Time is money! Or maybe not. Personally, I think time is more important than money. You can always earn more money, but time… once it’s gone it’s gone, baby, gone!
This is why people pay others to do things they are fully capable of doing. Because their time is valuable. Could I change the oil in my car? Probably. Is it worth the time to do it? Nope, not for me.
It’s not just the time to change the oil, but the time to put on the right clothes, the time to make sure I have the right tools, the time to do the job, and the time to clean up after the job. Not to mention the time needed to take the car to the shop after I end up with extra parts when I’m done!
The same principles apply (for me, anyway) to installing a toilet, painting a room, building a fence and, well, just about anything that falls under the “handyman” category.
But put me in front of a website that needs web marketing and I’m all over that!
Like anything, if you are paying someone to manage your web marketing, you are, in effect, paying for their time. How much that time costs depends a great deal on the skill and experience level of those you’re paying, but you don’t get that without paying for their time.
Time is a very valuable commodity. Yet, one of the worst mistakes businesses make is not capitalizing on their web marketer’s time to their full advantage.
Web Marketing Time Killers
Here are a few all-too-common ways that businesses take away valuable time from their web marketing team:
Requiring too much explanation. A certain amount of explanation is necessary with any web marketing deliverable. What’s it for? What is the business supposed to do with it? How will it help? And sometimes there is a little back and forth compromises being made to ensure what’s done is the best for all aspects of the client’s business.
But there does come a point when requiring too much detail slows down the whole process. I’ve been in positions where the business wanted to save money by having their own team implement our recommendations. However, so much time was spent explaining everything that it would have been cheaper to just give us access to do it and be done. That’s not a good use of time!
Taking too much time to respond. Web marketers feel immense pressure to get their clients from zero to awesome as quickly as possible. And nothing puts the breaks on that faster than waiting for approvals, edits or feedback from the business they are working for.
I require my team to respond to all client messages within 24 business hours. It would be great if that went both ways! I get it though. As a business marketer, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Your job doesn’t revolve around web marketing alone. But just keep in mind that the quicker you’re able to provide your web marketing team what they need, the quicker they can get you to awesome!
Sending the team down rabbit trails. There are literally thousands of things that web marketers can be doing at any given time. For the most part, their job is try to use their time wisely by prioritizing those tasks. At the same time, they want to keep the business they are working with happy and give them whatever they want. Sometimes, though, that can work against the business.
As the business leader, you know the pulse of your business more than any agency marketer does, but the marketer will most likely have a better idea of where your online marketing priorities lie. However, when the business asks the marketer to go in a different direction, they likely will. Just remember that any new direction you send them pulls them off something that may be more critical.
You hire web marketers for your business because you want to get results. It would be a shame, then, if you don’t take full advantage of that resource. Both you and your marketers are on the same team, and it’s usually in your best interest to let them do what they do. You should be working as a team, but when it comes to the web marketing, let the marketers lead.
Marketing Time Maintenance Checklist
- Limit the amount of explanation needed for you to give approval for the job. If you can’t grasp it in a couple of emails, trust your team and let them proceed.
- Respond to all web marketing team request within a week. Don’t let them use you as an excuse for poor results. Some things may take longer, but don’t dilly dally. Give it a due date.
- Let your team stay focused on the critical tasks. If you need something outside of the existing plan, be willing to pay separate for that rather than having to steal hours from something more important.
- Trust your team. There may be times when you can’t give them everything they want, but work with them to find a great compromise.
- Give them time to get you to awesome. Web marketing doesn’t produce immediate success. Know what to expect and when, then wait it out. If you expect something before its time, your team will spend valuable time re-explaining it all.