What does a typical day in the life of an ad manager look like?

So being an ad manager, many of us work from home, we enjoy that freedom, that remote lifestyle of being able to maybe choose the hours that we work and also the flexibility of work and family.

But with that comes a lot of challenges in our everyday life. As we see things around us, for example, you might be thinking, I just need to go and quickly unload the dishwasher. And then before you know it, you’re there in the laundry, picking up a new pile of laundry, and then you think, Oh no, I better get the sheets as well.

So you run off, you go to get the sheets off the bed. I need to get the towels from the shower and you grab them as well. And then while you’re there, you notice the shower’s a bit grouty and say, Oh, I need to just clean the shower. And before you know it an hour later and you still haven’t unloaded the dishwasher.

Well, the struggle is all true real when you’re working from home, but to be an effective ad manager and to enjoy that freedom and that flexibility of that work and family balance, it’s really important to have some sort of structuring your day to get everything done that needs to be done and what needs to be done well, work-wise, you need to work on your business.

You need to work on your client campaigns. You need to be networking. You need to be learning. You need to maybe do the books, send out proposals, invoices, quotes, talk with potential clients. The list goes on and on. So when we have what I call a default diary, that’s going to help you stay on track and be productive during the day so that you can get as much fit in and as much done in your Workday.

So that in the evenings, you’ve got time to be with your family. So you actually get to enjoy this flexibility that we have, and you’re not just working all the time. And it’s so easy to maybe just stuck back into the office and finish something up, hands up. I know I’m guilty of doing this myself, and I’m still a work in progress and there are still times that things happen.

That’s for sure. But when you have a default diary and you have a schedule that you go through and things are going to run a lot smoother for you, and it’ll be a lot smoother as you work with clients as well. So what should your default diary look like? Well, I’ll run through a few things here like what we typically could be a good outline for you for each day and for like your mornings and afternoons,but then there’s going to be other things that come in. Like, there’ll be a day where you’ll have your weekly reports. There’ll be a month where a day in the month where you’ll have your monthly reports and other sort of things that will come up. But this is a basic guideline of what you can do for each day and roll within.

Okay. So first of all, obviously you get up in the morning, right? And you do whatever you need to do. But then when you come in and you get into work mode, what should you do? Now? I remember hearing someone say that our successful business owners spend the first part of their day on their business. And that was a game changer for me.

It was like, wow, that’s typically the last thing that I work on. And as a service provider, you might relate, okay, you’re busy working on everybody, else’s business rather than your own. And while that’s great to have all these clients to have full books, things inevitably happen. There’ll be times when a client might have to stop working with you.

For whatever reason, maybe you lose two or three clients. And then all of a sudden you’re going, where am I going to get clients from? And you’re on a hustle. So that’s where working on your own business. First thing in the morning, promoting your business is going to do you very well in the long run. And what does that look like? Networking. And it’s just a matter of maybe emailing someone you put off that you’ve connected within the past. You put it in the diary that you’re going to be connecting with them, you know, like every two months or something like that. So following up with emails, sending on messenger, going and looking at their personal profile, commenting on a post.

So keeping those relationships open and flowing so that when the time comes and they’re looking for someone to manage their Facebook ads, you’re front and center of mind also creating new connections. Whether it’s LinkedIn, whether it’s Facebook groups reaching out, starting to connect with people, dropping value bombs in groups, high quality groups, mind you, not all groups are equal,but dropping information in groups, creating your own marketing, right? As an ad manager, you’re marketing everyone else’s business, you know exactly what you need to do for your own business. And yes, it may be scary to get in front of the camera like this, but getting visible, getting known, being consistent, putting great information out about Facebook ads and what’s working well.

Now we’ll again put you in a great position when someone’s thinking they need an ad manager. You’re the one that they’re going to, think of first. So it’s much better to have a wait list of people who are wanting to work with you. Then all of a sudden have to be hustling and convincing people that you’re the right person for them.

