At Interactive Minds, the second half of the year is like a new year for us. Our largest event of the year is over and it’s a great time to regroup, to revisit priorities and to plan for the future. Needless to say, as a planner, part of me loves this process. It’s like a fresh start and a chance to change those things that require it. I’ve spoken to a few people about this process and one of them suggested that I “Marie Kondo” my business and focus in on what brings me joy. In fact they suggest that I list all the things we do and give each one a “joy rating”. I love this idea, it’s a big picture way to help me prioritise and bring some personal rating into the business (and factor in things other than financial, performance or demand driven inputs). It can be done at a high level (project based) or even a micro level, as a way of reviewing all the smaller elements in a project. I’m in the process of doing a bit of both and using this as a guide to work out what elements need work, what elements I am not enjoying (and therefore might need to remove, delegate or redesign) and what elements I love.  According to Marie Kondo, I need to remember to thank those things that have brought me joy but which I’ll no longer be continuing with (#grateful)!

Applying this to Marketing

With the popularity of the Netflix show, this technique has also been popular for marketers as a means of tidying up marketing strategies and simplifying the number of things that you are concentrating on. It’s no secret that marketers are feeling overwhelmed by the number of channels and options that we feel we need to keep up with and understand and this is one way to review the options.

How can you use the Marie Kondo method in your marketing?

  • First decide on the metric that matters to you. In marketing, it may not be right to only ask if it brings you “joy” (though try to include it if you can!), rather you might need to evaluate whether a project, tactic or channel brings you revenue or ROI, conversions or a specific life-time customer value for example.
  • Then write down a list of what you are working on. Like me, this might be at a macro level (by project) or a micro level (eg. by tactic within a campaign).
  • Give each item a ranking of how it answers your question. This could be a ranking of one to ten. If you can also give each item a ranking of joy that it brings to you/your team/your customers or the business that would also be cool to include.
  • Go through and order your items based on the rankings they received. Perhaps you could average out the ranking if you gave a number for two criteria.
  • Decide on how many projects you can work on in the desired timeframe. I try and prioritise just three big projects at a time and then line up my other projects behind this in terms of priority.
Hopefully through this process you have a new way of evaluating what you should be working on. Whilst this way is a bit of fun, it is obviously one of many techniques that you can use to plan your work. I recently shared another method I use to prioritise my projects which was around considering projects based on their urgency and importance. You can check out a quick video on this in our Facebook group. I think both techniques are valid in their own right. It’s important to consider what achieves business objectives, make sure you are enjoying how you spend your time and factor what is important to the organisation. I’m personally doing a bit of each technique – in fact now that I’ve done both, I’d recommend starting with the “Marie Kondo activity” and then moving onto the “prioritisation activity” from there. Here’s a few other resources which describe their take on the Marie Kondo method, that you might like: Has anyone used a Marie Kondo like process (or a variation of) in your marketing?  Share your experiences with us in our Facebook Group.