Inside the Operations of a Boutique Marketing Agency
In, what feels like, an ever-evolving landscape of a post-pandemic world, the priorities of employees and businesses alike have undergone a significant transformation. Remote work, work/life balance, and fostering a vibrant company culture have become integral aspects of the modern workplace. Employees are eager to find positions that go above and beyond paying a living wage, and are looking to join companies who have embraced the necessary changes to continue encouraging a seamless work environment.
While Red Cat Marketing (RCM) was built on this foundation, we actively engage in learning opportunities to boost employee satisfaction. From podcasts to workshops to genuinely listening to our team’s feedback, we’ve been able to create a space that proves that a happy employee truly is a productive employee.
Embracing Remote Work
Tools We Leverage
Over time, we’ve learned how to incorporate and leverage tools like Gather, ClickUp, and Slack to ensure that the team works as effectively and efficiently as in a traditional office setting. These platforms facilitate communication, project management, and collaboration, bridging the gap between team members working from diverse locations.
One platform we love is called Gather. This tool is essentially a virtual office where our team can easily connect, almost as if we were in a physical office. Here’s how it works: we sign on when we begin our work day and sit at our virtual desk. Then, we set our status. We can either set the status to available (we’re all good to chat with our other team members), busy (we aren’t in a meeting however we don’t want to be disturbed as we’re heads down in the middle of a task ), or unavailable (we’re in a meeting or out of the office for a bit). These statuses help us maintain boundaries with our co-workers and ensure we are only coming up to someone when they are available to talk to us.
If a team member you want to talk to is available, you can simply move your avatar over to the person and “ring” their bell. If they answer, you can turn on your mic and video and easily have a video chat. We love this feature of Gather because it’s a quick and easy way to get in touch with someone if you have a question about a project or just want to chat about the latest Netflix binge we’re on - equivalent to the water cooler conversations! We also have two boardrooms where team members can meet and have a group video call. And we can invite Clients in as guests for our meetings.
In addition to the productive aspects, Gather is also super fun! We can customize our avatars to look like us (or not), fill our desks with all our favourite tools, and decorate the office for holidays!
Strategic Use of In-Person Meetings & Events
Although we work remotely, we also value our in-person connections and plan regular team meetings throughout the year. This helps us build on the connections we’ve made online and allows us to do things that just wouldn’t be the same online (such as important things like craft cocktail making seminars). We also find the change of pace can be great for making our strategy meetings more productive, as sometimes the best ideas come out in our in-person meetings.
Prioritizing Work/Life Balance
Understanding the importance of work/life balance, we’ve implemented practices that resonate with our team. We encourage time off during the holidays, enjoy early Fridays before long weekends, and promote flexible working hours, just to list a few. We are also firm believers that time off means time off - no checking emails or “just popping on for a moment”. This commitment to work/life balance not only enhances employee satisfaction but also contributes to increased productivity and overall well-being.
Burnout is absolutely real, especially when working in a remote setting. However, by implementing the practices mentioned above and encouraging our team members to take time off, to travel, and take breaks, they are much less likely to burn out and therefore maintain a high level of productivity. And of course, they’re much happier too (meaning, they’re more likely to remain loyal team members for years to come).
Fostering a Unique Company Culture
Our company culture revolves around three core goals:
Creating great work - The team shares an "everything is figureoutable" mindset, working diligently to exceed both client and company expectations, driving financial success for our clients.
Have fun - We place a strong emphasis on cultivating a welcoming environment where team members wake up excited to contribute.
Achieving business success - We share team objectives and celebrate successes that fosters a sense of shared accomplishment. In our culture, success is a collective effort, and as the company prospers, so do all team members.
We find that by having common goals, we can ensure our team members are on the same page. This helps us to move forward and continue to grow as an organization.
Encouraging Continuing Education
We believe one of the best ways to grow professionally is to continue learning. This is especially the case for industries like ours, where the rules and best practices are always changing. We strongly encourage our team members to be on the lookout for webinars, classes, and more, that can help them to continue their professional development.
Sometimes these training sessions directly benefit our team members in their everyday roles. For example, earlier this year, one of our team members, Veronica, completed a LinkedIn training course with LinkedIn expert Judi Fox. Although Veronica specializes in social media and knew a great deal about how to perform on LinkedIn, Judi had insider knowledge that helped Veronica to gain a deeper understanding of the unique algorithm and the best practices for posting and interacting on the platform. Veronica now uses this knowledge to help us post on our own LinkedIn page, and she uses this knowledge with Clients too.
Other times, the training helps our team members to enter new areas and expand our expertise. For example, another one of our team members, Alexis, recently did a Salesforce training program. This course was a six week intensive of content and live coaching where she learned about the specifics of Salesforce, including executing campaigns in Marketing Cloud, lead generation in Marketing Cloud, content and emails in Content Builder, Marketing Cloud Analytics, and more! This is an excellent new skill that Alexis is already using with Clients.
Want to Work with Us?
This just starts to touch on the inner workings of RCM. As we continue to grow and evolve, our processes and platforms will too. We have the most amazing team members and work to ensure that we nurture that through prioritizing work/life balance, fostering a unique company culture, and encouraging continuing education.
All of this means that we’re a pretty fun bunch to work with! Got some marketing needs? Set up a meeting and we’ll invite you in to Gather to chat!