Time-Saving Tips for CMOs

As a Chief Marketing Officer, do you ever really have enough hours in the day?

Time is easy to spend, but difficult to save. Especially when you face competing demands across multiple functions (usually all at the same time).

Follow these time-saving tips to maximize productivity, drive results, and avoid burnout.  

How CMOs Can Save Time and Boost Productivity

Focus on High-Impact Activities

Every CMO has a wishlist of ideas and opportunities in their back pocket. In an ideal world, we would have ample time to explore new initiatives. In reality, CMOs often have to prioritize tasks that deliver the greatest return, in the shortest period of time.

Follow these tips to narrow your focus:

• Build custom reports and attribution models to reveal high-impact tactics and channels.
• Double down on the efforts that drive pipeline and revenue - not just MQLs.
• Identify under-performing activities. What can be optimized, quickly? Where could you cut workload and recoup time?
• Review your funnel, forecast future results, and act early to get ahead of potential roadblocks.

This approach doesn’t just boost ROI. By allocating 90% of your time to high-impact efforts, you can free up your remaining hours to research, experiment, and build your next dream project.

Ruthlessly Manage Your Calendar

As CMO, everyone in the organization wants a slice of your time. A quick question here, an impromptu catch up there - suddenly, another day has slipped away without tangible progress. To maintain productivity, guard your time like the valuable asset it is:

• Ensure all meetings have clear agendas, agreed action items, and strict timing.
• Embrace asynchronous communication.
• Don’t be afraid to snooze non-urgent notifications.
• Block out your calendar for deep work, and stick to it. This is not the time for admin.

Regularly review your high-impact initiatives and delve into strategy, planning, and reports. Does your calendar give you a sense of chaos, or control? A few hours of undisturbed analysis each week pays dividends in the long term. Plus, even CMOs deserve five minutes to grab a coffee between calls.

Don’t Fear Delegation

CMOs cannot - and should not - do it all. Once you have chosen your core priorities for the month ahead, delegate the rest of your to-do list. Don’t get stuck in the weeds of execution. A well-run organization looks to you for leadership and strategy - not ad copy or email templates:

• Equip your team with the tools and insights to act with autonomy and confidence.
• Streamline communication with transparent, accessible status updates and reports.
• Provide guidance, feedback, and defined objectives - but don’t micromanage.
• Play to employees’ strengths and invest in professional development.
• Effective delegation is all about balance.

To support your team to do their best work (and maintain your own peace of mind), ensure everyone involved has clear visibility of goals, progress, and results.

Leverage Technology (wisely)

According to the Productivity Paradox, the proliferation of technology has actually decreased our outputs. If you oversee a sprawling tech stack with dozens of disconnected tools, this won’t come as a surprise. To make technology work for you (and not the other way around), perform a thorough audit of your tech stack:

• What duplicate tools could you cull? Which platforms slow you down?
• Where are you forced to pull manual reports? How can you improve efficiency and visibility?
• Is your data secure and in sync across your tech stack? Can you accurately track both new and historical data?
• Do poor integrations create cumbersome workarounds? Can you streamline your toolkit with native solutions?

CMOs can save time, gain clarity, and enhance their decision making with a consolidated tech stack. For example, with a reporting and attribution solution that sits natively in Salesforce, you can overcome syncing, storage, and API limitations - and eliminate needless switching between tools.  

Maximize Your Time as CMO

To maximize productivity, CMOs must meticulously prioritize, delegate, schedule, and streamline. When it comes to marketing resources, budgets can be tweaked and teams can be developed, but your time is finite.