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What sets this podcast apart? We believe in the power of meaningful marketing—a holistic approach that prioritises authenticity, connection, and purpose, whilst still turning a profit.
Chantal Gerardy is an International Award Winning Marketing Strategist who empowers purpose-led businesses to revolutionise their online marketing approach and create a brand that resonates deeply with their online audience. If you're tired of cookie-cutter marketing advice, and seek strategies that truly make a difference, this podcast is for you.
If you are a business owner feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or struggling to cut through the noise online? We've got your back!
Our podcast is tailored for entrepreneurs hungry for clarity, confidence, and tangible results in their online marketing. Our podcast isn't just about boosting sales; it's about creating an efficient marketing machine that reflects your values, passion and purpose. Whether you're stuck or looking to maximise your marketing, we're here to guide you every step of the way.
Our episodes dive deep into practical skills, customer-generating strategies, and streamlined systems to help you thrive without relying on paid ads. From mastering social media, creating content that converts, ranking on google, getting your website to work, lead list building and email marketing, each episode is packed with tips and techniques to help you thrive online.
Join me each week as we explore management and monetisation online marketing strategies designed to reduce your time online while increasing your impact. With our guidance, you'll align your business and marketing team more closely, ensuring every effort moves you towards growth. From overcoming challenges to seizing opportunities, each episode is packed with actionable advice to help you thrive in the world of online marketing and effective management.
Are you ready to transform your online marketing, build a business that you enjoy, and leave a lasting impression?
Tune in to the Meaningful Marketing Podcast and unlock the secret sauce to marketing success.
This podcast is brought to you by Podpro Australia. Are you struggling to find the time for your marketing? That's BS. In this episode, I'll show you what to do with your time to make your marketing more meaningful.
Social media, Google, email marketing, systems, website traffic, and the endless content creation that comes with marketing. It's overwhelming, right? Say goodbye to endless stress and hello to clarity with the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. In this podcast, I will share with you fast and free practical methods to help you manage, monetize, and market your business, all infused with a healthy dose of motivation.
Let's do this.
Welcome back to another episode of the Meaningful Marketing Podcast with Chantal Gerardy today, I'm going to be going over something that you may not is super important. However, when we get into it, you're going to see that it possibly is one of the most important things to help you stay on track and make your marketing more meaningful.
Time blocking is an absolutely crucial aspect for any marketing manager. Many people will say to me, uh, my marketing's not working. And when I say to them, show me in your diary where you have Uh, allocated time where you've blocked out for working on your marketing or working in your marketing, show me that time in your, in your calendar, in your diary and they go, uh, no, it's not in the diary.
Uh, you know, I just wake up every day and I go, Oh, I'll um, do a bit of this today and a bit of that and oh, maybe I'll do a couple posts tomorrow and maybe I'll work on a funnel the next day. But there's nothing actually concrete inside their calendar. Now here's the thing. You have to allocate enough time in your calendar to not just work in your marketing, meaning the ongoing management of your marketing, but to work on your marketing, meaning re look at your systems, re look at.
Creating lead magnets, re looking at the insights of how things are performing or not performing. And it's absolutely fundamental that you have time in your calendar to work both in your marketing and on your marketing. By allocating dedicated blocks of time for specific marketing activities, you can streamline your workflow and achieve much better results.
Plus you can enjoy the process. Many of you may know that I was a triathlete in South Africa. And when I first started triathlon, you know, you've got three disciplines, you've got swimming, you've got running, you've got cycling, and then you have to put all those things together and practice transitions with triathlon as well.
Now, if I woke up every single day and I just swam, run, and cycled every single day, I would burn myself out, I would get injuries and I wouldn't get good results. And your marketing is exactly the same. If you wake up every single day and you try to do little bits of everything, you're going to burn out.
It's going to be super exhausting and you're not going to get the results that you want. So within Triathlon, I had specific allocated tasks. So I would wake up in the morning and I would have in my calendar. I would be doing a swim and maybe it would be an endurance swim. Then maybe in the afternoon it would be strength training.
The following day then might be running intervals. Then the next day might be cycle hill climbs. But all of it was specifically blocked in strategic orders to make sure that when you woke up every day you had confidence knowing what it is that you were going to do. But also certainty in the fact that it was actually going to result in good results.
So I'm going to share with you now some four strategies to help you. And what I believe is, is that if it's not in your diary, it's not going to happen. So treat your diary like it is your roadmap, your roadmap to success and cherish your diary and protect that diary and make sure that you have everything in your diary that you need in order to succeed.
