By leveraging marketing analytics, SMBs can visualize which campaigns are working and which ones are not. This helps SMBs allocate resources to the campaign activities with the highest payoffs. Below are three steps for how your SMB can turn marketing data into valuable information to improve campaign productivity and support better decision making in 2013.

Embrace the marketing analytics concept as a new way of doing business

The average SMB owner does not have a lot of time to investigate, evaluate, or pilot new marketing initiatives. She is starved for time and focused squarely on her business. In many cases, that business faces a fine line between success and failure, and marketing is a key factor in which side of the line the business lands. Outside of personnel, the average SMB’s largest investment is in marketing. And yet, the SMB owner is overwhelmed by the number of online marketing tools and their return-on-investment claims.

MORE:  3 steps to improve marketing productivity – iMediaConnection.com.

While most people attempt to force great ideas of out themselves by relentless pursuit of an answer to a problem or straining to think up original ideas, they don’t realise that most truly great ideas are borne from a more hands-off approach that comes from the back and forth dance between concentrated and diffused focus.

The road less travelled

Creative bursts occur when discrete bits of information stored in the brain connect along new neural pathways. Unfortunately, most people are typically overloaded and exhausted mentally and in a stressed state when trying to produce good work. Despite their best efforts, their brains travel along well-worn, established pathways, and they literally have one-track minds.

Clearly, a one-track mind is no place to generate awesome ideas. But, if one thing were ever true, it’s that you can’t force creativity: it needs incubation, downtime, and the space to happen on its own schedule. However, just because you can’t force creativity doesn’t mean you can’t give it the proper encouragement. Let’s take a look at four lesser-known secrets for increasing creative productivity.

MORE:  Four secrets to enhancing creative productivity | Feature | .net magazine.

via Why Multitasking May Make You Less Productive.