# How I thrived as a remote marketing manager: Tips for success
Are you looking to accomplish a full-time marketing role entirely from home? Do you worry about the challenges and whether it's actually feasible?
As someone who worked fully-remote for two years in a fast growing (and fast-changing) proptech startup, I can confirm it's possible.
I finally had the freedom to get a dog, earned a higher salary, managed a team and stayed by my wife's side throughout the pregnancy of our first child. This would have all been very different in a full-time office role.
It's not for everyone though. It's different to a hybrid role and long-term it does risk an adverse effect on your physical and mental health.
Some roles are easier than others when working from home. A customer support engineer who primarily provides support to customers over the phone, email or via remote control is more likely to find it not much different working from home vs the office as long as they have a decent internet and phone signal. However for other roles, like marketing, there are definitely additional challenges that need to be considered and planned for.
Below are some of my key learnings that helped make the role work for two years before I moved on to a new opportunity.
# Managing projects effectively
It's really key to stay on top of all the different projects you are involved in and potentially responsible for. Doing this remotely adds an additional layer of challenge because it's more difficult to prioritise and know what your colleagues or direct reports are working on.
One of the best ways to do this effectively for me was using a tool like Asana. It enabled seamless creation of large projects, sub projects and tasks within those. I could see instantly who was assigned to particular tasks and get a good grip on how far and fast a project was progressing.
In addition, these projects could be tied to overall company goals so that everyone could stay on track and ensure the work being done was moving the needle of the company's targets for that year.
As a marketer, I'm often spread across lots of different things going on, from social media output to the launch of a new event. Splitting these into individual projects made it so much easier to manage. But what I personally found the most challenging was keeping on top of what the #1 priority was at any one time. Admittedly this was exacerbated by working in a fast moving startup where things changed frequently, but this was a personal challenge as well.
# Prioritisation is key
Don't lose sight of these like I did. It'll come back to bite you. Using the tools and project management platforms like Asana can help but it's the communication with leadership and stakeholders that helps ensure you are staying aligned and working on what you should be working on.
In an office environment, I can do this simply by having a conversation with my boss there and then, but when working remotely it's key to arrange a call and have regular one-to-ones. If you are pushed back, keep at it and don't fall under the radar and just cracking on with your todo list.
You risk working on the items that are not at the forefront of your leadership's mind, leading to inadvertently becoming and unproductive worker, even when working hard. This trap is much easier to fall into when working from home on a permanent basis.
As a marketer you are spread thinly across lots of different things throughout the week so it's important to over compensate in this area and ensure you are keeping on top of the right projects.
# Managing a team remotely
Working remotely as an individual contributor is one thing, but when you are asked to manage a team without actually engaging with them in person, this adds a whole new level of complexity to your role.
I started my marketing role as an IC but within a year we were launching a lot more projects than I could handle alone, so we looked to hire a couple of marketing executives to report into me and take some of the load off.
Initially, I thought this was a great idea and all my problems would be solved. However, I quickly realised a lot of my time was to be spent on people management rather than getting the work done.
This is of course completely natural and part of stepping up into a leadership role as the team expands. But whilst I dealt with the personal challenges surrounding this change, it became evident that the real goal was ensuring my team knew what they working on at all times and never felt lost.
This was accomplished by making the most out of the tools available - Asana and Slack - and ensuring regular one-to-ones took place very much in the same way I was requesting them with my boss so I was staying in the loop.
I'd have a meeting with leadership and be given a project to work, a goal to reach or a metric to deliver. Id then be sent on my way to achieve that however I see fit.
I'd then take some time to think about this new work and how it would be accomplished by myself and my team, and who would work on certain parts so it's aligned, the best work is being given to the right team member based on their skill set and ability to deliver, and reasonable timeframes are put in place on due dates for the various work.
Id then build this out in Asana as much as possible so it's like a visual representation of my planning, whilst also being really transparent and clear with my team on their responsibilities, deliverables and expectations.
Then, either via a team meeting or one-to-one, I'd outline and discuss those tasks, not just assign the task on Asana and leave them to it.
And on Slack I'd be available for questions and also regularly check in to see how progress is going. But doing this in a way to genuinely help and ensure teammates are not stuck or being blocked and just not telling me. It's not a way to micromanage and keep tabs on the work they are doing and whether they are doing it. By making the deadline clear, it's then on them to be autonomous to deliver that or ask if they are stuck on something.
# Intentional overcommunication
When working remotely it's important to overcommunicate. In an office environment you can be working away, taking calls and leadership and your team get a gist of what you are working on and can usually tell if you are working on the right thing.
Micromanagement and checking-in to remind leadership you still exist and are doing work remotely aside, if you are working hard at home but not generally communicating about that, you may find priorities have changed without your knowledge.
Thankfully pretty much all companies with a remote working culture in place will make use of various communication tools to make it easier to keep in touch. Popular options include Slack and Microsoft Teams. Chatting on Asana using the comments can also be useful as the discussions can be tied to that particular task or project.
