Managing different teams or departments can be really challenging. As a business owner, you probably have to wear different hats when doing so. Throw in a distributed team into the mix, and things can get even more complicated.
Marketing is one of the departments that’s most suitable for a remote working set-up, however. And having an effective business system in place can help you manage one well enough and result in great campaigns and stellar customer feedback.
So, in the service of our valued readers and customers, we tracked down some of the industry’s best practices for remote marketing teams and summarized them thus:
Cultivate a sense of psychological safety.
Marketing can be fun. The work allows people to play with different ideas while developing a cool new strategy. However, brainstorming within a tumultuous team can cause tremendous insecurity and stress.
Your job as a leader is to ensure that everyone on your team gets to have their say. The goal is to create a culture that allows for risks, mistakes, suggestions, grievances, and different ideas. Always encourage discussions and healthy dissent as these can challenge your team to come up with the best options.
This would require establishing a connection between team members first, though. Or at least, enough of a connection so that they’re comfortable with each other. You can do this gradually, first by facilitating regular meetings or discussions, keeping the conversation going, and positively responding to comments and suggestions. Furthermore, you can also hold remote team building activities, though don’t force everyone to engage if they don’t want to.
The bottomline is to give your remote staff enough room to explore ideas while maintaining healthy accountability levels at the same time.
Encourage face-to-face interaction.
It’s easier to communicate when you can put a face to a name. If person-to-person interaction isn’t possible, your remote team can hold video calls. While it’s not really a substitute, it would be more interactive than exchanging emails and texts back and forth.
Video calls can be especially helpful for marketing teams doing brainstorming. Hearing each other’s voices and seeing facial expressions can create a more vibrant atmosphere and encourage more creative ideas to flow.
In short, interactive meetings can help build stronger and more meaningful work relationships. At the same time, it also facilitates the strategic and more complex exchange of information and ideas.
Keep your teams small and diverse.
While it can be tempting to form big groups of talented people, it’s far easier to manage the alternative.
Sure, it’s good to have multiple and numerous sources of ideas. However, there are plenty of benefits to having a small yet solid remote marketing team.
For one, communication is easier since there are fewer individuals involved. Getting approval or a consensus would take less time, allowing the team to move faster.
For another, it’s easier for a small team to develop camaraderie. It wouldn’t take as long for the members to get to know each other better, and they’d feel more comfortable sharing ideas and acting up on them in no time.
Lastly, it helps to maintain diversity in small groups. Start by assigning one person to a distinct role to prevent responsibilities from overlapping. For instance, it’s better to have just one writer, one graphic designer, and one social media manager in one team rather than to have two or three of each function. This way, roles, and responsibilities are clearer and there’s less risk of people stepping on each other’s toes.
There’s no one-size-fit-all approach when it comes to employee management. But you can always try strategies that have worked for others to see if they fit well with your business.
However, if you don’t want to waste time on trial and error, you can always reach out to proven and trusted industry partners. Remote Staff has been partnering AU SME’s and entrepreneurs with top Filipino remote talent for more than a decade. Whether you’re looking for your first virtual assistant or are looking to build your remote marketing team, we know exactly how to get you started on the right track.
