An Efficiency Systems for One-Person Marketing Teams
One-person marketing teams often carry the weight of the entire business. You’re busy all the time and have an endless list of tasks to complete by last Friday. You might find yourself completing tasks with minimal effort just for the sake of doing them, or your energy is spread across so many areas that it feels impossible to do good work.
Being busy is second nature to you, and saying no to things because you’re “busy” can feel rewarding or important.
But busyness doesn’t equal results.
How do you know if that busyness is actually moving the needle forward to deliver the marketing results you’re being paid for? If you can’t answer that question, you’re going to find it very difficult to do good work. And if you can’t do that, you can lose your reputation or job.
But there is a way out of this mess.
I manage 3 LinkedIn company pages and 2 executive personal LinkedIn pages, 3 websites, an email list of 4,000+, a community of over 4,000, 25+ in-person and virtual events every year, write weekly blogs, create lead magnets, and everything else.
There’s a full-time job in every one of those roles. But there’s only one of me.
Most businesses can’t afford to employ a 20-person marketing team. So, we must adapt and manage our work in a smart way that stops us from losing our jobs and minds.
Why Most Marketing Work Is Futile
There’s no hiding from the fact that most of what we do as marketers is futile.
We’re swinging for the fences and hoping that something lands with someone to give make them think that they MUST put money in our pockets.
The reality is, though, 80% of our work results in nothing but the sound of crickets and tumbleweed.
Even if you have an unlimited marketing budget and a team of the 100 best marketers in the world, failure is inevitable.
I like to look at that positively. This career allows for a lot of creativity, but we’re not paid to make pretty graphics for social media. We’re paid to make the business/client money.
I see a lot of marketing teams go through the motions with their job. You can’t do that in this profession.
The long list of responsibilities I do on a daily basis (the one that usually requires a large business to hire 20+ employees), is made manageable through structured systems, both in my workflows and in the marketing efforts I produce.
I’m under no illusion that structuring your work is easier for some than others. There’s no perfect solution, either. But here’s what helps me make sense of the busy work, prioritise it, and deliver successful projects like these.
The Simple System That Keeps Me Sane
Calendar Management
When you’re managing multiple projects and regular tasks at the same time, opening your laptop at 9am on Monday morning can feel extremely overwhelming. You have an endless task list, but where do you even start?!
I started time blocking in my calendar in 2023, and it has completely transformed the way I work (it’s heavily contributed to my progress from failed apprentice to marketing manager and business owner).
This isn’t another article about optimising your productivity, though. I don’t believe in that.
I want to do good, meaningful work with purpose. That requires structure.
My calendar is sort of like my second brain. If I have an idea, I add a 30-minute “meeting” in my work calendar. If I’m in a meeting with someone and we’re discussing another meeting, I book it there and then. If I know that I have regular tasks that need to be completed every week (like creating social media content), I block out specific times repeatedly to do it.
Ok, you’ve got the idea of using your calendar as a second brain. But no one has ever recommended Microsoft Outlook as a good project management tool. When you have to manage projects, how do you organise what needs to be done, and when?
Notion
Both my personal and professional life has been spread across various Notion pages for a few years now.
It’s my third brain.
Notion is essentially a sandbox note-taking tool. You can use it to manage an entire business, or you can simply use it to capture ideas. However, you want to use it is up to you, but here’s how I use it for work.
I have 4 pages that would make my work a lot harder if I didn’t have them. They are:
Projects & Tasks - Tracking deadlines and tasks for bigger projects.
Content - Calendars for all 5 LinkedIn accounts I manage. YouTube, and blogs.
Email - A calendar for the 2 email lists I manage.
Lead Magnets - A calendar for planning and drafting new lead magnets.
Separating these sections gives me clarity in my work. Before I did this, I had no visibility of what was being done and when, making it almost impossible to produce the results required.
Visibility of everything makes decision-making so much easier. It’s why I advocate for journaling so much (part of the reason my newsletter is The Marketing Journal). Because your thoughts are a lot easier to understand and act on when you can see them in front of you, not within your consciousness.
It prevents you from working in a job where all you know is putting out fires and struggle to deliver real value to the business. Whether you choose to use Notion or not, the message is still the same: make your ideas and plan tangible.
You’re setting yourself up for failure if you keep your work in your head.
Why This Matters Long-Term
Working in marketing means you will probably never feel on top of your task list, and that’s okay.
If you’re still making it up as you go alone, you’re already miles behind your competitors. Marketing systems are the way forward, especially in an industry that evolves as quickly as ours.
This is the solution that has worked for me so far. I rarely stress about work outside of doing it because I’m confident in knowing that my “marketing brain” is documented. It’s a lot nicer to live that way. Being able to be completely present when you’re with your family or anywhere except at your desk is priceless, and one that should be prioritised above trying to get that last task ticked off your to-do list.
