Is saving time important for a B2B marketer? Your answer is likely an unequivocal yes. But saving time by upping efficiency isn’t just a one-and-done step. It should be an ongoing, living and breathing process that changes and improves over your marketing career. And that means you should be taking time to review and audit your processes to uncover opportunities for improvement. In my 35-plus years working in online communications, I’ve come to learn several efficiency-boosting methods. So, here are five of my personal time-saving tips to overclock, fine-tune, and crank up your B2B marketing efficiency. Why B2B Marketing Efficiency Matters Saving a few minutes here and there throughout the day may not seem all that important — or worth devoting much effort to achieve. But keep in mind that saving two minutes each day equates to eight and a half hours over a standard business year. That’s valuable time that can be used for countless other activities. The passage of time delineates our work and our lives. And as Tolstoy wrote, both time and patience hold immense power, which is especially true in today’s marketing battlefield. “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” — Leo TolstoyCLICK TO TWEET In addition, what we do with our time in marketing and beyond allows us to have an impact on the world and on the lives of all those we interact with. And by saving time we can create space for new marketing opportunities, or — as novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” — Nathaniel HawthorneCLICK TO TWEET For marketers, boosting efficiency isn’t just time saved. It’s additional time that can be used for many things such as experimenting with new technologies, taking on additional projects, or optimizing existing campaigns. Here are five tips to help get you started on your own personal efficiency journey. 5 Time-Saving Tips to Help You Boost Marketing Efficiency Overclocking Tip 1: Ride The Productivity Wave When It Strikes via GIPHY When you find yourself in an especially productive period, take advantage of it and ride the productivity wave to get as much done as possible while the creative B2B marketing iron is hot. Unfortunately, we can’t control when we’ll be at our peak combined levels of energy, productivity, and efficiency. By quickly recognizing when such a period hits us, however, we can get in as much work as possible before the big wave eventually peters out. How can you take advantage of these times? Here are three strategies: Turn off anything you can that normally distracts you, such as alarms, notifications, or whatever may cause you to break stride while working at your best Try to include short micro-breaks — even if just for a minute — to keep the overall energy up and use the time to focus on what you want to accomplish next during the session When your very productive period comes to its inevitable end, take a little time to write down what you think made for such a good working session, and what you’d do differently next time to make it even better How productive are you? Have you re-assessed your efficiency lately? The Harvard Business Review offers a free 25-question online 工作职能邮件数据库 productivity rating assessment, by Robert C. Pozen, senior lecturer at MIT Sloan and the author of “Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.” Since a large part of marketing involves learning from our peers and idols — such as those listed on our “25 Influential Women in Digital Marketing Who Rocked and Inspired in 2018” list — it can be helpful to read efficiently, and Pozen offers several tips in this regard. “Skip directly to the conclusion. Because the conclusion tells you where the writer is going to end up. It usually summarizes his or her main points and, if it’s well done, suggests what the writer thinks are the key takeaways.” — @PozenCLICK TO TWEET Pozen also encourages efficiency gains through a three-step process of brainstorming, categorizing, and outlining, which is helpful not just in marketing but in many areas of life. A study by the National Association for Professional Organizers found that 82% of respondents believed that if they were more organized, their quality of life would be better — a statistic that shows how powerful time management can be in both our professional and private lives. Overclocking Tip 2: Be A Magical Marketing Archivist Can you find any file in less than a minute? With the astounding amount of information we generate and have access to daily, it’s more important than ever to know how to find exactly what you’re looking for, when you want it, and to not waste time with every single search. And that’s where a good digital filing system comes in. I consider a good digital filing system, or even better — a full-fledged digital asset management (DAM) system — to be one of the most important parts of working with computers. Far too many people seem to have a haphazard approa