that CTA.” Well Boomerang will keep you from uttering those words ever again. The scheduling aspect of it is also good if say you’re more of a midnight worker and don’t find it appropriate to shoot out 20 emails to your CEO while they’re lying in bed.

6) Sidekick

Sidekick is generally thought of as a sales tool that lets you track who is opening your emails, looking at certain pages of your website, etc. You download it to your Google Chrome browser and it will automatically integrate with your email and website.

How it makes your job suck less

People keep telling me how great Sidekick is for sales people. Well, it’s awesome for marketers too. Do you know how great it is that I can tell when my content manager opened the email I sent asking why the layout for our new piece of content has taken 3 weeks?

I may have become the most annoying person to work with because I can stalk everyone I email in the office and never let anything fall through the cracks but hey, it makes my job suck less.

7) Trello

Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.

How it makes your job suck less

The absolute best part about Trello is that numerous people can edit the board. So you could set up a board for your content and the different stages of implementation and people who are working on it can move it through the different stages of production. This way you can hop into the board at any time and know where things are without needing to send those annoying “what’s the status on _____” everyone loves so much. Check out an example of how we use it:

So those are my tips and tricks to help alleviate some of the hurdles of a marketing job. What are yours?