Why and How to Build a Remote Digital Marketing Team?
Employees all over the world are now on the search for companies that allow remote work. The reasons are many. No commutes, lesser distractions, and increased productivity.
In fact, 80% of respondents in a survey said that if they had two similar employment offers, they would turn down the one that didn’t offer flexible work.
Even businesses across the world now realize the importance of remote work in reducing costs and sourcing the best talent without the constraints of geographical boundaries.
The pandemic became the reason why many business giants like Shopify made the huge shift from offices to remote.
Image Source: https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1263483496087064579
Let’s go on to see why going remote for your digital marketing team may be the best business decision ever.
Why Opt for a Remote Digital Marketing Team?
Here are four major benefits of having a remote digital marketing team:
Reduced Costs:
According to research by Global Workplace Analytics, companies can save around $11,000 per employee per year if these employees are allowed to work remotely 50% of the time.
Why is there such a massive cost reduction?
- Reduction in real estate costs, utility bills, cleaning services, and office furniture
- You can put an end to everyday travel (commute) allowances
- Increased productivity and happiness due to remote work leads to fewer unscheduled absences
- Time saved due to no commutes, and lesser distractions can be spent working on high-value activities.
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Ability to Hire From a Wider Talent Pool:
You can have the luxury of hiring your marketers from all over the country and even the world. This allows you to form a team based on talent and culture fit, not location fit.
In fact, according to a report, the world could be facing a global human talent shortage of more than 85 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the population of Germany.
Some of the countries that would be facing the major brunt of it would be the USA and Japan among others. With the majority of baby boomers moving out of the workforce by 2030 in the USA, younger generations would not be yet equipped to fill up these empty positions.
The solution? Hire remotely!
Improved Workflow and Productivity:
No nosy workers! No coworkers speaking loudly on the other end of your desk! No long commutes and thus extra sleep!
What does all of this have an impact on?
Employee productivity!
Many studies show that remote workers are able to achieve more by working at home than at their offices.
Add to that an improved workflow when your entire team is online. With the help of various tools and scheduling processes, you no longer need to wait for someone to send you a document or ask someone about the next task. Everything is there online!
Diverse Thought Processes and Ideas:
When your entire digital marketing team is situated in different parts of the world, you get diverse perspectives. For example, suppose you want to create a digital marketing campaign for the European demographic. Your team in the USA might share their unique insights but if you have someone working remotely from the European demographic itself, they would know the target audience better and thus be better equipped to suggest actionable digital marketing services that drive conversions.
How to Build a Remote Digital Marketing Team?
Building a great remote digital marketing team is the key to getting great results for your business. Here’s how you can do just that.
Get Your Hiring Process Right:
Before you start looking out for remote workers, consider the type of positions and their respective workloads. For example, you may need graphic designers, content writers, digital marketers, SEO specialists, and so on.
But while it may make sense to hire a full-time digital marketing manager, you could hire an independent content producer if your content production needs rise and fall and pay them per project or hourly rates.
You can then post these job listings on digital platforms such as Indeed, LinkedIn, Behance, or Upwork, and be sure to advertise them as “open for remote working”.
Ensure that if you need two people for similar roles, each of them brings different things to the table to have diversity in your team.
Your hiring process could be just a video interview through Skype or Zoom or you could even have a writing test or pre-interview survey where you can evaluate a candidate’s skill in a particular area.
Set Clear Expectations and KPIs:
What are those KPIs that matter the most to your brand when it comes to digital marketing campaigns and other goals?
These could be the number of visitors gained or conversions due to a particular campaign.
The next step would be to find tools that help you measure success on each of these goals.
The entire team should have access to this data so that they can monitor progress and use the insights given by these tools to better direct their marketing efforts.
For example, you may figure out that your email marketing campaign is opened by readers but they do not click on the CTA. You can then experiment around a different CTA, different email content altogether, or change the graphics.
Also Read: How to Measure Digital Marketing Campaign
Make Use of Tools:
Having the right tools can make every task easier for your team, be it collaboration, communication, SEO, or project management. Here are a set of tools that you can look into to create an effective digital workplace for your team.
- Messaging platforms like Slack can be used for internal communication. You can even create different channels like “Inspiration”, “SEO hacks”, and “Favorite marketing campaigns” to encourage and inspire your team.
- Project management platforms like Asana, Basecamp, SmartTask, and Trello can be used to assign and follow tasks on different projects
- Skype and Zoom are robust video conferencing platforms where you can have team meetings and gather for quick discussions on projects.
- Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and Moz can be perfect for driving your SEO-related tasks.
- Schedule and create shared editorial calendars with the help of CoSchedule, DivvyHQ, and Google Calendar.
Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to tools. You’ll have to experiment and find the ones that fit your team the best.
Also Read: Digital Marketing Tools
Identify Ways for Virtual Team Bonding:
According to Cigna’s report on Loneliness and the Workplace, remote workers are more likely to feel lonely and isolated.
To make them feel engaged with your team, here are three things you can try out:
- Get everyone on your team to know each other: At Knopman Marks, they introduced a virtual “Inside Scoop” where team members take turns each week to talk about their interests, hobbies, cultural traditions; anything outside of work.
- Have fun together: You can have no-work meetings or create different channels on Slack such as “Pets”, “Current TV Binge”, “Memes”, and so on.
- Play games: On Fridays, you could have one hour dedicated to playing some online games where the entire team can participate and blow off the entire week’s work stress.
Conclusion
A remote digital marketing team can do wonders for your business. You can bring together talent from around the world and provide them the flexibility that can increase productivity and reduce costs for your business.
The challenge comes when you start building a remote team. But with the right hiring process, clear expectations, the right tools, and strategies to encourage team cohesiveness, you can reap all the benefits that remote teams bring.
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Author Bio:
Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention as a Marketing Manager. She has 7+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing and hanging out with her family.