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If you're transitioning from working in an office to working remotely, maintaining focus throughout the day may be something you're struggling with. Never fear—as someone who's worked remotely for years, I've picked up plenty of tips for alleviating this problem!
This might be a hard one for those of us with roommates, husbands, wives, children, pets, etc.—but separating your work space from your home space is one of my top tips for maintaining focus. This is an effective way of tricking your brain into associating a certain space with work.
I also tend to clean my workspace in the evening once I’ve completed my day. This allows me to start the next morning with a clean slate. I don’t want to stop anyone from moving locations, especially if you want to get some sunshine—but when you do, make sure it’s a space you can designate to focus on work.
Each week I spend 30 minutes scheduling out big chunks of my week. Then each evening when I’m planning for the following day, I create a simple to-do list and block out my time with specific activities.
It's also helpful for me to schedule out my free time and breaks. It’s important to take 5-10 minute breaks throughout the day before you start a new activity. Our brains take a second to move from one task to the next (hence why multitasking isn’t helpful), so taking a break will allow your brain to reset.
This one took me a while because I always wanted to be available internally and externally, but the "Do Not Disturb" setting on your phone is indeed your friend. Eliminating unnecessary notifications allows you to truly focus on the task at hand, which will make you more productive.
In my experience, I'm able to complete more tasks when I’m completely focused on one thing at a time. Utilizing one or two of these steps will dramatically improve your focus and efficiency with work.
“I find it easier to focus in my home office since I don't typically have anyone else in my house while I'm working. When I really need to focus and get something done, I'll close my email rather than have it dinging at me and doing its best to distract me away from what I'm working on.
When I do this, I make a point to check it every 30 mins or so to make sure that I'm not missing anything urgent. Checklists come in handy when I have lots of pending action items.” —Matt Baine
“It's OK to take a break. If you're having a mental block or starting to feel nuts—step away from your computer, and give yourself a little reward.”—Holly Maine
“TV is a productivity killer.”—Kelly Wittmann
“I like to set up "zones" for myself when I really need to focus uninterrupted on something and knock it out. It's something I brought with me from my previous job. If I have 15 prospecting emails to send, I put myself on Do Not Disturb for one hour until they are complete.
You can give your team a heads up that you're going into "the zone" if you're worried about not being available to them. If I can plan for these in advance by putting them on my calendar, it keeps me from forgetting or not finding the time.”—Ben Morton
Interested in joining our team? Check out our careers page.
In March, retailers across the US experienced record-breaking sales of cannabis and cannabis-related products for both medicinal and recreational use. The biggest sales increases were seen in:
Despite shelter in place orders and social distancing across the US, more than 20 states are allowing cannabis retailers to continue operating. Some of these businesses are asking customers to access their products through online orders and curbside pick-up, while others are keeping their doors open and adhering to social distancing rules.
Industry experts aren’t expecting import slowdowns of cannabis itself. However, lack of supply may occur for components like vape batteries and cartridges, which are made in China. Supply chains in China haven’t resumed to normal activity levels, which has impacted overall production volumes. Additionally, the shipment of products across seas hasn’t yet been normalized.
Cannabis retailers are further benefiting from the annual 4/20 event, using the entire month of April to celebrate. Companies such as Bloom Room, Headset, and Alterna are offering deals to customers during this period to celebrate the occasion.
Centro maintains teams of subject matter experts dedicated to supporting cannabis clients, provides access to CannaVu’s premium inventory, and has partnered with Peer39 to bring first-to-market interest targeting segments to the cannabis industry that can be used in the open exchange.
To learn more about how you can take advantage of the booming cannabis industry this April, check out our How to Capitalize on Cannabis webinar.
Covid-19 has changed our world, and the economy is experiencing unprecedented change across all industries. In our Industries in Flux miniseries, we'll address how specific verticals are pivoting in real-time to adapt. Each week, we’ll focus on a different industry, and share strategies based on consumer trends and changes in media consumption.
