10 Time Wasters That Are Costing Your Agency

Time is gold; you can directly translate it into money by strategically spending it on campaigns and agency growth. But, as an agency owner, you'll be familiar with situations where undesired activities chew up all your time and leave you shocked to see your productivity at the EOD.

In this article, you'll learn to identify and eliminate all those wasteful activities that eat up your valuable & productive hours and hamper your growth and profitability.

Identifying Your Agency's Biggest Time Wasters

Agency owners often have to juggle managing their clients and the agency. It results in splitting their attention into multiple things, such as strategy making, client servicing, and day-to-day handling operations.

It can lead to them not being able to fully focus on either of these tasks. To resolve this, businesses should invest in dedicated teams to take care of the day-to-day tasks, focus on strategy, and interact with clients.

Some of the time wasters are as follows -

• Unexpected revisions on a project
• Content/idea rejection by the clients
• Delay in approvals
• Lack of clear goals
• Repetition of tasks
• Lack of proper tools
• Lack of proper processes
• Lack of automation
• Absence of time blocking
• Unnecessary meetings

You can control and eliminate many of these factors using automation and agency management tools such as the DashClicks. However, there are a few factors you have little or no control over, such as eccentric clients and delays in approvals from their end.

Unexpected rejections and revisions take up a lot of time and resources for the agency and are among the significant reasons for missed deadlines with other clients.

Not having a clear goal or strategy can lead to agencies spending more time on things that don't really matter in the long term.

Not setting boundaries when it comes to working hours is another common issue among agencies. It leads to burnout among employees and frustration among clients who expect timely responses from their agencies.

The 10 Wasters That Are Costing You Time and Money in Your Agency

Here are ten common time wasters that might cost your agency valuable time and money.

1. Working on the Wrong Tasks and Repetition of Tasks

Poor planning and delegation might lead to your team members working on the wrong tasks. So, tasks are repeated by different team members many times over. To work around this issue, you should use robust task management software. Using a project or task management system has the following advantages.

• Keep tasks in one place
• Save time and stay on schedule by delegating and tracking tasks
• Prioritize your work
• Improve collaboration
• Track team progress
• Put project work at your fingertips
• Set due dates and never miss deadlines

Pro Tip: DashClicks' dashboard and project management app enables you to manage and streamline tasks like never before. The platform also allows you to track your tasks and monitor project progress.

2. Tracking the Wrong Metrics

Sometimes your team members might be tracking the wrong metrics, leading to inaccurate results and a waste of time. It would help if you used data analytics and metrics tracking to prevent this thing from happening.

Data Analytics is extremely useful in digital marketing as it allows you to leverage the power of customer data to curate a better product & marketing strategy.

Digital analytics allows you to pinpoint the information that marketers would otherwise miss. It allows you to process massive packets of information sourced from multiple channels to quickly spot the patterns. It enables an agency to get actionable insights.

Data analytics will also help you improve your focus on customer experience and leverage social media marketing.

Image Source: TechTarget

3. Having No Systems in Place to Manage Projects

Do you have too many projects and insufficient time or resources to complete them? This is a common problem faced by many agencies. So what can you do to manage the situation?

A few things can help digital marketing agencies avoid this problem in the future. Learn how to prioritize projects and focus on tasks that will have the biggest impact. Give yourselves room for error and include more slack time in your project schedule for potential delays.

Set up systems to stay on track with your deadlines, like setting up reminders and alerts for critical tasks or even hiring someone to help you stay on top of your projects.

Pro Tip: DashClicks' project management app enables you to manage your projects by effectively setting up reminders and alerts and delegating tasks to team members. The white-label project management software also allows you to track your campaign's progress.

4. Working With Poor or Unreliable Resources

Working with poor or unreliable resources is always challenging, but there are a few ways to make the process easier. For example, if you're working with someone difficult to get a hold of, it's best to set clear expectations and deadlines. If you're working with someone unreliable, it's best to have them sign an agreement outlining what they will be responsible for and your expectations of them.

Pro Tip: If you are tired of working with virtual assistant services or freelancers, use DashClicks' white label fulfillment services and stay committed to your deadlines. This way, you can keep your clients happy and satisfied.

