Professional Stress is inevitable. Everyone, whether working in digital marketing or any other field, has had to endure stress at some point in their career. Being a digital marketer, I naturally empathize with my fellow professionals who are constantly barraged with a variety of intense and time sensitive tasks in the modern day and age.
This kind of emphasis on digital marketing and the ensuing stress on marketers is not surprising considering one third of the CMOs believe that digital will account for 75% of total marketing budget in the coming years. Thus, the expectations from digital marketers are all-high.
The difference between the most successful digital marketers and the rest is the way they are able to avoid unnecessary stress by managing their time and work.
Here are five ways digital marketers can cope with work-related stress.
It is pretty easy to lose yourself in the frenzy of different digital marketing tasks, especially if you are in a managerial position. After all, you have to take care of content development and social media branding, handle all kinds of SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing campaigns, and also stay on the same page as sales and upper level staff.
If you happen to be facing these problems then you must restructure and update the way you do things.
Use only one comprehensive analytics tool instead of juggling multiple at the same time. Have a solid content development process, plan and schedule special media and blog posts in advance and organize your SEO, PPC, social media and email marketing campaigns ahead of time.
Assign different aspects of the task to separate teams, comprising of few but capable members and if you can, try using those all-in-one marketing platforms that companies like HubSpot, Moz, SEM rush, and many others offer and see your work get easier.
According to the study published last year, most marketers think that bad work processes are hurting results and as much as 36% of the marketers are late in completing their work at least twice a week due to delayed approvals and clumsy communication channels.
An effective solution then, is to use a credible management software or workflow system which allows for streamlined communication where every member of the team – from the boss to the intern – is on the same platform.
Using one agreed-upon communication tool will dramatically decrease the number of emails your team has to send, reply to, and read every day. Raven Tools were sending 75% less emails about their blog posts after implementing a task-based workflow instead of relying on emails.
Increased cohesiveness between the sales and marketing departments of a company goes a long way towards relieving work-related stress and pressure from digital marketers. McAfee, the renowned computer security company, achieved that by implementing a marketing automation system to help out the marketing and sales teams. The result was a 4% increase in lead conversion along with a new found cohesiveness between marketing and sales.
You could be implementing marketing automation for your email marketing campaigns, drip campaign, and lead scoring & nurturing campaigns, in order to improve your professional performance, make your life easier, and avoid stress as much as possible.
One caveat however, the use of a marketing automation software is only recommended when you already generate a lot of leads because if you don’t, your attention should rather be on generating leads instead of getting ahead of yourself with the use of marketing automation.
It is not enough to complete all your marketing tasks. Marketers also have to track and analyze their every single effort and measure their efficiency and effectiveness. Any digital marketer who is held accountable for the performance of every single one of his/her social media post, is under an immense pressure and is probably getting insufficient sleep every night.
In such circumstances, businesses and specially startups, need to set smaller and specific goals that have a realistic chance of getting completed. You can have lofty goals if you want and if you complete them, all the better, but not being able to achieve those benchmarks will leave you frustrated and you will have to reinvent all your plans.
It is never a great idea for digital marketers to take on the challenges at all the fronts simultaneously. Content, SEO, email, social media, PPC, and other areas of digital marketing are better handled when prioritized in the form of timely and specific goals.
As important as any other thing you will do in your life, remember to take breaks and recharge your batteries. They are not a waste of time rather a way for you to reinvent yourself. Scientists have routinely estimated that taking breaks at work increases productivity and helps a person remain focused on a task for a long time, also it keeps you from getting bored which is really important not just for a digital marketer but any professional. Get help of professional digital marketing company at best prices.
You should try taking a few small breaks other than the lunch break and schedule them in a way that stimulates your brain process and are convenient for you. Of course, if you take too many breaks, your work will suffer so it is important to maintain a balance.