I absolutely love waking up and looking at my diary knowing that there's allocated blocks inside my diary to do exactly what it is that I need to do and um, I'm not winging it. It's strategic. I'm not winging it and not only that, but I also put specific things in timeframes or time of day that I enjoy doing.
So for example. If I'm going to be doing creative tasks, I much prefer creative tasks first thing in the morning. So therefore I'll allocate that specific time in the morning. If I want to do more strategic stuff, I find I'm a lot better sort of midday to the afternoon. And in the afternoons, late afternoons, I generally avoid any strategic or creative activities.
I probably use that time more for just going over and reviewing my results and seeing how things are working, but it's all in my diary. It's all pre planned and I've already identified. When I am at my best doing what particular tasks and then I make sure that I block those tasks in there. Then I also review it regularly.
So the four strategies is first you need to identify the most important marketing tasks that you need to do. So what social media do you need to be doing? What do you need to be doing on your website? What do you need to do across Google to rank higher? What are you going to be doing in email marketing?
And make sure that you've now got those specific tasks identified so that you know how you can prioritize them and put them into your diary. I always, um, laugh because when it comes to, um, you know, for example, Black Friday, people will contact me about three days before Black Friday and say, let's map out a campaign.
And it's, it probably takes about, you know, three to four weeks to map out a campaign, and then you need about at least another week to go and market it. So. As I said before, if it's not in your diary, it's not going to happen. So by having it in your diary and identifying what those important priority tasks are, you'll be able to go in and make sure that you're doing things in enough time so that it can actually be meaningful for your marketing.
Number two is you need to allocate specific time blocks in your schedule for each task. So I have a look at how long will it take me to go and schedule my social media content for the next week. And then I will go and block out that specific time in my calendar and I will give it a certain color. So I know that that is me doing my marketing management and that marketing management will be a specific color.
Now, if I'm going to go and work on a new campaign or a new funnel, that is not management for me that is working on my marketing, not in my marketing. So that will be given a different color that, and I'll go into my diary and give it enough time to be able to do it. For me, usually when I'm coming up with a strategy or a big funnel, so let's use, you know, Black Friday campaign as a, as an example, for me, that would normally take me around three hours to create.
So I'll dedicate a three hour block and I'll make sure that I've put it in a time in my diary when I'm at my best, but also where I'm not going to be distracted and not going to have any interruptions as well. So number three is minimizing those distractions and making sure that, uh, when you're working in those specific things that you're not scrolling through social media, you're not checking your emails, you're not answering your phone, um, and you're not attending to the kids whilst you are actually, uh, Performing those tasks.
So minimize distractions, turn off all your notifications and make sure that you are in a, a quiet supportive work environment. Number four is evaluate how it's working. So when I first started doing this, I went and I mapped it out in my calendar. What I, What I thought would work. I'd go right, I think this is going to take me about this much time.
I need to be able to check my emails. I've got to be able to post my social media. I've got to go and post on Google. I need to write a blog. I want to schedule out my email campaigns. I broke them all up into little blocks. Put them inside my diary where I thought they would go best. But what I found is, is that as I tested and trialed it out over probably around two to three weeks, I worked out that some needed to adjust.
I needed more time for some, I needed less time for some, or I needed to put some of the tasks in another time of the day, um, because something just wouldn't, wasn't working. One of my biggest things I remember doing is, I think it was check emails from 30 in the morning. But when I was doing school drop off, I was never ever home by nine o'clock.
I was always home by quarter past nine, which meant I only then had 15 minutes to check emails, which wasn't enough time. I also felt that I was a bit frazzled coming straight from dropping off kids straight into now checking emails and having to reply to emails. So All I did then was I just changed my calendar and went right on the days that I take kids to school.
9. 30, I'll start 9. 30 to 10 and I just delayed my start. So evaluating what's working or not working is really important. But the only way that you can do that is by testing and trialing it first. So if you put it in your diary, make sure you do it because that's the other part. Like if it's not in your diary, you're not going to do it.
But if you don't do it, it's not going to work either. So what I've learned is, is that time blocking requires discipline and it requires consistency. Um, but it certainly helps in the managing of your marketing and making sure that it is effective and that it's not one of those things that you just push to the back and it, it, it ends up never happening or not happening.
It also means that you're prioritizing your marketing and it's not getting squished into tiny little spaces where you distracted and you just kind of winging it. It means that you're now. honoring your time and you're honoring your marketing as well. Having the structure in place gives you lots of confidence, lots of certainty and lots of control over your marketing.
So where do you start? We'll break them down into small actionable tasks, um, of working. What are your work on your marketing tasks and what are you working in marketing? That again is the strategy versus the management and making sure then that you've chosen what calendar you're going to use in order to do it.
