February: Strategic approaches to Digital Marketing, the Cookie-pocalypse, dull data and remote working

This month on Marketers of the Universe, the team talks tactics, and specifically how you can avoid the common pitfalls of digital marketing. 

After much delay, Google has finally started to slowly kill off the cookie – but does it really matter? The muted response would certainly seem to suggest not… 

We also return to one of our favourite bugbears: boring data. Data is a vital part of smooth business operations, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dry. We name some companies who have nailed their data presentation game. 

Finally we talk about remote working, and how it might change your working dynamic. Fun fact: the Digital Marketing Team at Brew Digital is all remote!

Time codes

00:00 Introduction

01:34 Strategic approaches to Digital Marketing

09:40 Cookies: what they are, what they do, and is the impact of their demise greatly exaggerated?

18:22 Nobody wants your raw data!

25:12 Navigating remote working while keeping the team happy and motivated

34:25 - Wrap-up

Transcript

Haydn Woods-Williams 00:00

It didn't give me my individual stats, it gave me the entire stats. So when I read it I was like how much blood have I given this year Hit? So welcome to the Marketers of the Universe podcast. We are at episode eight. It is February 2024, which is a date that kind of feels like it's from a sci-fi movie.

00:27

We are scratching the surface of a couple of meaty topics today, because we only have five to ten minutes per topic. There is sometimes more that we could go into. If you do want more detail, do make sure to go and check out our resource hub at brewdigital.com/resources. Today we're talking about working efficiently and humanly when remote. We are talking digital marketing strategies. We are looking at how to present data in an interesting way and we're also looking to try and educate and stop some of the fear mongering that's going around about cookies. Anyway, let's get on with the podcast.

01:14

I'm Hayden Woods Williams and this is Marketers of the Universe. Our first topic today is looking at strategic approaches to digital marketing, hopefully helping you start the journey of putting a digital marketing strategy together or refine your digital marketing strategy With us. Today we have four of the broodigital team. We have Debbie from our social media team. We have Mark Bundle, who is from our email team, rich, who is our head of digital marketing services, and Kieran, who is an account manager. So, kicking things off, what are the key things someone should be thinking about when it comes to digital marketing strategy? Debbie, can we start with you please, for me when it comes to digital marketing?

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira 02:17

I think it's very important for companies to always make sure that they keep their strategies to be adaptable and ready to adjust. I think that the nature of anything that is in the digital landscape it's always, ever changing, always growing. Apart from that, you'd see trends come and go and there's always things happening. Case in point the pandemic where everybody shifted to the digital universe. Thanks, debbie Rich. Have you got anything to add to that?

Rich Harper 02:44

I'm going to keep banging the drum, as we've talked about a lot on these podcasts but have a customer-centric focus to your digital strategy. And I mean beyond personal marketing. And I mean beyond personalization in emails high first name. That is not personalization. I mean really focus in on the customer. Build your strategy around your ideal customer profile. Think about it more of the kind of a flywheel approach, so the customer is in the middle and then everything else is constantly evolving around that central focus.

Haydn Woods-Williams 03:25

We will come back to the flywheel in a minute, but I want to just linger a little bit on that ideal customer profile, or client profile, whatever you want to call it. Customer personas some people call that. It's really hard to make things like that. How do you make that not rubbish and fake and how do you make that real? I'm going to chuck this to you, mark.

Mark Bundle 03:47

Research. I think we've tested and tucked on this before in the previous podcast. But if you're not sure about something you're not sure your customers are, ask them, go out, find who you're selling to. If you've created a brand new thing from scratch, presumably you're trying to fill a gap in the market to do something, who's he trying to help with that product? If you need to go out and all you do need to go out and I see be your persona or whatever you want to call it ask people. You can't do it on your own. You need to actually get the information from the people that you're trying to do business with, the people whose lives you're trying to help.

Ciaran O'Neill 04:14

It is research, like Mark says it's, you have to fundamentally have a completely understanding of who they are, and that probably follows into talking more about refining your data. So there's no gray areas, which I'm sure we're going to talk about later, but it's all inherently linked.

Rich Harper 04:37

Being data driven in your decisions, tracking, analyzed performance. Do your research? Really understand the marketplace, really understand where you fit within that marketplace. But also don't be afraid to embrace experimentation. Try things, be different. Don't just be a copycat and follow because someone else is doing something they're successful at it, that you're just going to replicate it and expect the same results. Think about how you can position your brand in a different way so that, even if your competitors are targeting the same ideal customer profile, which inevitably they will be, how do you create that? Standout the stuff that does work, build on that and grow on it.

