As the Covid-19 saga rages, businesses across industries are unearthing new ways of maintaining commercial momentum in these most challenging of conditions.

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the power of remote working and its business-boosting opportunities.

Yes, in the digital age, we have the tools and technology to create cohesive remote workforces that drive innovation, virtually.

77% of remote workers confirm they are more productive when they work from home. Plus, The number of professionals that work on a remote basis at least once a week has skyrocketed by 400% since 2010.

We are living in the age of the remote workforce and if you know how to do it right, you have everything to gain. Remote working enhances the productivity and creativity of most traditional business departments—marketing is no exception.

So, if you’re in charge of a marketing team right now and you want to create sustainable remote working success, here are some essential tips you should read.

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Overcommunicate

Overcommunicating may sound counter-intuitive, but in a remote working environment, it can create real cohesion.

Regular group brainstorming sessions, one to one chats, virtual departmental updates, and open communicative touchpoints (collaborative platforms and tools that people in the team can use as and when) will ensure your virtual team stays connected, building rapport, maintaining morale, and boosting productivity in the process.

Studies suggest that a lot of remote workers feel disconnected or isolated from their colleagues. That said, if you want your team to feel engaged, inspired, and connected, investing in over-communication is key.

Create cohesive processes

To create sustainable remote working success, you should ensure you put solid processes and practices in place from the get-go.

As you as would in an office, you should ensure everyone in the team understands their role and how to approach a variety of daily or weekly tasks in a virtual environment.

To help steer your efforts in the right direction, here are some practical ideas for managing your remote marketing team from afar:

  • Develop a culture of accountability with processes where everyone should update the rest of the team of their progress at the end of every working week.
  • Hold weekly one-to-one meetings with every person in your marketing team. This will give everyone an opportunity to share their ideas or voice their concerns in a personal, secure virtual environment.
  • Choose tools that will make the remote working experience more cohesive and more rewarding. Take the time to make sure your team understands how to use them to their advantage. For example, you should provide training on a particular piece of project management software, creating guides or tutorial to break down the process into digestible steps.
  • Host frequent virtual skills or knowledge sharing sessions with various members of your marketing team every two weeks. This is an effective way to maintain a collaborative environment while upskilling everyone in the team.
  • Give everyone in the team the tools to monitor their working hours and track their workload with tools and daily documentation processes that work remotely.

Work with the right tools

When you’re responsible for a remote work marketing team, choosing the right project management, organizational, and communicative tools is vital.

Communicative project management tools will enhance collaboration, keep your processes transparent, and ensure everyone can work towards ongoing milestones or deadlines with confidence.

A host of dynamic project management tools exist in today’s digital world—many of which offer a perfect storm of communicative and organizational features to cement the success of complex or time-sensitive marketing initiatives.

To keep your remote team as efficient as possible, investing in time tracking technology is the way forward. Modern timesheet apps for tracking hours will empower you to take charge of your team’s productivity periods, giving you the tools to manage your workload effectively while making sure your team gets the downtime they need to succeed. Time and costs savings for productive remote teams.

Remote or virtual working is indeed the future—and being thrust into isolation has shown us that it is not only a possibility but a vessel for enhanced organizational success.

Follow our advice, keep those lines of communication open, and you will reap the rewards of remote marketing success.

For more tips and advice, read our guide to the three drivers of marketing campaign success.