I use a Gmail calendar. I think it's super simple and easy to use. I can do it on my phone and I can also update it on a laptop. You can also view it, uh, in a week or in a month and you can print it out as well if you prefer paper. And it's just super easy to do and it even counts. Um, how many hours each week, if you're color coding everything, it will actually tell you how many hours each week you're spending on each of those tasks.
So I can also then, uh, reflect on the effectiveness of how this is working. My second tip is to time track, um, and this one over here is really interesting. I went to a conference and they said That's a lot of entrepreneurs or people who work for themselves or, you know, just basically do whatever every single day, um, and don't have a boss checking over them.
They said they tend to be less productive because there isn't a time or there isn't a start or an end time to it. So what they recommended is that when you go in, you actually set, set a timer. Or for me, I've got my notifications on my calendar. So it beeps to say to me that now it is time for me to do this new activity.
So I put down what I was doing for my old activity and I move straight into my new activity. Make sure that you've also put space in between there. If you track your time. So if you use like a time tracker, like toggle your time, which is an app, there's a start time and there's an end time as well. And what you'll find is if you say to yourself, I need to get this blog done in half an hour and you set the timer.
You will get that blog done in half an hour because it's kind of like a boss has handed it to you and said, look, you're going to lose your job if you don't get this blog back to me in the next half hour. Um, and you would get it back in the next half hour. So they have proven that we do work better when we have structures in place like this.
My third piece of advice on getting started would be to experiment with different time blocking techniques. So the Pomodoro method is around 25 minutes, uh, 25 minute blocks. And then I think it's, you know, 10 or 15 minutes. For me, that doesn't work because I find that I get in the zone. So 25 minutes for me, I kind of get in the zone at 25 minutes and the next minute, 25 minutes is up and I've got to go and have a rest and I lose my flow.
I kind of get more effective as time goes on. So Pomodoro method doesn't really work for me. The time blocking method works better for me. But there is also another, um, strategy that you could use, which is called eating that frog. Meaning that every day when you wake up, if you've got a whole lot of marketing tasks to do, uh, having a look at which of those tasks is the biggest, scariest, and closest to making you money.
and basically completing that task before you do anything else in the day. Um, so that's a book it's called eating, uh, eat that frog. If you want to have a look, look that up. So you may wish to do that as well. Generally people avoid the scariest biggest thing that they're not comfortable doing and they keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off.
But usually that's the thing that they need to do to make the big difference inside their marketing. So for me, I'll look at which of these things is going to be more meaningful. Profit wise and to my community and I get that thing done before I go and get the other things done. Now the opposite of that is, so I'm a little bit of a, um, Jacqueline Hyde when it comes to this.
Sometimes when I have a massive big thing that I need to do like a new funnel creation or something. It is so big and if I've got like 20 tiny little things. I will go and put a timer on for 20 minutes and I will see how many of those 20 little things I can get out of the way. And it absolutely amazes me.
Sometimes 20 minutes, I can get those 20 things done just because I've got a time and I'm kind of racing the clock, but it frees up my brain to then be able to to work on that frog, eat that frog. So a little bit of a conundrum. I do go with my, my feeling, but my advice to you is to check in. If you are procrastinating because it's uncomfortable, it's hard, it's challenging.
And if it is hard, challenging or uncomfortable and you go, Oh, I'm procrastinating, no need to procrastinate. I've just got to get it done and just go and do it. The best slogan ever just do it. So, I encourage you to implement these techniques into your daily routine, and I'd love it if you could, in the comments below, share any of your experiences with time blocking.
Have you ever time blocked before? What do you find works for you? Are you more creative in the morning? Are you more creative in the afternoon? Do you ever, ever actually work on your time? On your marketing or you just constantly working in your marketing or perhaps you're avoiding working in your marketing or procrastinating around working in your marketing because you're not sure where to start or what to do.
Yeah. Really interested in your comments. Love it. If you could put your comments in the comment below and just let's help support each other in mastering a super valuable skill here that is going to help us. Excel in the management of our marketing. So to wrap it up, time blocking is an absolute game changer for effective marketing management.
Uh, you can jump onto my website, onlinebusinessmarketing. com. au, and there are some tips and resources around time blocking and don't forget. To subscribe to the podcast or on the website. If you found any of this information interesting, uh, and share it with someone that you know, that could do with a little bit more better time management in their marketing day.
Until next time, keep time blocking and conquering your marketing goals. This is Chantal Gerardy from the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. Thanks for listening in. Meaningful marketing is all about you making your marketing meaningful. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please hit that subscribe button.
But subscribing means that you won't miss out on future episodes, all about marketing and motivation. Stay inspired, stay focused and make your marketing meaningful.