This week we feature Felix Tarcomnicu. He has build ProOptimization to help you take your online marketing strategy to the next level.

In this interview, you can read more about his work at ProOptimization, favorite marketing tools, productivity tips as well as his advice for budding marketers.

Your location: Bucharest, Romania.

‍

‍

Your favorite gadget: iPhone.

You start your day with: Each morning I check my website’s performances, my email and my to-do list. Every once in a while, I go for a 3–5 km morning run.

Your favorite time-saving trick: I never spend more than 2 hours on a single task. This helps me stay productive and focused.

Your top 3 blogs you read daily: I’m using Flipboard as a news aggregator so I read quite a lot of different blog and websites. If I were to choose the websites I enjoy reading the most, they would be TechCrunch.com, Entrepreneur.com and VentureBeat.com.

“Try to work in your rhythm but always challenge yourself with demanding tasks.”

Describe an average day at ProOptimization?

I am an online marketer and entrepreneur, so I have to work on my customer’s websites and also on my own projects. I usually wake up early at 6 AM, and I start working at about 9 AM. Over the years I noticed that I am more productive if I wake up earlier and if I do sport in the morning.

The first hour of the day is dedicated to analyzing how the websites have performed during the night. I then create a to-do list with the main priorities and the things I want to concentrate during the day. If nothing out of the ordinary pops up, I take my tasks one by one until they are all completed.

As a marketer, what is your favorite productivity hack?

Working without a schedule and some clear objectives is the worst thing you can do to your productivity. Each Monday, I create a list of all the things I want to accomplish during the next week and I try to complete at least 90% of them. I always try to challenge myself with complicated tasks because this is the only way you can achieve personal growth. At the end of each week, I create a short report for myself and keep track of how productive I was in that week and analyze what I can do to improve. If there’s something that’s keeping me down or blocking me from achieving my goals, I try to find a solution as soon as possible.

As a person who is well-versed with online marketing/ inbound, I’m sure you rely on a few marketing tools to automate your efforts. What are the top 3 tools you use?

I sure use a lot of online marketing tools. The ones I use most frequently are:

• Monitor Backlinks — This is the one and only SEO tool I need to keep track of my rankings, backlinks, link building opportunities and basically everything that involves SEO.
• Fanpage Karma — For social media analytics, this is the tool I like the most.
• BuzzSumo — Helps me find new content ideas that gets lots of shares on social media.

Your company has a growing community of users. How do you use this treasure trove of customer insight to power your marketing efforts?

Your users can provide a lot of information and they can help you understand what are their expectations, frustrations or what is keeping them from purchasing your service. I always value our users feedback more than anything else because it helps grow our product/service in the right direction. The key is to improve your website based on their needs.

What is your strategy for getting people to your site and then converting them to a customer?

My favourite strategy is to collect people’s email addresses using a popup form. I’m using SumoMe list builder, which helps me collect emails with a great conversion. Once a user has subscribed to my email list, I try to create a business relationship with him. Nevertheless, instead of being aggressive and forcing them to purchase my services or products, I want to engage with them and see if I can be of help. Being personal really helps and converts well.

Besides collecting emails, I also use social media and guest blogging to bring new users to my website.

Is there any advice you’d like to give to budding marketers to help them work smart and stay productive?

For me, it really helps to follow a schedule and have a list of priorities. Keeping track of the things that have blocked me in the past and what has helped me be more productive is what matters the most. This way I avoid repeating previous mistakes concentrate on what works best.

Do consider that we are all different and what works for others might not work for you. So try to work in your rhythm but always challenge yourself with demanding tasks.

A big thanks to Felix for taking the time out to answer these questions! If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you check out ProOptimization.

The ‘How Marketers Stay Productive’ series asks marketers their tips & strategies for staying productive. Every month we’ll feature a new guest and the tricks that keep them working smart. Know someone you’d love to see featured? Email Us.