I’ve been involved in PPC since 1998; and over those years I’ve used a lot of PPC tools from GoToast to PAD to Omniture and many more.
There’s one tool that I started using for PPC in 2001 and I’m still using it today: My Calendar.
Now most people don’t consider this a PPC tool; but in reality – it’s your most important one.
I have switched from Outlook to Google Calendar; but the idea is the same. If you don’t have a good calendar, you can’t get anything done and PPC management will fail.
Consider these days:
I did a poll during a recent keynote and asked the audience a simple question: What day would you build an account?
There were 4 options:
The overwhelming majority of people picked the morning of day 3.
Now day 1 and day 3 have the exact same number of hours blocked off. There is the exact same amount of free time to build the account on those 2 days; but the structure of the day changes most people.
PPC people are creators. We want huge blocks of time to build and create. Most PPC people have their calendar controlled by their manager (or client) who don’t understand the need for large blocks of time as they live in 30 and 60 minute chunks of time.
There’s a brilliant article on this subject here.
However, a poorly managed calendar means the client waits at least 2 more days for the work to be done. If you have 30 minutes between meetings,
Trello (and this image is courtesy of Trello – we’re huge fans) wrote a great article on how to find the correct hours to work.
What this means to PPC people:
The next time you say you don’t have the time to do something (build an account, use a tool, doing some optimization work, etc) – look to your calendar.
A tool is only useful to accomplish a task.
If you don’t have the time to accomplish a task, or even know what the task is because you haven’t had the time to analyze any data, then look to your best PPC tool – your calendar.
Ryan
I’m really loving these articles revolving around time efficiency and working from home.
Really interesting insights into using data to help promote a healthy working environment and finding the most optimal times throughout the day to allow for full work focus and motivation.
Keep writing them please!