So first thing in the morning, dedicated to your business, building your business, making it more sustainable for the long term. Then after you’ve worked on your business, then you can go and work on your client’s business. And what that may look like is coming in and checking your client campaigns, making sure that everything’s ticking along now, this isn’t where you’re going to dig in and start working radically on the campaigns it’s coming in,making sure everything’s ticking along nicely, noting things that need to be worked on later in the day. Or if there is something urgent, then yes, you can tap into it at that time. But basically this is a sweep of accounts to make sure everything’s ticking along and then set you up for later in the day, then we’ll look at incidentals.

One of those things that just come up that you may need to deal with,it might be client discovery calls. It might be preparing a quote, sending out invoices, all those kinds of little things that are also business building, tools for your business, but they just sort of need to be done. And not every day, you’re not going to be sending out the invoices every day. Typically, ideally for your own productivity sake,you’ll have like one day of the week that you would be doing that. And the same with discovery calls in order to increase your productivity and make your time as efficient as possible.

Don’t allow people to book in a call anytime, have you set specific days or set specific hours in a day that is open. And I would really earn more on the side of like,you might have Thursdays and Fridays that are open for discovery calls, or it might be Tuesdays and Thursdays. So that the other days of the week you can get into a flow and you can get things done. So let’s say I went to sit in tools and then dig into your emails, look at what’s come in, what needs to be addressed, what needs to be responded to and deal with those.

A lot of people do just dive into their inbox first thing in the morning, but you know what, that’s being reactive to the situation. So instead of you being in control of the situation and determining how your day’s going to go, you are reacting to what other people have put on you for the day.

So that’s why I’d suggest putting that a bit later, go off and have your lunch, enjoy an ice break, go out and sit in the sun for a while and then come back into it. And typically in the afternoon, what it can look like is working on your client accounts. So those notes that you’ve made from earlier in the day, this is where you’ll come back and you will dig into the accounts who might be creating new ad sets,new campaigns, bringing in new ad copy and creative, organizing new copy and creative with, you know, designers or copywriters working on those campaigns, optimizing them, launching new stuff, and really getting in deep to the campaigns.

Then if you know, they might have some days where that will be the rest of your afternoon, but on those days where it’s not feeding some learning,you’re always going to need to know what may be working now. What changes are coming up with Facebook? What changes have already occurred with Facebook? So dive into some learning, make sure that’s a regular part. So maybe not every day, but at least once a week, have time set aside. That’s going to be allowing you to dig in and keep up to date with what’s going on with Facebook.

So then after our client accounts get into, after you’ve gone in you’ve optimized you’ve, or you’ve done some learning client work. So what that might look like is those communications with the client, okay. Going in wrapping things up. So while you’ve responded to them earlier in the day, come back and respond and wrap things up for the day.

After you’ve been working on the accounts, give them an update, clients love communication. And it’s really valuable for you to have open communication with your clients to be regular in communication. Because that’s one of the things that I hear about when people are starting to look for another agency or someone else to work on their ads is that, you know, they start hearing from their agency or their freelancer less than less.

And so therefore the confidence goes down, the communication, the relationship goes down. So keep that communication flowing. So communicate in the afternoon, just touch base with them, wrap up anything that’s been addressed during the day, so that that’s dealt with for the day, or even if it’s, can’t be resolved in the day, just go, Hey, just touching base,looking in on this. And I’ll have an answer back to you in the morning. Okay. So wrap things up there and then emails come back, check the emails for the end of the day and then put it all to bed, go off, get dinner, ready, go and take the dog for a walk and enjoy being able to go I’ve done a great day’s work.

I’ve got everything done that I’ve had to do today. And now I’m closing the door to the office and I’m just going to live life as normal people do, rather than, I dunno if as an entrepreneur, you can never really be that normal, but just enjoy that time away. So that you know you’ve had a really productive day.

Now, the night is yours, whatever you want to do!

Looking for support to help as an Ad Manager? Join my Facebook Group Ad Manager ADventures.