Small business owners know all too well that there are not enough hours in a day, especially when you wear many masks. Unfortunately, this means important tasks like marketing don’t get the attention they deserve. With this in mind, we’ve put together the following ways to make more time for marketing.
Table of Contents
Create a Plan
You will have heard this repeatedly, but if a project is expected to succeed, it must have a thorough plan to back it up. A clear plan lets you focus on the core tasks first and leave less important activities until later. When you have a strategic plan in place for your marketing, will find it easier to allocate time to focus on important tasks.
Set Task Time Limits
With your plan in place, you can break each milestone into manageable tasks. However, you still need to make sure you have time to execute them during your weekly schedule. Therefore, while you’re busy breaking up tasks, allocate an estimated time frame for completion.
The first tasks to write into your schedule should be larger than 30 minutes. Then, after you’ve slotted in other important tasks, you can go back and plug spare 30-minute gaps with those smaller marketing tasks.
Find Ways to Hold Yourself Accountable
Completing a weekly schedule relies on holding yourself accountable, but this is often tricky, especially when it comes to the end of the week. Therefore, you’ll need to come up with effective strategies to keep yourself accountable. For example, you can find a reliable colleague to become your accountability partner, which will keep you from procrastinating instead of focusing on marketing tasks.
Focus on 60-Minute Bursts
Everyone has a different capacity for staying focused, which is why the 8-hour working day is considered outdated. According to countless studies, the human brain can only focus for 20 minutes at a time. However, other bodies of research suggest that the brain needs around 23 minutes to focus after being distracted. Therefore, to allow your brain time to reset and a good stretch of focused work, stay on task for around 60 minutes before taking a short break.
If you need help staying on task without being distracted, you can use time-tracking tools like Toggl, which will increase your overall productivity.
Outsource Other Business Tasks
We’ve already mentioned that small business owners wear many masks, which makes it difficult to squeeze every task into the working week. However, thanks to innovations in cloud technology, it’s easy to outsource business tasks to a third-party company. For example, if managing your ICT infrastructure is taking up too much time, you can use a managed services provider to take the weight off your shoulders. Then, you’re free to spend more time on marketing efforts.
Being accountable for too many tasks can lead to burning out, low standards of work, or work being overlooked entirely. Given how important marketing is, you can use the strategies above to free up more time in your schedule.