5. Improperly Managing Client Expectations and Requirements

Lack of communication is the biggest evil responsible for improper client expectations and requirements management.

Here are some tips to better manage client expectations and requirements -

• Set expectations from the outset
• Invest in good communication software
• Be transparent about processes
• Clearly define goals
• Create official records of the smallest deals
• Keep the client in the loop throughout the process
• Rely on the right tool to keep track of all the stages of a project
• Learn how to say no with dignity when necessary

Pro Tip: You can use DashClicks' Contacts App, a CRM tool for enhanced client communication. It allows you to inform your clients by sending them via SMS and emails about the latest project updates.

6. Lack of Proper Tools

Today's business environment is about using the latest tools, software, and platforms. It minimizes your team's workload and enables them to deliver results in a fraction of the time with a high degree of accuracy. Without these tools, you can hardly manage multiple campaigns and perform day-to-day operations such as conducting analytics and sending performance reports to your clients.

Pro Tip: DashClicks' white label platform offers numerous automation tools to make life easy for agency owners. These tools include a sales CRM tool like the Contacts app, instant report generation tools such as InstaReports, bulk website building tools such as InstaSites, and lead management software such as the Inbound app. Apart from that, you will also get project management software to manage your projects and apps like forms to manage your online forms.

Without such automation tools, your agency will heavily rely on time-consuming and tedious manual processes. For example, manual report generation alone can consume dozens of productive hours. On the flip side, you can generate reports in a few seconds with InstaReports.

7. Unnecessary Meetings

Tesla chief Elon Musk sees meetings as a timewaster. He once said in an email, "excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time."

He has clearly instructed his employees not to conduct frequent meetings unless it is highly urgent. So, big meetings are a big no-no in his companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink, OpenAI, and Zip2.

8. Not Practicing Time-Blocking

Time-blocking, also known as time chunking, is a time management technique that is used by famous enterprises, business leaders, and innovators such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates to great success. It enables you to make the most of any amount of time.

The time-blocking technique involves working on one task at a time broadly. It allows you to acquire the flow state by entering deep focus. It's linked with massive productivity and enables you to complete tasks faster and easier.

Here are the steps to use time-blocking for maximum productivity -

Step 1: Identify the tasks that you need to accomplish

Step 2: Estimate the time required to complete each task

Step 3: Decide how much flexible time you can afford as per your schedule

Step 4: Review your plan

Step 5: Implement time-blocking using your favorite calendar app

9. Lack of Proper Processes

Business process management is directly linked with cost benefits and a high level of productivity. Well-defined and accurate processes allow you to communicate and apply consistent standards and practices within the business.

Proper business processes help you in many ways, some of which are as follows -

• Gather information to resolve issues and quickly reduce downtime
• Know what each team member needs to do
• Easily onboard new employees
• Comply with norms, standard practices, and certifications
• Improve product quality
• Ensure that everyone is on the same page
• Reduce risk & improve security
• Analyze and enhance tasks in a dynamic manner

10. Lack of Clear Goals

Do you know why projects fail miserably despite using the best processes and tools? The major reasons are the lack of direction and vague goals. It is, therefore, important to sit down with your client and discuss the objective. Sometimes, all a client wants is maximizing inbound leads, whereas an agency might be wasting time and precious resources on brand building through social media.

Setting and prioritizing your goals, therefore, becomes extremely crucial. Take time to communicate these goals to your team members so everybody is on the same page. Understanding the client's goals helps the team members accomplish projects.

Image Source: Hypercontext

Here are some of the disadvantages of having no goals -

• Your team lacks focus
• You live by the flow rather than control it
• You have confusing priorities
• Distractions might hit you

Final Words

Time is the most precious asset; unfortunately, we all have limited time at our disposal. As an agency, you only work a limited number of hours a week, and you are supposed to meet your business goals and increase the number of clients within that period. So, you can't afford any type of time wasters.

Go through the above tips to steer clear of time wasters and save your agency time with automated reporting tools, project management software, and utilizing white label fulfillment services.