In part two of Industries in Flux, Centro's EVP of Media Services and Operations, April Weeks, and VP of Paid Social, Amy Rumpler, share how quick service restaurants are pivoting their branding, messaging, and advertising strategies to reach their audiences, while remaining sensitive to a turbulent economic landscape.
The ability to prioritize tasks is valuable in any line of work. But when it comes to working from home, prioritization is crucial!
I’m Alissa Hammes, Senior Agency Lead at Basis. I’ve worked remotely for the entirety of my nine years here! When I was asked to share some of the best practices I've picked up along the way, prioritization was the first habit that came to mind.
My best advice is to set daily and weekly goals. I personally enjoy crossing things off a to-do list, so I create lists for both work and home to take the "what's next?" question out of my down time. Here's how I organize each of these lists:
Work
Home
Now more than ever, your normal daily schedule may look a little blurred between home and work. You may need to work with your manager if the regular workday needs to be adjusted to early morning or evening hours so that you can prioritize each aspect of your life while you're working from home.
But enough about what works for me—here's what a few of my coworkers had to say about prioritizing when working remotely!
“Turn off email notifications! Most of the time, I am working on something and then I see an email. I totally drop what I’m doing and I tend the new email. Before I know it, I have multiple emails open and I leave things half-finished to work on something else.”—Alyssa Brown
“Keep a running to-do list in a notebook where you can cross things off. Star timely items that need to be completed that day. Before you sign off at night, re-write your to-do list for the following day so you can hit the ground running.”—Kelly Wittmann
“With more self-accountability, it is easy to push projects for ‘later’. List out 1-3 projects each week that you WILL complete.”—Alana Putterman
I hope these tips help you to find your optimal blend between work and life. Stay positive out there!
Interested in joining our team? Check out our careers page.
Covid-19 has changed our world, and the economy is experiencing unprecedented change across all industries. In our Industries in Flux miniseries, we’ll address how specific verticals are pivoting in real-time to adapt. Each week, we’ll focus on a different industry, and share strategies based on consumer trends and changes in media consumption.
In part one of Industries in Flux, Centro’s president and 20-year industry veteran, Tyler Kelly, discusses the overall impact of Covid-19 on the media industry. You’ll learn about emerging opportunities within the advertising landscape, as well as how Centro is looking forward to the new normal.
Unless you have a large business with a substantial marketing team, it’s impossible to have all the expertise you need in-house. In today’s world of multichannel marketing, there are simply too many areas to focus on and different ways to optimize. If you want to keep your marketing campaigns streamlined and effective, investing in specialized third-party services is the way to go.
A great many small-to-medium businesses work with marketing agencies in lieu of hiring their own team. The vast majority of marketing organizations harbor strengths and weaknesses in particular areas and agencies likewise have different experiences, knowledge, and technologies to help with certain channels and strategies. Finding the best agency to complement your internal team’s skills will empower you to build a comprehensive strategy that plays to everyone’s strengths. Here, we take a look at the many benefits that come from partnering with an accomplished performance marketing agency.
Skip the learning curve
The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. There are new channels, marketing strategies, and tools to optimize your efforts. Keeping up with these changes can seem like a full-time job in and of itself. It’s part of an agency’s role to keep up with the latest trends and identify new opportunities for performance marketing. With their help, your business can dive right into new opportunities without having to learn the ropes first.
Save money
Employing external marketing experts is likely to be more cost-effective than expanding your internal team. Hiring someone new means recruiting, paying them a salary, onboarding, training, and dealing with the possibility of churn. When you hire an agency, they have all the knowledge and tools you need in place. They’re able to get right down to improving results, saving you the time and investment that comes with looking for new employees.
Gain a new perspective
Your business and marketing team are effectively siloed from the rest of the marketing world. Working with an agency is an opportunity to get a fresh perspective from new minds working on the project. You might identify a new approach that would have otherwise been missed.
