Did you know that workers in the 90th percentile of productivity produce almost 4 times the work of other employees? With high levels of industry competition and tight budgets, that’s not a statistic that agencies should ignore.
Productivity is about more than juggling multiple tasks and taking on a long to-do list. Instead, your agency should be focusing on how you can maximise high-quality work while optimising schedules, and creating a calmer, happier, and more efficient environment.
To help you get started, we’ve put together 6 opportunities to boost agency and digital marketing productivity.
Virtual assistants can do more than lighten your workload; they can actively contribute to your agency’s growth plans.
With years of experience and specialism in different areas, your virtual assistant can expand the potential of your business by establishing streamlined systems for repetitive tasks.
A virtual assistant can take over or aid with tasks including:
You can also find virtual marketing assistants with more specialist skills. These assistants can support your agency’s digital marketing efforts through social media management, basic SEO optimisation, campaign research and content production.
It’s been found that generative artificial intelligence (AI) can boost a skilled worker’s productivity by over 40%. It can also reduce human error, enable faster delivery of work, and help your agency scale without the need for more staff or space.
From taking over repetitive processes to supplementing ongoing work, AI has a lot of potential for digital agencies. Some of the main uses of AI include:
Most of these tools are best utilised alongside human skills. For example, a videographer might use AI to quickly make simple edits to videos before polishing the final cut themselves, adding a human touch to AI-assisted content generation.
It’s also important to understand the limits of AI.
Just as it can drastically boost productivity, the same study cited above found that productivity decreased by 19% when used incorrectly. If you decide to employ AI in your agency, spend time understanding the capabilities of your tools before you begin using them.
Self-service tools are those that enable your clients to carry out a task without the help of your employees. They’re a great way to reduce the strain of customer service, allowing your team to focus on their to-do lists and boosting productivity.
For example, let’s say a client has a question about how they should pay your agency. Rather than emailing a busy member of your team, they can instead find details of payments in the Knowledge Base section of your client portal.
Other self-service tools include chatbots, FAQ sections, and community forums.
Scope creep occurs when the requirements of a project increase after it’s begun. This is pretty common in agencies, with clients requesting additional tasks or your team realising they need to do A before they can achieve B.
However, scope creep can drastically reduce your productivity and negatively affect your agency’s capacity planning. When a project’s predicted schedule and budget don’t reflect the additional workload, it can create stress in the workplace and draw attention away from other important projects.
The end result? An inefficient, overworked agency that struggles to allocate resources (including time) evenly.
Luckily, there are ways to reduce scope creep and manage its effects. Here are some top tips to help:
Burnout can reduce productivity by around 40%, making it a key focus when increasing your UK agency’s output.
If you or your team are experiencing symptoms of burnout, start by switching up work tasks. If an employee spends every morning scanning and filing documents, for example, consider delegating or rotating the task between different employees. This lightens the strain of repetitive work on individuals and helps to shake up routines.
It’s also crucial that you and your employees aren’t overworked. A never-ending to-do list and too many deadlines is a one-way ticket to burnout.
You should avoid micromanaging your team, too, and encourage autonomy around work schedules and projects.
Self-care is at the heart of reducing burnout. By promoting self-care practices in your agency, you can encourage your team to prioritise their mental health. This ensures they come to work every day feeling well-rested, fresh, and ready to go.
Some key self-care practices to encourage amongst your team include:
Provide mental health resources for your team, too, and take any signs of burnout (such as irritability, excessive fatigue, and an inability to focus) seriously for a happier, more productive agency.
Frequently switching between different tasks can make it harder to focus, putting productivity at risk. That’s why both multitasking and context-switching should be left behind as we enter 2025, with interruptions and distractions kept to a minimum.
You can do this by:
Whether you’re a social media agency or work in digital marketing, productivity is the key to success.
We hope the opportunities outlined in this article have given you plenty of inspiration on how you can streamline your processes and take care of your team for a more productive workplace.
If you’re looking for more business advice to supercharge your agency, be sure to check out the latest news from BIMA.