What Is A Remote Digital Marketing Agency?
A remote digital marketing agency is a team of digital marketers who work outside of a traditional office environment, usually from home but employees could work from a coffee shop or anywhere they like. There is no physical office space and the team will work independently from their chosen workspace. Working remotely can have some drawbacks which we will touch on later but it can be extremely beneficial for both employers and employees.
Running a digital marketing agency remotely allows you the opportunity to grow your team globally. Not having the restriction of only hiring people within a certain geographical location can increase the chances of building and maintaining a great team of digital marketers with diverse skills and capabilities.
A CFO survey done by Gartner during the pandemic in 2020, shows that at least 74% of CFOs plan to permanently keep employees working remotely even after the Covid-19 pandemic ends.
Let’s dive into some of the benefits of a remote digital marketing agency.
What Are Some Of The Main Benefits Of A Remote Digital Marketing Agency?
Increased productivity in employees
Working remotely eliminates constant interruptions in the workplace and allows employees to create their own work environment that will allow them to work more productively.
Opportunity to hire better talent
You are no longer limited to only hiring employees that live within a certain distance from the office. One of the greatest benefits of digital marketing as a whole is that you are not limited to only working with clients in a specific location. Remote working has added this benefit to the employee side now too and you can broaden the search for great digital marketers.
Flexibility and a healthy work-life balance for employees
Not being tied to a specific physical work location allows employees to create their own work-life balance. The flexibility of a remote digital marketing agency comes with them being able to choose how, where, and possibly even when they work, which creates an incredible level of flexibility for employees. Many employee’s frustrations from a traditional work environment are eliminated when they work remotely, as well as loud and distracting colleagues is no longer an issue.
Save money
No more exorbitant amounts of money wasted on office space each month! In a traditional office space, the more team members you have, the higher your monthly costs will be as you need to spend more money on rent, utilities, and equipment. Working remotely brings these costs down tremendously and money can be allocated to helping employees with costs such as internet and beverages. Employees save money too by not having to travel to an office every day.
Lower staff retention
It’s a true and proven fact, happy employees will stay at a company longer. Remote working gives employees the opportunity to work flexible hours, save money and maintain a healthier work-life balance, therefore they are less stressed and less likely to move jobs. An added benefit is that employees will no longer need to leave a company just because they are moving to a different location.
What Could Hinder The Performance Of A Remote Digital Marketing Agency?
Difficult to build a company culture
If you are moving from working in a traditional office environment where you already had an established company culture to a remote agency, then this shouldn’t change. There may be some difficulty when hiring new employees but if the company culture is well established then it will be easy to identify if employees are a good fit or not. Building a remote digital marketing agency from scratch and trying to establish a great company culture is a strenuous task on its own. Lack of company culture in a digital marketing agency can cause many other aspects of the agency to fail. Companies may experience segmented company culture as different teams develop their own culture within a company that may not be aligned on brand.
Poor communication
Digital marketing team members that are not great communicators, could be problematic in building a successful remote agency. Luckily there are many remote tools to help improve communication in a team to avoid communication affecting the performance of some employees.
Some employees feeling isolated
Remote working can be lonely and the lack of face-to-face interactions can have a negative impact on many employees. Again, there are many remote tools to help with this feeling of isolation but there is no getting around the fact that face-to-face meetings will either be very rare or non-existent in most agencies.
Great Tools To Consider Using For Your Remote Digital Marketing Agency:
Now that you have determined the main pros and the cons of building a successful remote digital marketing agency, let’s take a look at some of the best tools that could assist you in running a remote agency
Online meeting and video software
There are many online meeting and video platforms out there but the most popular seem to be Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Skype.
Project management software
These platforms have become increasingly important over the last few months. Being able to allocate, manage and track the work of teammates is made simple with tools like Trello and Monday.com.
Business communication platforms
Working remotely takes away the freedom of just being able to turn around and ask a question or pop into your colleague’s office to run over something. Tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams have made remote working a little easier as they can be used for messaging, sharing files, and even video calls where you can present a screen to all members in the call.
Ready To Go Completely Remote?
Whether you are already running a fully remote digital agency or still looking at this as an option for the future, there are so many great tools out there to help you achieve this.
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