Get access to valuable tools
Marketing agencies don’t just come with expertise, they also come equipped with their own tools. These can include analytical solutions, marketing automation technologies, CRMs, creative applications, and more. Rather than buying and learning how to use these yourself, you can take advantage of your agency's suite of tools.
Improve productivity
Learning and operationalizing new marketing strategies takes a lot of time. When you work with an agency to fill in for areas your internal team doesn't have expertise in, that frees them up to focus on other important strategical tasks.
Drive better results
Most importantly, partnering with an agency can significantly improve the results of your marketing program. Agency success depends on the success of their clients, so they’re motivated to work relentlessly and deliver results that drive revenue for businesses and improve other marketing goals.
Scale quickly
Another major benefit of hiring an external team is that it allows you to increase the capacity of your marketing strategy beyond what your internal organization can handle. Once you start seeing results from your agency’s efforts, it’s easy to scale and grow your business with better marketing.
Agencies can specialize in certain areas of expertise or offer services in a variety of marketing areas. Here are some of the different areas of expertise you might want your marketing agency to have:
Website and Creative
Building mobile-friendly websites optimized for search engines to promote your business. Creating content such as landing pages, product page copy, blog content, and more.
Branding
Some agencies offer branding services to help you build brand awareness and deliver a clear message to your audience. They can help with positioning your brand compared to your competitors, developing your brand’s voice, and more.
Paid Search
This includes optimizing data-driven PPC campaigns to help reach target audiences through search ads. Providing AdWords certified specialists and software tools to automate and optimize PPC bidding.
Social Media
Building social media campaigns to reach and engage audiences on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. May also include YouTube video marketing and paid social media ads.
SEO
Creating target keyword lists for organic search engine optimization and developing strategies to improve domain authority and rank. Agencies can manage SEO and PPC together to ensure the respective strategies complement each other.
Public Relations
Public relations services include messaging, reputation management, media relations, and content marketing. They help your brand to elicit a positive image and help mitigate negative PR on the web.
Email Marketing
This involves developing email campaigns to nurture leads, drive traffic back to your website, and earn sales. Can include providing email automation software services.
eCommerce
Some agencies specialize in helping eCommerce businesses build and manage their website and marketing. This can also include Amazon marketing services.
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These represent just a few of the main areas of expertise a marketing agency may have. You can find a full list of services on an agency’s website. Then ask for more detailed information pertaining to your needs.
If you want to take advantage of agency marketing expertise, be sure to shop around to find the right fit. There are lots of factors to consider when selecting an agency to partner with, namely their capabilities, how many clients they have, and how they communicate with you. You should also consider how well the agency gets along with your own team.
When vetting a potential agency to work with, be clear about your needs and ask to see examples or case studies illustrating their expertise in these areas. A good agency will tell you if their area of expertise doesn’t match your needs. However, you should still do your due diligence to ensure you choose an agency that offers the most value to improve your marketing outcomes.
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Interested in gaining access to Centro’s team of dedicated performance-driven digital experts to help solve your biggest challenges? Get in touch with us today!
At Centro, we know that keeping up with the trade pubs and latest trends can be tough and time-consuming. To make that easier, we’ve compiled all the articles, reports, and other bits of awesomeness you may have missed, but should definitely read. Enjoy our latest list below!
Mondelēz Shifts Investments To Paid Media To Capture Online Orders And US Snacking [:02]
In-store marketing have less impact when people are strictly shopping off lists or queuing up orders online. By focusing on media campaigns that can put products in consumers’ minds and on grocery lists, paid media channels are driving snack purchases for the global CPG company. Oreos go great with or without a pandemic.
Facebook’s Q1 Ad Demand Was Way Down Due to COVID – But It’s Starting To Stabilize [:03]
Facebook is far from immune from COVID, but it’s doing well, all things considered. While much of Facebook’s ad revenue is from small and medium-sized businesses, they also saw that for the first three weeks of April, ad revenue was flat year over year. Engagement also saw growth during shelter in place (though not confirmed much of it could be attributed to post 10 album/TV show/movie challenges).
