As a marketer, we’ve all been there. We’ve been sat at our desks, working away, until a colleague comes creeping up behind you with a sickly sweet voice with one of the following phrases on the tip of their tongues.
“Can you just…?”
“This will only take 5 minutes…”
“Just a quick one…”
“I need this doing…”
“Can you help me?”
“I need it by tomorrow…”
“Could you do this for me?”
“I need a favour…”
“I’ve got a slight issue….”
“Sorry to bother you, but…”
Sound familiar? – Time is money right? The biggest headache that most marketers appear to have is not having enough time in a day, yet an awful lot of it is wasted.
Research tells me that the average user of marketing materials for businesses in the UK, whether it be a salesperson, a branch or a different department, spends on average 2hrs 36 mins to access & customise sales & marketing documents/templates. This is before they have been approved by the relevant person or any changes have been made. This is not ‘5 minutes’ or ‘just a quick one’.
I can’t help but think of the time, money & opportunity impact this has, not only on the department but also the whole business performance due to the inefficiencies. This is without mentioning the headaches of brand and version control for Marketing.
Marketers are often time poor and are the ‘go to’ department for everything content related. They fail to realise that they are the root cause for their time, budget and reactive pain issues within their roles and business. Saying ‘yes’ to everything and not challenging the status quo, ‘it’s just the norm’, ‘it’s my job’, ‘we haven’t got the budget to bring in extra resource to deal with this sort of thing’ stops efficiencies and ultimately causes a lot of undue stress.
Are you one of these marketers that faces these challenges?