Customers are the living force of any brand, and you rely on your marketing team to attract and keep them. In that vein, an efficient marketing team means more loyal clients and a booming business.
Every marketing department requires specific resources and stellar management to be successful.
A 2014 paper published on Research Gate evaluated marketing departments’ role in enterprises. It found that a marketing team’s influence on brand success depends on its resources and responsibilities.
However, with the pandemic forcing people to work from home, you might wonder, “Can marketing teams work remotely?” Well, with a time tracking app, you can easily monitor in-house and virtual employees.
Many see time tracking as a digital punch-card system without recognizing it as the productivity resource it is. Over the years, time tracking solutions have evolved to gather more insightful data on how employees spend their work hours. This information can now be used to reshape workplace strategies to boost efficiency.
This article shows how time tracking helps organizations promote efficiency in the marketing department.
Tracking and Optimizing Performance
Before anything, you first have to ask, “How do you track team performance?” Without a way to keep tabs on your employees’ output, you can’t make things better.
Since you can monitor how team members spend work hours, it’s easy to identify workflow bottlenecks, distractions, and inefficiencies. This way, you’re finding areas that need improvement and taking necessary actions. You’re not speculating about things that need changes but working with empirical data.
Identify Bloated Processes
Some tasks and processes take up more time than they should. These include unnecessary meetings and project briefs. Your marketing team could use their limited time and energy to be more productive elsewhere than handling these assignments and engagements.
A good time tracking solution can help you identify these bloated processes. This way, you can allocate appropriate time slots or scrap them entirely.
Time Trackers Are Productivity Monitors
Some time tracking applications are designed to monitor the apps and websites you visit. This information helps you know what platform takes up valuable time and hurts productivity. This way, you can avoid them and focus on work.
While your marketing team may have to work with social media, they can curb excessive use by allocating time slots and visiting the sites strictly on official assignments. It will also help if they use separate devices for work and personal life.
Avoid Burnouts
The marketing team is constantly generating leads and pursuing the next sales funnel. Their work is rarely done. That’s why it’s difficult for most team members to know when to pump the breaks. It’s even worse in remote office environments where employees can work outside hours.
This causes burnout and reduces work efficiency in the long run. According to a Stanford University study authored by John Pencavel, people no longer produce reasonable results after working 55 hours a week.
With a time tracking solution, you can find out which employee is on the verge of burnout and get them off the grind.
Getting workers to rest when they should will increase efficiency as time goes on. A Hiroshima University study showed that even a 15-minute nap could improve alertness.
Effective Task Distribution
One of the best ways to improve efficiency is assigning the right jobs to the right people. There are many tasks to go around, and two persons rarely share the same skill. That’s where matching an individual to their area of specialty becomes a vital part of management.
Time tracking data allows you to assess how much time it takes individual team members to complete specific tasks. By doing that, you’ll identify employees who spend less time completing specific assignments.
When a team member completes a particular task in less time and without errors, it shows they’re proficient at that task. So, it would make sense to keep assigning them those tasks in this case.
On the other hand, if a worker takes a lot more time handling an assignment, they’re either unfit for the job or inexperienced. So, it would make sense to rotate them with other tasks to find their strength.
Reduce Duplicate Tasks
Things can get complicated when multiple team members work on the same project. For example, task assignments can be jumbled up, and two employees could end up working on the same job. This will negatively affect the project as other important tasks will be left hanging.
While effective communication can prevent two workers from doing the same thing for too long, it doesn’t stop the issue from the onset.
With time tracking, supervisors can immediately detect the mix-up and fix things. Time trackers don’t only keep tabs on time. Employees are now required to enter details of their tasks in their reports. This way, two identical tasks can be flagged.
Foster Accountability
Collective efficiency is, to an extent, a result of accountability. Things tend to go smoothly when everyone knows their part and is willing to execute it. Also, no team member would want to slack when they see others throwing their weight behind a project.
However, it’s natural for workers to take their eyes off the ball from time to time, especially without supervision. This is where time trackers come in.
Since employees’ work hours are being tracked, they’ll be grounded to focus on work. This sense of duty increases overall efficiency.
What’s more, organizations will be held accountable when it comes to tracking overtime and paying accurate wages.
Setting Measurable and Reasonable Objectives and Milestones
Marketing teams can be too results-oriented. If they’re not evaluating goals by leads converted, they’re looking at successful campaign execution. This can be overwhelming for the team, leading them to sacrifice efficiency for output.
Setting realistic goals using time tracking data can resolve the issue of efficiency. For example, you can see the average time spent on campaigns and specific tasks using tracking data. This way, you can set pretty developed goals and objectives to reflect the team’s work routine.
Instead of using a general goal, set milestones and individual objectives. These goals should be based on completed work, hours, and results. This way, employees focus on finishing the task at hand rather than looking at a campaign deadline weeks or months away.
Effectively Evaluate Campaign Cost
Your marketing campaign budget affects your team’s efficiency. Since the department requires every resource it needs to run a successful campaign, you can’t afford gaps and inadequacies in the budget.
One of the ways to make sure you get your budget right is by looking at your payroll. If your marketing team is paid by the hour, there’s no better way to evaluate wages than using time tracking data. Once you get payroll right, you can quickly fix the proper budget for other aspects of marketing.
If you use external, remote teams, time trackers will accurately help you calculate wages and draw up timesheets.
Conclusion
It’s rare to see any enterprise today without a time tracker. The pros far outweigh the minor cons. Companies can now assess input, efficiency, and productivity without conducting interviews or relying on signed time stamps. If you’re interested in growing your business, contact me – I’m always happy to help!
Danielle Foley, Marketing Consultant
Foley Marketing Advisors
dfoley@foleymarketingadvisors
(973) 632-9170