With the unanticipated rush to remote work recently, there’s little doubt that you have questions concerning your marketing team’s capabilities. So, let’s get to it.
Challenges of Managing A Remote Marketing Team
Establishing and managing a remote marketing team is challenging. The right strategy, planning, and delivery are crucial, especially with an uncertain global business climate. The “new normal” has given businesses a jolt with minimal warning.
“Case in point,” says Caroline Weishaar, a marketing campaign consultant at Webopedia, “if your marketing team is spread out across the globe there are time-zone challenges to deal with. First, you have to motivate your employees, monitor their productivity and train them to overcome isolation and work-from-home burnout.”
In addition, there are various software requirements you must acquire. These tools help to ensure your team operates smoothly. The list is interminable, but manageable.
Still, prevailing over the challenges an internet marketing team presents is worthwhile with numerous benefits:
- A choice of worldwide professionals with the ideal skill-sets to create the ultimate remote marketing team.
- Employees who are more productive and satisfied due to flexible work arrangements.
- Less outgoing revenue due to decreased costs in supplies, office space, employee benefits, and more.
Your job, as a qualified administrator and leader, is to build, manage, and grow a stellar remote marketing team. A team that can market your business effectively and enhance its profits as well.
Recent data reveals that remote work options provide increased benefits for companies as the twenty-first century continues to roll along. According to performance based remote work stats this year, nearly 95% of companies stated that productivity was the same (over 65%) or better (approximately 26%) since adopting the work-from-home construct. In another study of hundreds of CEOs, approximately 77% agree that remote work is here for the long haul.
Tips and Tools for Leading a Successful Remote Marketing Team
When leading a remote marketing team, staying on top of the situation is critical to achieving your marketing goals. These tips and tools will help you maintain a dynamic remote marketing team and make online teamwork rewarding.
Tips
Hiring Qualified People
Finding people to work remotely is not difficult. However, hiring individuals dedicated to work remotely and perform effectively is another story. Organizational skills, determination, and resourcefulness are key characteristics to look for if you want a disciplined workforce. It is a strategy that has contributed to the growth of remote businesses, like Slack, Time Doctor, Zoom and many other internet marketing businesses.
What’s more, the core strategies of your company should agree with the skill-set and temperament of the individuals you hire. Luckily, as a dynamic leader of a remote marketing team, your chances of sniffing out the best candidates by utilizing tools like teleconferencing software, is better than ever.
Maintain Order
Establish regular meetings, record accomplishments, and acknowledge special effort put forth by top performers. Develop metrics that assist with quantifying your marketing endeavors in order to lead your team more effectively. Make sure everything is properly documented for fact checking.
According to Tanishq Agarwal, Marketing Analyst of Beaconstac, “A number of custom QR Code based team management platforms have also made tasks like recording meeting check in and check out timings, clocking employee login and logout timings, and automating all other attendance and time monitoring workflows seamless for remote teams.”
Also, ask each team member to document their daily activity for clarity in case they need to be covered by another team member.
Making Recruits Feel Welcome
Success as a remote marketing team leader, requires the Midas Touch – the ability to convey company objectives successfully to your team, with courtesy. You should also develop a distinct corporate ethos to make team members feel welcome.
This philosophy should be the foundation upon which you develop your company’s rules and regulations, such as written agreements and employee etiquette. By fostering a culture of adaptability, trust in your team members independence, and distributing responsibilities appropriately, your employees will remain keen and dedicated to your company’s objectives.
Online Team Interrelations
In order to lead and structure a rock-solid internet marketing team, develop opportunities for teammates to interact informally. By way of a real time cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform, team members can bond rather than view work associates simply as automated entities.
Likewise, schedule one-to-one leisure chitchat times with employees. Regular talk sessions are not only crucial for validating whether staff are satisfied and productive, but it makes your company appear more relatable and tangible.
Furthermore, this gives you the opportunity to spot any shortcomings that might need addressing.
Setting Limits
Leading a remote internet marketing team has just as much to do with defining limits, as it does with hiring the right people. Though the benefits of remote work allow employees more flexibility and a better home-work-life balance, it is important to set limits around the times they should be working.
At least 30% of the time remote workers spend working should be during normal working hours. This ensures that employees are available for meeting briefs, task changes etc., by keeping everyone on the same page. This is also the time, when your marketing team can approach you with any concerns or ideas, they might want to share with you.
Tools
Without the right tools, your leadership skills will suffer, as it will be nearly impossible to carry out plans, objectives, tasks, and more. The tool suggestions below are designed to keep remote marketing teams functioning competently.
Communication Tools
Communication tools are probably the most important virtual tools you will need to keep your team performing efficiently. Most of your communication will take place via email, video conferencing, phone and instant messaging.
You should encourage a lot of visual communication as well. For example, if your internet marketing team needs to brainstorm for a project or simply share ideas, the right communication tool will make it happen.
Communication tools also make it easy to add multiple team members to calls and screen share time for virtual meetings. Excellent communication tools include Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Slack.
Collaboration Tools
Team members can partner-up on various projects with a great collaborative tool regardless of their location. In addition, a proficient collaborative tool permits team members access to settings allowing them to make modifications on projects and documents where needed in real time.
A few well-known online collaborative tools include GitHub, Google Drive, and Trello.
Task Distribution Tool
A task distribution tool assigns projects with instructions and deadlines to each member. Keep in mind, one misstep by a team member could cause an entire collaborative project to go wrong. A reliable task management tool, will ensure that your team works together efficiently.
Popular task management tools include Asana, Toggl Plan, and Todoist and Workast.
Productivity Tool
Remote workers require apps to organize and track their assignments. This is what a productivity tool does. What’s amazing about productivity tracking tools is that they work seamlessly in the background without interrupting other software functions.
Productivity tools are a substitute for the antiquated method of “punching the clock.” They also alert you when a team member needs assistance so that you can provide support.
Popular productivity tools include Dropbox, ProofHub, and Basecamp.
Instant Messenger Tool
An instant messenger tool helps you communicate with your remote marketing team and allows you to respond quickly. You can also set-up short meetings for situations that require your immediate attention. What’s more, team members email boxes remain uncluttered.
Employees can also create threads with other team members to collaborate on projects, upload documents, and view other team members correspondence with company clients.
Popular instant messenger tools include WeChat, Skype, and Brosix
Important tool tip: make sure all team members use the same tools. If not, you will face unnecessary challenges with tracking projects and evaluating your employee’s performance.
Conclusion
To effectively lead a remote marketing team, it takes all of the above tips and tools and more. You, as a team leader, will need to nurture your team and communicate effectively, which means being honest and open. Treat your team like human beings and not automatons. Communicate company objectives without making employees feel inadequate.
And last but not least, the success of your marketing team begins with your leadership skills and how effectively you use them.
About the Author
Chioma Iwunze is a content marketing strategist. She enjoys writing about productivity, remote work, marketing and employee engagement. You can connect with her on Twitter @cwritingnews.
