10 Best Strategies to Improve Your Marketing Agency's Productivity

Evie Harrison is a blogger by choice. She loves to discover the world around her. She likes to share her discoveries, experiences and express herself through her blogs.

Want to know the simplest formula for success?

Productivity = Profitability

Pretty straightforward, right?

But many marketing agency owners will agree that this is a little more complicated than it seems. Several factors influence the overall productivity of your business. And you have to manage it all because the reputation of your agency is at stake.

Are you searching for techniques that can boost your agency’s productivity? Look no further, because today we’re looking at ways to do just that.

But before we dive into the topic, you must understand that being productive is more than ticking things off a to-do list. In order for your agency to be productive, it needs to:

finish a reasonable amount of tasks within expected deadlines
create quality work that meets set standards
utilize time, money, effort, and other resources efficiently

With these key points in mind, let’s highlight some of the best strategies to improve your agency’s productivity.

This Article Contains:

1. Use the Right Tools

This is probably one of the easiest ways to boost productivity. With the right tools, you can automate mundane, repetitive tasks and save time and resources. Moreover, you can automate multiple aspects of your agency, from streamlining processes to organizing tasks to delivering personalized content for targeted audiences.

However, to improve the overall efficiency of your agency, you need to invest in the right one. For instance, a comprehensive productivity platform like ClickUp can help get work done from anywhere. It offers features that allow you to track the progress of all your projects, see what other team members are doing in real-time, manage team workloads, chat with employees to foster instant collaboration, and help prioritize tasks so that important work is completed first.

2. Don’t Waste Time on Road

According to a report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the average American commuter wastes 54 hours in a year due to traffic delays. That’s a considerable amount of time that you can put to good use.

For instance, on the commute to and from work, you can listen to podcasts to improve personal and team productivity. If you travel by train, instead of scrolling on social media, align tasks for the day. Or complete preliminary research about clients, check up on emails, conduct meetings, or make a series of short phone calls.

3. Structure Your Team

Like any other business, digital agencies need to employ qualified individuals that are capable of working independently. With a proper office structure, your agency can operate smoothly. However, this requires effective leadership, communication, collaboration, and mutual support to ensure work is completed on time and goals are achieved.

More importantly, learn to delegate responsibilities to appropriate employees. That means the right employee works on tasks they can deliver the best. This allows your agency to grow and generate more revenue.

Being able to distribute the workload is crucial for your digital agency. Too often, managers waste precious time on micromanaging workers that continuously need assurance that they are doing their jobs properly. At other times, tasks are too time-consuming, or employees are not skilled enough to manage them. Either way, you need to find someone else who knows how to do the job better or consider outsourcing the work.

4. Upskill Your Workforce

The digital landscape continues to change. So even if you hired adept individuals, they would eventually need to upgrade their skills. To help keep your employees, and your digital agency, at the top of the game, consider offering additional training and productivity workshops to transform them into better assets for your agency.

Digital marketing is a fast-paced industry that thrives on ambition and positive energy. So these training sessions can be useful as well as motivational. Learning new skills alongside other passionate online marketers gives your staff a boost of confidence and keeps them up to date with current trends.

To identify which skills you must teach, perform a skill gap analysis. This will highlight the skills your employees don’t have but need to fulfil their responsibilities. Given the opportunity, most employees are keen to learn how to improve workflows, manage time more effectively, and develop new skills. For more information on how each employee can increase their productivity level, check out this piece on personal task management.

5. Avoid Employee Burnout

Undue work stress can reduce employee performance and productivity. According to Career Builder, 61% of employees say they’re burned out in their current jobs.

This is why your digital agency needs to take adequate measures from the get-go and ensure employees remain happy and stress-free. The following tips can help avoid burnout:

Schedule coffee and lunch breaks throughout the workday to give everyone enough time to relax.
Set realistic goals and deadlines.
If you’re dealing with international clients, don’t force your staff to work 24/7. Set up shifts and off-days.
Consider outsourcing tasks or projects that drain employee productivity to other digital marketing agencies that have adequate resources to get the job done.
Organize team events to build employee morale.

6. Reduce Employee Turnover

After investing time and money to train your staff, the last thing you want is your good employees to walk away from your digital agency. As a token of appreciation for the hard work they put in, offer adequate salaries, perks, and incentives.

However, you don’t always need to provide monetary benefits. A dinner out or even a verbal recognition of their efforts ensures they feel valued. In fact, they are simple ways to build positivity, boost morale, and increase employee retention.

Consider appreciating your employees’ efforts more often. Create an employee recognition program where everyone knows the different rewards they can receive and the approval process. In this way, an employee’s contributions are instantly recognized and rewarded. According to hbr.org, 40% of employees claim that they put more effort into their work when their efforts are recognized. More importantly, you need to offer constructive feedback to help guide employees in the right direction.

7. Eliminate Bad Clients

Turning down customers is probably not an option when you’re just entering the world of digital marketing. However, as you establish yourself, you can say no to bad clients. Surprisingly, many digital agency owners believe they can’t do this or are scared to do so. However, some of the most productive, profitable agencies say no to work that isn’t suitable for them.

Not all clients are your cup of tea. Recognize those that:

have high opportunity costs
take up more staff time than they can be billed for
require resources that you don’t have to serve them well
have a reputation of not making complete payments

Instead of focusing on these clients, discover ways to bring in more leads and work with others who fit your offerings.

8. Offer Flexible Work Options

Every employee is different. Some work best in a 9 to 5 office environment while others prefer working remotely. Offering work flexibility allows individuals to complete tasks when they are the most productive and are in their comfort zones. The key is to track your employees’ progress and recognize when they are more creative and productive.

9. Communicate Efficiently

Always be straightforward with employees, provide clear instructions, and respond promptly to messages. With basic communication guidelines in place, you can keep your agency running smoothly.

Consider using various means of communication. For example, instant messaging is ideal for short and immediate communication while emails can be used for lengthy communication. Additionally, there are plenty of software and marketing tools for agencies to help enhance communication within an organization. For instance, business communication platforms such as Slack help team members communicate better and stay more organized.

But nothing beats face-to-face team meetings. Setting aside time for regular meetups significantly improves productivity. It provides the perfect opportunity to address problems head on, brainstorm new ideas, talk about goals, set schedules for the coming week, and much more.

10. Assess, Analyze, and Improve Your Agency’s Productivity

Like everything else in digital marketing, one of the best ways to improve your agency’s productivity is to measure it. Make sure you’re using the right tools to analyze various areas of your agency. Knowing where positive results come from will allow you to focus more on them and generate more revenue. On the other hand, areas that are not producing the right results can be recalibrated to become more efficient.

You can also measure the productivity of your agency by monitoring individual productivity levels. This highlights how much each employee contributes to the overall productivity and which employees are more valuable. By identifying your agency’s strengths and weaknesses, you can improve productivity and profit margins.

Over to you

In order for your digital agency to remain successful, you need to ensure that optimal productivity is achieved in every department. Implementing the tips mentioned above can significantly enhance overall productivity. That means you’ll get more work done in the least amount of time and in more cost-effective ways.

It’s time to start improving employee productivity today.

Are you ready to work smarter, not harder?