Remote Digital Marketing for Small Business

No doubt, the global pandemic has changed the way we work: 56% of the American workforce now telecommutes compared to 16% pre-pandemic. While a Folgers commercial might joke about aiming cameras up high and the extroverts among us miss daily employee interaction, we generally like working from home. And the majority of us want to continue working that way, according to a December 2020 Pew Research study. This includes remote digital marketing teams.

Because the majority of their work is digital, it makes sense for a digital marketing team to work remotely. But setting up or hiring a remote work team for marketing your small business can seem like a daunting task at best and a bad investment at worst. How can you ensure that anything gets done at all, let alone well or on time.

At Ingenium, we’ve enjoyed the remote work business model since our founding. We’ve found that it serves both our marketing team members and our marketing clients extremely well. But it does require intentional communication, repeatable systems, and goals mindedness. Here’s how our small business marketing team achieves quality and timely projects for our clients while working remotely.

Communications:

Remote teams easily feel disconnected. Another form of the office plague “siloing,” poor remote communication among team members can lead to various problems including burnout. For clients, this can look like slow progress and poor project quality. Externally, poor communication with clients leads to wasted time and money. We’ve found it crucial to foster regular internal and external communication.

Internally, we developed regular systems for daily communication. During our daily “Stand Up” check-ins, we share our goals for the day, areas where we could use help, and at least one personal thing that we can all celebrate. Weekly, quarterly, and yearly internal meetings also help us all to be on the same page with the company vision and goals.

Externally, we communicate regularly – often daily – with our clients via email, phone calls, and video calls, depending on their preference. We also meet with each of our clients at least once a month to discuss pertinent metrics (like website traffic) and track progress toward their sales goals. During the monthly call, we also collaborate on the direction for the coming month and consult on any additional challenges our clients might be facing. We store call notes in the client’s shared Google Drive folder and our project manager updates our task management platform after each call.

Check out this article to learn more about effective remote work communication.

Our Favorite Communication Tools:

Slack: for daily communication needs. It works great for communicating on the go since it also includes a mobile application. We also set up channels for each client so we have a unique space to discuss client projects with each client.

Google Meet: Google Meet is our platform of choice for face-to-face interaction. This is where we conduct our weekly internal meetings as well as regular client meetings as well.

VidYard: It’s often easier to explain things if you can look at the same laptop screen as a coworker. Sometimes a screenshot doesn’t cut it.   With VidYard we are able to record our screens with a voiceover as we walk through a question, idea, or instructions.  Then we simply email a link to the video, which we can save and refer back to later.

Internal Systems

Documented systems ensure both efficiency and quality assurance. We implement these systems whether marketing for a small business, start up, or large company.

We document Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in Google Drive. Pretty much everything that gets done on a regular basis gets an SOP. Project quality needs to be repeatable. And SOPs allow our client work to continue as we add more team members or if the assigned team member takes a vacation.

We’ve also developed systems for project management. Our project manager tracks all internal and external projects in ClickUp (you can check this awesome platform out here). This ensures that we get things done on time for our clients. And because the tracking program is cloud based, we can quickly access it anywhere we have internet and easily keep our clients updated on project status.

To learn more, check out this blog we wrote on project management.

Our systems for quality assurance also ensure that projects are both timely and, well, quality. Everything we do for our clients goes through at least one upper level internal review before a client sees it. And we require client approval before publishing any public content.

Finally, we automate systems wherever we can. Automations help avoid human error – whether through a scheduled due date notification or a recurring task that automatically pops up at the beginning of each month. Automations ensure we remember every detail of our monthly client retainers.

Our Favorite Systems and Project Management Tools

Google Drive: where we store both internal and client documents. It allows rapid document sharing (generally faster and more seamless than an email attachment). And it means our whole team can access call notes, SOPs, and more.

G-Suite Google Docs: Google Docs allows for project collaboration with multiple team members and with the client. We can all access and edit a document at the same time which improves productivity and collaboration efficiency.

ClickUp: where we track all things project related. We set up a standardized process for tracking project status that we share with our clients. We use it to build content calendars and more.

Goal Mindedness

Our goal minded approach to small business marketing gives us purpose behind client projects and affects everything we do: analytics analysis, consultations, quality assurance review, task prioritization, and more. It means that everything we do for our clients has an outcome resulting in more sales and increased client profitability. We don’t just complete projects. We chase goals.

Our communication and systems facilitate pursuing client goals because they boost our efficiency and quality. They also boost transparency between us and our clients. If you want to know the status of each element of a project, you can check it on ClickUp. If you have a question about something we’re doing, you can message us on Slack.

And if you don’t know your goal, we’ll consult with you to help you identify it.

Our Favorite Goal Tracking Tools

G-Suite Google Sheets: Our cloud-based equivalent of excel. We keep a detailed record of your sales goals, the incremental steps required to get there, and the progress we’ve made with website form submissions, email campaigns, and social media interactions.. This document is accessible to our entire team as well as our clients through a shared Google Drive folder.

Google Data Studio: Our platform of choice for tracking essential metrics in real-time. It pulls data from Google Analytics, Google Ads, and many other applications to generate detailed reports on each stage of the marketing funnel. These reports are easily customizable to provide the data we need to clearly track our progress toward your goals.

Work with Our Small Business Marketing Team to Achieve Your Goals

Partner with us to take your business to the next level. We’ll streamline your strategies, take work off your plate, and most importantly, work with you to build a lasting business.

Learn more about our small business marketing services.