Presented by BetterHelp.
Running a marketing campaign can be a lot like building a house. There are so many different kinds of tasks to get done. You need an architect, builders, plasterers, electricians, plumbers and more to complete the job.
The result can be feeling stressed from learning and managing how all these jobs work.
Yet that’s the challenge many businesses are facing with their digital marketing, which includes the far-flung fields of Social Media, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising, Data Analytics, Website Programming, Graphic Design, and Content Strategy.
Understanding all these marketing functions poses challenges for even the most well-trained marketing staff.
Yet many solo entrepreneurs and people working at companies where there aren’t enough marketing resources are left feeling stressed, and worse yet completely burnt out.
Take action if you feel overwhelmed, and know there are options out there for getting support. Online therapy is an option that can work well for some.
On a platform like BetterHelp online therapy you can be matched with a therapist in as little as 24-48 hours after signing up. Working with a therapist online can also be more convenient and easier to stick to.
Because therapy takes place online, you can have a session from the comfort of your home or at your hotel during a work trip.
No matter what step you decide to take next, remember that the workplace can be stressful and to pay attention to your feelings. In this article, we’ll look at some ways to approach your marketing that can help alleviate some of the stresses involved in this profession.
Marketing Is A Stressful Job
It’s not in your imagination. Marketing and PR is one of the most stressful jobs in America, according to at least one survey. There are a lot of reasons why marketing can be hard on your mental health. Marketing is interdisciplinary and involves many departments.
People clash over what direction to take. There’s a gap between the time you implement a campaign and seeing whether it will be successful, or not.
The list goes on, but our focus here is on better managing yourself and your mental health by taking easy, accessible steps.
Focus On Your Strengths
Marketing is multi-disciplinary and involves complex skills and learning new technologies. Sometimes, it’s easy to feel like there are so many skills to learn that you’ll never catch up.
By focusing on what you do best, you can start to let go of a lot of the more frustrating aspects of your marketing plan. But it has to make financial sense.
Let’s look at a scenario for a consultant who makes $100 an hour and is doing a lot of admin tasks that interfere with higher-level work managing PPC campaigns.
Someone like that making $100 could afford to hire someone to be their admin assistant at $30 an hour to free up a few hours a week.
Don’t discount hiring someone because four to eight hours of work per week doesn’t sound like much. If you’re completely overscheduled those four hours could mean the difference between you getting home for dinner in time to sit down with your family or catching a spin class at the gym.
A few hours a week isn’t a lot of time, but a handful of hours might be all you need to make positive strides in your mental wellbeing self-care routine.
Buy More Time For Important tasks
Remember you can always make more money, but you can never get back more time. Don’t limit yourself to hiring for your marketing tasks. Hire someone to clean your house or spend money on an automatic car wash instead of doing it yourself with your yard hose.
If you’re happy and excited to wash your car on weekends, then don’t move that task to another column.
Some people look at hiring others to tasks as a waste of money. The truth is that just because you can do something yourself doesn’t mean you have to. Don’t get caught up whether you can successfully do something.
Concentrate on whether a task is a good use of your skills. Again, pay attention to your feelings. Know what tasks make you feel refreshed and what tasks leave you feeling depleted, which decreases your overall productivity.
Experiment With Using AI To Assist You
Look for ways to use AI as an assistant. While there is a lot of chatter about people using artificial intelligence (AI) to complete tasks, the success you have depends on the task. Generally, if a task is one step or has a clear answer then you’ll tend to get good results.
Where AI becomes less reliable is in using it to complete complex tasks like writing a book. It’s just not there yet. Where you may be able to use AI effectively is in smaller tasks, like writing an intro to your weekly email.
A lot of the success is in how specific the task is and using the right prompts to describe what you need. For example, pick a small writing task like a welcome email for new customers.
Then be sure to give the AI prompts that describe your audience and tone when using it for these kinds of writing tasks.
There are many other creative ways to use AI technology to help you complete certain tasks in your marketing campaigns. Here are just a few possible ways to use AI to complete marketing tasks:
- Analyzing data – AI is good at finding patterns and trends in data and performing repetitive tasks, such as analyzing customer sentiment or pinpointing hot social media topics where there’s a high level of engagement.
- Building chatbots – For many companies, the challenge of building chatbots has prevented them from implementing the technology. AI can in some cases help you build chatbots faster and more completely than a human programmer.
- Video production – Video editing software can be complex and difficult to use. If you don’t have an in-house video producer, AI may be able to help you edit and produce video marketing content more quickly and efficiently.
- Creating graphics – An AI design tool like DALL·E 2 from OpenAI isn’t going to take the place of your graphic designer, but it could perform some less important tasks where graphics are needed. For example, with resizing images for different social media platforms.
- Writing headlines – At this stage in development, AI writing tools tend to be more successful at completing smaller, more specific tasks. Using an AI writer to generate headlines is an ideal use. Pro tip: Ask for 10-20 headlines for your next social media post, then pick the one you like best or combine multiple elements to get the best headline.
- Customer support – Interacting with customers can be a thankless job, especially if you’re fielding technical support questions from frustrated customers. AI can help make a difficult job like customer support a little less difficult by generating technical answers and responses to customers.
- Backend SEO content – Anyone who understand SEO knows how important written content is to rankings. Each page of a website has on-page content, plus there are multiple meta tags, including the title tag, description tag, as well as alt tags for images. Website meta data like this used in Search Engine Optimization is highly structured and based on the website’s on-page content.
AI is particularly creating structured content based on example content, which works well for writing meta tags.
One way to begin experimenting with ChatGPT for free is to sign up for a Microsoft Bing account, and download the Microsoft Edge browser. There are daily limits as to how many prompts you can give the AI for free, but you can always upgrade to a premium ChatGPT account to be able to ask more questions.
Another smart move where you can rely on AI is when using your Mac or iPhone. You do not have to manually create an engaging content for your marketing. Take advantage of AI second brain. It is just like having your own ChatGPT which you can access on your Mac or iPhone anytime
Automate Your Marketing As Much As Possible
According to studies, automation can reduce mental workload, along with fatigue and feelings of stress. Admittedly, automating can be as hard or harder than just doing the task over and over again.
But there’s a mental toll to be calculated from doing these kinds of repetitive tasks over and over again. Even if it costs as much or more to have someone automate it, you may feel like a weight has been lifted by getting certain tasks off your plate.
Look at simple ways to automate weekly or monthly reporting. For example, Google Analytics has automated reporting options that are free and relatively easy to set up.
Once you set them up, having automated tasks complete themselves can help build momentum throughout your day. For this reason, automating tasks can be worthwhile for the mental boost alone.
Takeaway
When looking at ways to improve your marketing and overall mental wellbeing, don’t just calculate the cost of what you make versus hiring someone to do it. Be sure to calculate the mental health benefits of taking an action now and avoiding burnout.
Go take a small step today, and plant the seeds for a healthier and more profitable tomorrow.
