Burnout in Marketing is a Problem: Here's How We Can All Avoid It
Marketing Tasks Always Get Pushed to the Back Burner
As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate; managing a team, growing your clientele, developing your processes, and trying to stay on top of your marketing. With the 50+ clients we've worked with, we've heard the same story so many times; marketing tasks always get pushed to the back burner. However, we know you are motivated, value marketing, and have good ideas to help grow your business, so what's the deal?
Newsflash. It's not you. Marketing is one of the most challenging industries to work in, so it makes sense that trying to manage your marketing while running a business will be a struggle. According to Forbes Magazine, a recent survey polling 7,000 professionals nationwide found that marketing and communications professionals fared the worst among job functions with the highest burnout, with 83.3% reporting they felt burnt out. The most common complaints being unmanageable workloads, insufficient rewards, lack of control overwork, and lack of support from management. But we believe there is more to it.
Why is Marketing Stressing People Out?
We have seen story after story about the effects of screen time and time spent on social media, the insatiable medium that devours content in seconds and moves on as fast and you can flick your finger across a screen. So it makes sense that you are up against some serious challenges in managing your businesses' marketing. So what can you do about it?
4 Tips to Prevent Burning Out on Your Marketing
No. 1
SET A TIMER FOR HOW MUCH TIME YOU SPEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA
We've all been there, down the rabbit hole of social media, not realizing just how much time we've spent scrolling. Social media may be "always-on," but that doesn't mean we should be! Being one of the most addictive mediums, we must put healthy boundaries on our social media time.
Or better yet, ask yourself if your time spent on social media trying to market your business is paying off? Could you switch up your efforts and test other ideas that could grow your business with less effort, less time, and most importantly, less burnout?
No. 2
TIME BLOCK YOUR MARKETING TASKS
Often, when we work harder, we also work longer, and overworking can drive us straight to burnout. Break up some of the challenging, tedious tasks and limit those that can become trivial or time-consuming. If marketing is your biggest struggle, time block it out to be the first thing you do in the day, week, or month.
No. 3
AUTOMATE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
If you can schedule emails to be sent out on a specific date or plan your social media posts and still have them come across as genuine, human, and timely, do it! This we call batching content. Instead of taking 45 minutes a day to think of one thing to post, set aside 3 hours/month to write 15 posts and use a software tool to schedule and post automatically for you. Not only will your time be spent more efficiently, but you will also have more time to focus on personalized experiences for your clients.
No. 4
HIRE OUT YOUR MARKETING
Marketing is only one of the many things you have on your plate if you are a business owner. So once your business is established and you have a healthy cash flow, marketing should be one of the first responsibilities you officially hand over. Separate yourself emotionally from your work, and let a marketing professional with fresh eyes represent your business. That way, you can focus on what you do best, running the business!
What Clever Punch as a team is doing to avoid burnout
Knowing that marketing is an industry prone to burnout, we are proactive to keep our team healthy and sustainable for the long haul. Here's what we're doing to stay refreshed, focused, and productive.
The Clever Punch team! Left to right: Heather, Nicole, Madison, Jade and Ozzie : )
No. 1
Our account managers work shorter days. They focus on being productive, not just being busy. So instead of an eight-hour day, they work a focused six-hour day and aim to accomplish the same amount of work. Then they can enjoy the rest of the day, outside or with friends and family, and off their screens.
On the last Friday of the month, we take a half day to enjoy a team lunch and activity.
No. 2
We provide work phones for all account managers so they can keep work and personal life separate. Once the day is over, the phone gets turned off, and texts, emails, and phone calls are not allowed to be answered outside of work hours. The only time we work after hours is if we've made a mistake that needs fixing or if a rare emergency occurs outside our client's control.
No. 3
On the last Friday of the month, we have a team lunch and share an activity. We might go for a hike, a walk along the boardwalk, or on a tour of Santa Barbara!
No. 4
For two weeks over Christmas, we close our digital doors. Then, just like our shorter working days, we jam to put out the same content for our clients in two weeks, as we would for the whole month. When we can come back on Jan 2nd, we are revived and ready to hit the ground running.
No. 5
We've pivoted to only work with clients who need our support ongoing. Change is stressful, and we want to invest the time to learn about our client's businesses and align with them. So, working with clients ongoing means, we avoid the stress of starting and stopping with clients throughout the year.
No. 6
We aren't afraid to let go of clients who aren't a good fit. Nothing can burn you out quicker than a client who doesn't value what you do. So far, we have been lucky to work with the most amazing clients who trust us, are quick to respond, and aren't afraid to say thank you. It's for those clients that we can create some of the most successful results. If a client isn't a good fit, that's ok too. But we don't try to force the relationship and let our team become casualties of burnout in the process.
We have all of these employee benefits while still creating impressive results and unique content every month. When you let Clever Punch tackle your marketing, we can create sustainable solutions to your needs. And, sustainability keeps us in our roles longer, so we can do our absolute best for our clients.