Slack channels with big remote teams can become cluttered and key messages lost amongst the digital noise.
Remember that decisions and communication in a DM with one team member isn't the same as having a conversation with that team member in the office, and other people in your team may be oblivious to changes or new work that needs to be done.
# The tools that helped me the most
There are a wide range of tools that I used throughout the working week to help make my job easier and make me and my team more productive.
Whilst we all had an email address, we tried to keep emails to purely external comms and instead use Slack for all internal communication and discussion. Slack is fast, easy to use, onboard and amend to fit your scenario. Private discussions and team chats help segment from the noise and helped me stay aligned with my team. It was easy to create a "huddle" at any time as well to kick off a quick voice or video call.
When on external calls I primarily used Zoom as it was widely used by everyone else, so it was easy to set up calls with prospects and external clients.
Using MuteDeck was vital in ensuring I had full control over my meeting functions such as muting, enabling video and screen share, even if a client preferred to use Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. MuteDeck thankfully worked seamlessly across all different video conferencing tools it was linked to and I set up a Stream Deck with the various buttons so I was like a meeting ninja.
Asana was so powerful in giving us a full project management system as a remote team. Not only could we split by projects but we could create portfolios for each department, such as marketing and sales so it was easier to track how projects impacted overall growth and goals and also spot crossover. You can also set up private projects to manage your own personal to-do lists, as well as projects only you and your manager can see.
HubSpot. Oh HubSpot. I'll put out a bit of a disclaimer here and say that life with HubSpot was a bit of a rollercoaster.
When HubSpot works well, it can be extremely powerful in providing your team with extensive sales pipelines, lead generation contact management, email marketing (if the marketing addon is purchased) and detailed reporting.
I found it particularly useful setting up workflows to automate email journeys for prospects as part of our early funnel marketing to generate demand. I could link these to contact lists and then use criteria to send a different email or exclude a communication if it was something they'd already done like registered for a webinar or downloaded our reports.
Admittedly, HubSpot would be just as useful in an office environment but remotely it did give a real sense of being able to manage what was going on and also align with the current sales process and where prospects currently sat in the buying journey.
The thing about HubSpot is it's big and complex and because it's seen more of a marketing tool even though it's used extensively by the sales and account management teams, it fell on me to be responsible for it overall and that took up a lot of my time. Managing HubSpot can quickly turn into it's own full time job!
# Try to meet-up in person
Whilst it's great working from home and relying on video calls and Slack DMs to keep in touch, over time it can become rather lonely and detrimental to your mental health.
Even if your family are around, socially you'll find yourself craving a good chat with someone else in person.
Therefore it's important to schedule in an office day from time to time, so you have something to look forward to. Your employer may allow a Friday once a month to instead be a more relaxed day where you come into the office and do some work but perhaps go for a nice extended team lunch or finish early so you can get a few drinks in.
These social times can help reboot your mind and the physical effort getting into the city is good for your overall health too!
If you are in a situation where meeting work colleagues isn't feasible, for example you work too far away from the main HQ or perhaps even in a different country, then consider scheduling time with local friends to make the most of this.
# Keep stakeholders in the loop
I've touched on this above in regards to overcommunicating with your team and making it easy using tools like Asana to stay aligned on current projects.
In addition to this, it's important to track all of the different stakeholders who are involved in your current projects and ensure they are being kept in the loop. This includes third party partners you may be working with, such as advertising agencies, a PR agency or external suppliers such as a designer who is responsible for your latest flyers for your upcoming event.
Remember that when working remotely you may need to consider in-person catch ups with suppliers or venue visits depending on the capacity of your role. And if this isn't possible - overcommunicate with suppliers via email and phone to make sure nothing is missed. Because if something goes wrong on a supplier end, the responsibility is still with you to resolve it.
# Track your progress, success and failures
Without sounding like some kind of Asana Ambassador, if you are using a system like this in your remote role, try and set up tracking before doing the work.
I found that dealing with historic data was always more complex, and in some cases impossible, than setting up the necessary tracking and metrics and then adding on the data after - whether in bulk or ongoing gathering.
Asana let's you set up reporting and goals with progress bars so you can see how your work is directly impacting the company's overall targets as you go. If those bars aren't going up - maybe you need to take a step back and think about what can be changed.
Some of these goals could be vanity metrics like reaching a certain number of Instagram followers - and then all the projects and tasks beneath that should be things that would directly impact that goal.
This can help you stay aligned and also motivate your team.
Another one to mention is HubSpot. Try and set up your reporting, workflows and automation as much as possible before you start launching things. So have tracking in place for when people watch webinars, download reports or register for an account. In my last role I was tasked with launching an array of new features within HubSpot a long time after many things had already happened and launched. Knowing what previous customer journeys had been was a near impossible task and did not provide the result that we wanted to see.
As a marketer, you are pulled in different directions throughout the week, and by prioritising, using the right tools, overcommunicating and tracking your success, you'll be set up to reach your potential in a remote marketing role.