When you accept a marketing role, you also accept the fact that there never will be enough hours in a day to do ALL the things you want to do to promote your product.
It's Monday and you are faced with a 20 mile long To-Do list. What do you do?
If you are in a tactical marketing role or share the tactical marketing role, chances are you have a lot of fires to fight to keep existing run rate business. This is an obvious top priority.
If you have many burning fires, prioritize them by revenue impact before diving in. Don't let the squeaky wheel get your attention away from the quieter, larger customers!
It is also easy to get so caught up in the tactical that the strategic tasks get moved aside. Your strategic initiatives are what will drive new business, so make sure that you set aside "quiet" hours every week to focus on them. I have seen many businesses go down as they had no long term plan, and only lived quarter to quarter with no strategic vision.
When prioritizing strategic tasks, ask yourself two questions:
1) What will be the long term revenue impact of this activity?
2) What will happen if I DON'T pursue this path?
The answers to these two questions will make your priorities clear in your mind.
Keep a running tally in either spreadsheet or list form of all your current and target customers sorted by revenue - either current or expected. Refer to this list often when setting up your daily plans.
It is easy in this job to work very hard all day, but leave dissatisfied and feeling that nothing of real importance has been accomplished. Some ways to "buy" more time are:
1) Discourage random visitors to your office. Always look busy, and learn to close nonproductive conversations quickly.
2) Keep your phone communications short and to the point. Resist the temptation to engage in gossip or veer off the subject.
3) Bulletize Internet communications rather than writing long emails. They are more likely to be read and understood.
4) DELEGATE, DELEGATE, DELEGATE! Keep track of what you have delegated so you make sure it gets done.
5) Learn to say no to tasks that don't add to the bottom line.
6) Always look for a quicker way of doing things WITHOUT sacrificing quality.
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