COVID-19 Accelerates Digital Ordering at KFC, Taco Bell And Pizza Hut [:02]
Many quick service restaurants have only recently embraced online pickup and delivery with COVID-19 accelerating existing QSR trends around the use of technology to enable contactless delivery. Many brands have completely revamped their marketing messaging during the COVID-19 crisis.
Quarantine Creates New Opportunities For Video Makers [:01]
A recently released report outlines the most promising topics for opportunities for businesses to keep people entertained, pointing to the biggest opportunities as cooking, comedy, memes, games, and video games.
Digital Publishers Reveal Strategies For Growth [:04]
A new study breaks down the three-phase pattern for all participating publishers. First, you write great content to build an audience; next, you optimize your online experience to keep that audience. Only then can you really start to work on diversifying revenue.
Publishers Use Advertising Downturn to Perform Programmatic Housekeeping [:05]
Publishers are using the quarantine to catch up on programmatic housekeeping, like improving page-loading speeds on their sites, updating their ad tech stacks and refreshing their sales teams on the latest programmatic developments. (have you gotten Certified with Digital Media Essentials?)
Why Google’s Decision To Withhold Programmatic Data Is Pushing Some Advertisers To Pull Ad Spending [:06]
As advertisers search for more transparency, they’re demanding more from their ad tech partners. Google has long given advertisers a cause for concern. Marketers at P&G are looking to reduce the amount of money they put into Google’s ad exchange.
Foursquare And Factual Bet That The Future Of Location Data Is About More Than Advertising [:03]
Foursquare announced their merger with Factual. Together, Foursquare and Factual have more than $150 million in combined revenue, data derived from over 500 million devices worldwide and 400+ employees. The combined company will continue to use the Foursquare brand. The article highlights the rationale behind the deal, why the industry needs an independent location data provider and expectations around the future of location.
OTT-CTV Could Be A Potent Ad Force In 2020 Election [:03]
While presidential candidates increasingly lean on new media channels for communication around their campaigns, social media and CTV/OTT largely remain at the forefront for the 2020 election. Candidates continue flocking to social media where ad platforms like Facebook had a massive impact on votes in 2016. Projections around CTV/OTT usage reinforce and strengthen rationale for why political advertisers will want to spend there. eMarketer forecasts show OTT-CTV ad spend reaching $10 billion by 2021. Due to the social distancing and “stay at home” policies, streaming TV usage has been exceeding earlier 2020 projections.
TikTok announced a new partnership with their first API partner, Sprinklr, allowing in-feed video ads to be placed on TikTok. The customer experience platform will be integral for brands to create, manage and measure ad campaigns. This is one of a few missing pieces that has led TikTok to not yet attracting marketer attention and investment when compared with popular platforms like YouTube and Instagram.
Have you figured out a daily routine for working from home yet? If not, I have some tips to share about the importance of creating one!
I’m Alyssa Brown, Senior Digital Specialist at Centro, and I’ve been working remotely for three years. I’ve found that a daily routine both reduces stress and keeps me focused throughout the day. See my top suggestions for implementing a routine below!
My daily routine actually starts the night before. I wipe down, clean, and declutter my desk when I shut down for the day. As I’m sure many of you are realizing, it’s easy for dishes, papers, and trash to fill up your space throughout the day. Walking into a fresh space every morning really helps me feel put together.
Pro tip: Fill your workspace with things that bring you joy. I usually have a favorite candle burning, a live plant in the room, ideal lighting—whatever makes you happy!
I constantly have to resist logging on at 7:30-8am. I wake up early because I have a toddler—so I am caffeinated, dressed, and ready to go by 7am most days.
Taking some time for myself in the morning helps to center me before I begin my workday. Enjoy those 1-2 hours you would otherwise spend commuting, and create a new WFH routine that starts your day out right!
