Since the pandemic, working “remote” has been the new norm for many digital marketing agencies. After all, why pay for a local office when you have video calls? Why restrict your prospective customers to your region when you could expand globally?
The ability to work remote has also increased the competition in the job market. Agencies have a bigger talent pool to choose from, but prospective employees also have more businesses to choose as their employer. It makes for an interesting landscape of employee benefits, high performance expectations and unique company cultures.
About three years ago, I was on the hunt for a remote digital marketing job. It took several months but I ended up at an agency I love, working with people I jive with. If you’re currently subscribed to job alerts and waiting for that perfect remote gig to come through, then I know the feeling., I want to share a bit of how I ended up finding a company I love working at and how you can do the same.
The Hunt for the Right Remote Digital Marketing Job
The beginning of a job search is filled with excitement, hopefulness and motivation. But pretty soon, the endless clicking and scrolling through what feels like infinite webpages turns your hopeful search into a tedious slog that makes you question if your expectations are too high or if the job you want actually exists.
In my 8-month search, I learned a few methods for efficiently finding jobs that matched what I wanted.
Finding the Right Digital Marketing Agency
I used to think that I could get along with anyone and adapt to any environment. I was wrong. For me and my Miss Enneagram #1, highly organized (organizing is fun!) self, non-negotiables for a work environment have now been defined as:
It really helps to define what you’re looking for in an agency. Go deeper than “I want to create excellent work for clients and have a good work-life balance.” Everyone wants that. You have to dig into how you work and the environment you thrive in if you want to set yourself up to succeed at a new company.
Questions to Ask
Looking for remote marketing jobs at a digital agency comes with a unique set of challenges. On the one hand, remote work is great because you get the flexibility that comes with working from home. But on the other hand, you’re competing with other applicants from around the world, not just your town.
Here’s the other thing, you might get interviewed two or three times by your prospective company and meet the same person twice at most. You don’t see their office and get a feel for their atmosphere. You really don’t have much to go on when it comes to figuring out if a company is right for YOU.
If you’re looking for remote marketing jobs, here’s my advice: don’t settle. Put those well-honed communication skills to good use and ask tough questions. Determine your non-negotiables and then use questions in your interview that help you determine if it would be a good fit. Here are some ideas:
Pre-Application Research
Competition is high, so you need to be on your game when you submit your application. Here are six things I suggest you do for every application you submit:
How to Be a Successful Remote Digital Marketer
Lots of people have asked me how to be successful working remotely, whether it be for our agency or another remote position. So here are my top three tips for being successful working with others from the comfort of your home.
If You’re Sifting Through Remote Marketing Jobs, Look at Their Values
You can tell a lot about a company by the values they claim to possess. For some, you might determine that they didn’t put a lot of thought into their values. For others, maybe you just don’t align with their priorities.
Our values at Lone Fir are:
One of the reasons I love working here is because my values align with the company’s. That doesn’t make others good or bad if they don’t align with them, it just means they want different things in their workplace.
It’s important to understand and define what company values are important to you because if you don’t align with them, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
What Makes Lone Fir a Unique Remote Marketing Team
Whether you’re looking to work here or you just want to know what things might be valuable in a remote marketing agency environment, these are a few things that I’ve come to love about this specific team.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Marketing in itself is creative, and it’s tough to deliver a quality product by yourself. You need input from your team. But marketing is also incredibly fast-paced, and people are busy. You don’t always have a couple of days to pass around a piece of content or marketing campaign to get input. People can’t always drop what they’re doing to help you out.
At Lone Fir, I’ve been incredibly thankful to have highly responsive teammates. I post something for feedback in Slack, and at least two people answer within a few minutes. It’s helped me serve clients better and made me feel like I can really collaborate with highly skilled people.
Spend Your Time Where Your Strengths Are
Most digital marketers become something of a jack-of-all-trades. Content marketing, growth marketing, email marketing, demand generation, maybe a touch of Google Ads and a healthy dose of digital marketing strategy — most marketers end up dabbling in a bunch of things. So when asked if we “can” do something, the answer is often yes.
At Lone Fir, that’s welcomed, but we’re also hyper-focused on helping each other grow in our strengths. Do you think you’d enjoy working in a different area of the company? Are you good at it? Great. Let’s get you there.
Banter, Peanut Butter and Happy Hour
A lot of people think that remote work is only for people who don’t mind being alone. After working at Lone Fir, I’d say that’s completely false. It’s all about the culture you create. How responsive are you on Slack? I know what you’re thinking… “Slack gets distracting and I lose productivity.” That’s fine; you don’t have to be on 100% of the time. But you do have to be available a lot of the time. If that’s not your jam, well… 🤷
Here at Lone Fir, we intentionally make time to hang out. We have a regular remote Happy Hour where we all gather on a video call and someone hosts. We play games, have drinks and maybe debate a highly controversial topic like whether or not peanut butter belongs in ice cream. (Obviously it does) People tell funny stories, we all laugh and our Fridays end with a good time.
We also have a fairly active #banter channel in Slack. Here my coworkers post their cute dog pictures, favorite quotes from Thanksgiving and polls about footwear at home.
Make Time to Get to Know Your Coworkers
We are highly relational people and we function a lot better when we know the people we’re working with. When we understand what’s going on in their life, what they’re passionate about and what motivates them it not only makes work a lot more enjoyable, it allows us to work more cohesively as a team.
We have a Slack app called Donut that randomly pairs you up with people to have a regular, non-work related conversation. It’s helped us meet each other and spark some fun conversations.
Don’t Give Up!
My job search lasted a solid eight months. Months on end of figuring out the kinds of jobs I qualified for, what I could and should be making in them, and stalking various agency websites for openings. I filled that time with a lot of professional development so my resume would stand out and I could speak intelligently in my interviews. I worked on HubSpot certifications and read books and blogs. I listened to a fair amount of marketing and agency podcasts (hit me up if you want a solid list of podcasts). Sometimes I lost motivation, but I kept working on myself and the kind of employee I wanted to be.
If you’ve made it to the end of this article, let me offer one last piece of advice: keep improving yourself. Don’t let your job search put your development on hold. And hey, if you think you might be a good fit at Lone Fir, check out our .
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