Technology is always advancing, and as it does can either improve the value of marketing, or make it even more difficult to get an effective marketing program across to the target audience.

Are you sending SPAM emailing or a valuable newsletter?

Does anyone read your emails?

Does your brochure actually help people want to hire you, or give too much information (the average person doesn’t even read)?

Are the networking events and luncheons and trade shows you are going to actually generating new business?

Does your website bring you customers? Do you even know who reads your website? Have you ever seen a traffic report on your website?

These are all very important questions that a marketing professional must ask, and that an owner or CEO must always balance against the daily needs of running the business. What we specialize in is using technology to economize these activities – to provide a higher level of accuracy in reporting, adaptability to alter course in days instead of weeks should a program be ineffecient, and the experience to know what usually works better than most practices.

How many times have we sat through a marketing workshop that told us we needed to use some new gizmo to reach a trillion new people, only to go through the implementation process, the learning curve, and the complete headache of creating staff policies – only to find out 3 months later we saw no new business, got no new clients, and all in all wasted our time? If it’s not your ideal client you are talking to then there’s no point in talking at all – save your breath, your energy, and your time for the clients and colleagues that make your business and your profession better for the effort!

At the end of the day no one knows your business as well as you do, you’ve been doing it for years and you know your clients better than anyone. Our job is to bring the best practices from a variety of business climates to your doorstep and make it possible for you to reach new heights with new technology at your feet.

After trying out the GTD format, and then being a Franklin Covey convert for a while… and then the reality of working for someone else (ie. you use software designed to make your life easier that really -thanks to poor implementation- makes your life harder) have developed my own set of rules for the management of my day/time.

This might work for you, it might not…. but you can waste a couple of minutes of your life reading it if you want to!

1. Keep your calendar updated with REAL events… not those “maybe” appointments that you know never really happen… or those meetings that are scheduled for 30 minutes but always take 2 hours… get real!!

2. Review and update your calendar at the beginning and ending of every day. Keeping a calendar real takes real work, but it’s worth it. Schedule out your time to do admin, put your tasks time in, get your calendar to look like your reality. EVEN MORE go back to yesterday and update that calendar so it reflects what you really were doing.

3. Clean out your inbox. This comes from a long history of being an underling – I may have a msg in there that either gives me back an hour (someone finished the project so I don’t have to) or takes away an hour (last minute presentations). So going through my inbox gives me the piece of mind to know that I am actually working on what’s real as of this minute. If I don’t sort out the reading to my “reading” folder, and the non-work stuff to my non-work folders, I end up reading all that junk when I should be working, and even worse working when I should be goofing around with family/personal stuff.

I could go on and on, but that would tyrannical (and take me much more than the 10 minutes I have set aside to write this article), so I’m going to wrap it up here and wish you the best of luck. Whether you use my system, someone else’s, or mashup your own system… GET A SYSTEM and STICK TO IT. Your piece of mind will increase and your stress will decrease. I promise.

Cheers,

Rebekah