Actually sign off at 5 pm or when your work for the day is completed, and separate yourself from your workspace. I often find myself lingering later than I need to doing non-work related things, or doing work things that aren’t urgent just because I'm there.
Instead of scrolling, use that time to get up and MOVE. I use the iPhone Screen Time feature to set a 20-minute time limit (per day) for my social media usage. Not having social media in my daily WFH routine is what actually DOES get me up and moving. If you have ten minutes of downtime, do something productive!
Listen to your favorite podcast while you work on something where you can multitask. If you’re like me, podcast hosts feel like "friends” and can help you to feel less isolated (shout out to Ashley Flowers and Britt from the Crime Junkie podcast for being my virtual BFFs!). Remember to keep in close contact with your team and reach out regularly to connect. And speaking of teams… check out these daily routine tips from some of my WFH peers here at Centro:
“Run your day similarly to how you would organize it if you were in the office. Take a shower in the morning and build in a lunch break. It's not a vacation, so keep to your usual M-F schedule as much as possible.”—Holly Maine
“Simulate your commute. Get up, get ready and LEAVE THE HOUSE for at least 30 minutes. If all you do is drive around the neighborhood, so be it. Just get out of the house and then return ready to work.”—Andy Alvarado
“Pretend you're still going into the office to see other human beings. Give yourself time to wake up, have coffee, get a shower, and get dressed—you'll have more energy throughout the day. If you're a parent, try to meal prep in the evenings for the next day so you aren't scrambling.”—Kelly Wittmann
Try to stick to your normal office routine as much as possible! If you would normally get up, shower, snag a protein bar, and hit the gym before work, you should do exactly the same before firing up your computer at home. One thing you want to avoid is changing up your daily routines for the worse, i.e. staying up late or sleeping in. As they say, bad habits are tough to break!”—Rich Brown
I hope these tips are helpful to anyone working from home during this time. Overall, a bit of structure goes a long way for maintaining productivity and contentment! Now, time for a lunch break...
Interested in joining our team? Check out our careers page.
All of my teammates are currently working from home, which means that our team is facing an entirely new set of day-to-day challenges. Step by step, we’re figuring out how to stay productive, engage our teams, and find the silver linings in this situation.
People who are looking for work right now face an entirely different set of challenges. These people may be wondering how to put their best foot forward when interviewing for a role virtually, rather than in person.
At the same time, recruiters are being forced to get creative and work around usual processes such as interviewing candidates in our offices.
Interviewing remotely may seem daunting to both candidates and recruiters who have never done it before. Even for those that have, there are best practices that can help take your interviewing skills to the next level.
Below, I’ll share my top tips for remote interviewing to help you make the most of the interview, put your best professional foot forward, and ultimately accomplish your goals in these challenging times.
We all know how important it is to make eye contact during an interview. This is much tougher to do via video.
When you’re speaking to someone via video conference, your eyes naturally want to focus on their face. Depending on where that face is on your monitor and the location of your webcam, this can cause you to appear as if you are looking down or away.
You can avoid this by resizing and moving the window with the person’s video image. Move it up or as close to your webcam as possible. This will give the closest approximation to real human eye contact.
A neutral background is your best bet—the name of the game here is to avoid anything distracting or embarrassing. It’s also a good idea to avoid having a mirror reflection show up on camera. A plain wall, a screen, or bookshelf is just fine.
If you’re really concerned about background or there are elements you can’t control, find out whether the video conferencing software you’ll be using has the option to use a preset background. If this isn’t available, try hanging up a sheet or curtain behind you. If you go this route, make sure to keep at least two feet of distance between you and the background to avoid shadow.
Because technology can fail, it’s a good idea to check up on all your technology at least an hour ahead of your video interview. Here’s a quick check-list:
Interviewing remotely may be daunting, but don’t forget: so is interviewing in person! There’s plenty of preparation you can do beforehand to minimize your stress. Take a deep breath, smile, and open up that laptop—you’ll be great.
Interested in joining our team? Check out our careers page.