Productivity is one of those words that can make many people involved in businesses wince – including in marketing. Throughout Britain, the issue of an apparent lack of productivity is one of deep concern, one that acts as a check on economic growth. The reasons for this may be numerous, but for marketing teams there are some specific problems.
Too much information
One issue is that of information. New forms of media, particularly the electronic kind with its instant transmission and access, offer plenty of opportunities for communication. However, they also threaten to swamp teams with an excess of information, requests and demands. Apart from being time-consuming, it makes it harder to set clear, simple priorities. Similarly, while new metrics can help analyse how well campaigns are going, there remains a danger that too much information can lead to large amounts of time and effort that could be used elsewhere being spent on counting numbers. This can be counter-productive as it distracts from the efficient use of resources that could improve those figures. For this reason, the best way forward is to cut down the number of information sources. If email and phone are the only alternatives to face-to-face contact, it ensures marketers are not having to keep on checking for and dealing with innumerable messages from a multitude of sources. Similarly, it is possible to over-analyse, so do not use metrics for the sake of it. Whatever tools are used, do not spend more time on them than is necessary. Over-analysing means under-working.
Getting priorities right
Poor prioritisation in general is a big issue. It can be very easy to expect people to break away from what they are doing to deal with another issue. For this reason, it is vital to have a protocol in place to deal with issues that are not specific to the task in hand. That means anyone making a request for someone to break away from what they are doing to look at something else should ask whether this is truly necessary. This issue can also be helped by an efficient distribution of labour. If any such requests have to be filtered through a manger, they may be able to deal with these themselves, as well as being able to decide whether it is absolutely necessary to take them up with the individual marketer concerned.
Getting on with the job on hand
Whether in the travel section or anywhere else, many people like to enjoy lots of variety in their job. But sometimes, letting people get on with the job without too much interference or multiples of tasks is the best way of getting it done.
