You’ve got a business blog to update, an SEO meeting at noon and a direct mail piece that needs to be out the door by the end of the day—you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with all your marketing efforts and making sure they stay organized. Here are a few quick tips that we recommend to help keep your strategy in order and achieve your goals through marketing:
Tip #1: Document everything!
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s easy when you’re extremely busy to just skip documenting your marketing efforts. Our team keeps Excel file calendars for everything we do, from blogs to social media content, and each one has a column on the far right for status updates and notes. These files help us keep track of all our campaigns and due dates, or lets us know if another team member has been working on the project. There are some cloud-based systems for this as well, but in our experience, they do not always have the ability to combine all your marketing efforts and notes in one, easy-to-access place. So we stick with spreadsheets to keep it simple.
Tip #2: Keep a notebook on hand for inspiration
Each member of our team has their unique desk décor at the office, but there is one item that you will find on every single desktop: a lime-green, spiral bound notebook with the Allee Creative logo on the front. And inside those notebooks, we all have notes from various client and team meetings, marketing inspiration and fresh new ideas. Once we’ve written these ideas down during meetings, we often then go back to our digital files and find ways to incorporate our written notes.
Tip #3: Find an online project management or task tool
Over here, we swear by Asana, but regardless of which task/calendar tool you use, find one that allows you to create daily to-do lists. Tools with the option to check off your task once it’s completed are also a must, because who doesn’t love the satisfaction of crossing off an item on their to-do list? Schedule out your tasks accordingly as soon as you have been made aware of them. The beauty of many of these tools is that they also leave room for collaboration and conversation among tasks which keeps all team members on the same page.
Tip #4: Plan ahead with a content calendar
We’re giving away a lot of secrets in this post, so we hope you’re taking notes! Content calendars are a great resource for staying organized and planning ahead. CEO Melissa Harrison calls content calendars her “biggest secret for keeping it all together.” Here’s why: this document that holds all of the dates, times, keywords, information and specific post types for any publication–from your online channels or traditional print materials. Learn more about how to set up a content calendar and the top 5 must-have elements for this document here!
Planning, consistency and organization are all key elements of marketing and growing your business. Still feeling a little overwhelmed keeping your marketing efforts organized? We get it—there’s a lot to keep track of. Maybe it’s time for your business to consider outsourcing your marketing efforts to a company that specializes in digital and offline marketing services. We know just the team to help!
