Identifying and working on the next most important thing for your business is key to long-term success. However, it can be easy to work on the areas of your business that are most comfortable for you, which are not always the activities that will move your business forward.
An example of a comfortable activity for me is obsessing over the written content of my newsletter. The newsletter provides value to the people I serve, but if I am not careful, I will spend an inordinate amount of time writing the newsletter to the detriment of the rest of my business.
Several frameworks can help you determine where to invest your time; the DRIP Matrix is one.
The DRIP Matrix
The DRIP Matrix is a framework I first learned about in Dan Martell’s book, Buy Back Your Time. In the book, Dan explains how founders burn themselves out or struggle to scale their businesses by working on the wrong things.
Using the DRIP Matrix, you can examine how you spend your time and identify your highest and lowest-value activities. The framework explains how to use your resources to buy back your time and fill the remaining space with your highest-value activities.
The four quadrants of the DRIP Matrix include delegate, replace, invest, and produce. The goal is to spend most of your time on activities in the Production Quadrant. These activities bring you the most energy and money and move your business forward. You should also spend some time in the Investment Quadrant and remove the tasks in the Delegation Quadrant as soon as possible.
The Four Quadrants of the Drip Matrix and Applying it to Your Marketing
Here is a brief description of the four quadrants of the DRIP Matrix. One way to use the tool is to track your time and the tasks you complete every 15 minutes for two weeks. After completing this exercise, organize the tasks on the matrix according to how much you enjoy the task and how much it makes you money.
Delegation
Tasks in the Delegation Quadrant are the tasks that make you little money and drain your energy. A few examples may include administrative work, bookkeeping, responding to emails, and travel arrangements.
- Apply it to Your Marketing: you need to determine what activities are in what quadrant for you personally, but some of the marketing-related tasks that may fall into the Delegation Quadrant include scheduling social media posts, designing marketing assets, writing cover letters, developing copy for proposals, and working on your website.
Replacement
Tasks in the Replacement Quadrant make you money but drain your energy. Common tasks and responsibilities in this area include onboarding, selling, marketing, and managing your team. These are activities you may be critical for at the moment and are hard to let go of, but you should work to delegate so you can spend as much time as possible on your highest-value activities.
- Apply it to Your Marketing: depending on your personality, some of the marketing-related tasks that might fall into the Replacement Quadrant include coordinating and assembling proposals, designing and developing promotional materials, creating lead generation funnels on your website, creating content for social media and a newsletter, and submitting design awards. These high-value activities, but draining activities take you away from tasks in the Production and Investment Quadrants.
Investment
Tasks in the Investment Quadrant are those that make you little money but light you up. Activities within this quadrant are an investment in you, others, and your business. Depending on your interests, activities in this category may include writing a book, speaking engagements, and connecting with peers.
- Apply it to Your Marketing: marketing-related tasks in the Investment Quadrant include activities that contribute to your role as a thought leader in the architecture industry. Investing in this category gives you energy and builds long-term value, but activities in the Delegation and Replacement Category often get in the way.
Production
Tasks in the Production Quadrant make you a lot of money and light you up. These may be the things you and your business are known for. Invest your resources to remove tasks within the other quadrants from your plate so you can spend the majority of your time on activities in the Production Quadrant.
- Apply it to Your Marketing: the activities in this quadrant depend on your specific skills and interests, but they are less likely to be marketing-related activities. The activities in this quadrant are the activities you are billing for. These activities encompass the expertise you offer to your clients. In some cases, very high-level marketing and selling activities may also be included in this category.
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