Haydn Woods-Williams 05:22

I know a lot of people who listen to this podcast tend to be parts of maybe smaller enterprises this growing businesses. How important is it for a company like that to actually have a digital marketing strategy?

Mark Bundle 05:36

I mean, how important is it for a company to grow? Unless you're in a really, really niche sector, you can need an online presence these days, and just being there and kind of hoping that somebody's going to find your website, that's not going to do you any good Word of mouth. If you can get it, by all means fantastic, but otherwise you're going to need to promote your social channels. You're going to need to maybe use some Google Ads and paid ads to drive traffic through, but unless you're doing that in a focused, concerted way across different channels, you're wasting opportunity, nearly even money, on the table.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira 06:07

I think that, especially for smaller businesses, digital marketing can be cost effective compared to a traditional marketing way. The other thing that could also be a benefit for them is that, as Mark said, it is quite a targeted approach. You can find your audience and you can cater to them your content in a more personalized way. There's also such a thing as a business starting. It is very important to have that credibility, and if you do not have that digital presence, even if you do not have an active social media, that's almost already a minus points for you.

Rich Harper 06:43

The thing that Debbie was making there about being cost effective. Cost efficient is really important as well. As a small business, I think the instant go to is it's going to cost me lots of money, I don't have enough money, etc. It doesn't cost you anything to create an organic social profile. There's a little bit of your time to invest, but other than that doesn't cost anything else. There's obviously slight investments that need to be made in terms of a website and stuff like that, but there again are cost effective ways to create websites as a digital agency. We're not advocating for the do-it-yourself builders like Squarespace and stuff like that, but if you are starting out and you cannot afford a design development agency, there's nothing wrong with creating a presence on one of those platforms. One of the key points is if you are a small business, don't be afraid of the fact these things cost lots of money. They don't. You can be creative with the way that you do invest and there are lots of things you can be doing that cost very little.

Haydn Woods-Williams 07:46

If we look at this from a local marketing point of view, I know for me if I go and try to use a service locally and the website is linked to a Facebook page, it makes me less comfortable than even if that links to a very, very basic Squarespace page. Other tools are available. Kieran, what common mistakes do you see people make when it comes to putting together a digital marketing strategy?

Ciaran O'Neill 08:15

You're just not naveling your data. Your CRM is so important for the speaking, able to manipulate your data pots via persona, physical location, demographics, products. Just remember it's not a one-time effort.

Rich Harper 08:32

I think a lot of small businesses enter the digital marketing space. They might try a few Google ads, and then they doesn't work after a couple of months and they stop. They do a bit of social media and that doesn't seem to do anything, and then they stop. They write a blog, and then that doesn't work. This isn't a case of deputizing and it's going to work instantly. There's no silver bullet, there's no magic wand. It's a continuous effort. You have to invest time, a bit of money and then monitor, adapt and innovate to keep that business growing in the right trajectory.

Haydn Woods-Williams 09:07

Just to wrap everything up and I'm going to only ask one of you and whoever puts their hand up first gets answered what tip can we send people away with right now to help them improve their digital marketing strategy? Kieran?

Ciaran O'Neill 09:21

Listen to your customers, review your engagement, always be prepared to adjust your spend on a daily basis and ask for help from anyone, including us.

Haydn Woods-Williams 09:32

Picture that there needs to be a class on there. Cool On to our second topic today, and this is a topic that has really been bumbling about for a while, with a lot of people pretending to know a lot, a lot of people not knowing a lot, and I want us to just simplify a little bit. I'm not going to send you away to tell you this is how you tackle it. I think it's just about simplifying it a little bit. And we're looking at cookies here, and I want us to just have a little back to basics on what they are, what they do, and also try and just take away some of the fear mongering. And with us on the panel today we have Mark Bundle from our email team again, and we have Jason Morris, who is our SEO marketing manager as well. Let's kick off with you, mark. Can we have a basic rundown of what cookies are and what they do?

Mark Bundle 10:39

They're essentially little snippets of text, format as HTML, and are dropped on with pages and dropped from the page to your device that you're viewing the web page on and, depending on their purpose, they might analyze what you're doing, they might track your behaviors, they might predict future behaviors or they might let someone know what you've been. They can actually do some helpful things as well, like a website Remember who you are so that if you want to fill out a form, you can remember that and it can put the details in for you. So, although cookies are often seen as the enemy and the death of privacy, actually some of them are quite good.

Jason Morris 11:11

Anything to add to that, jason, just touching on that. All those points are massive for analytics. So, understanding the user's behavior, you get it not just on your site but for other sites how they've traveled through the internet, where they've come from, how they like their search results, things like that.

Haydn Woods-Williams 11:30

And when it comes to first party and third party, can we have a very quick breakdown of what is first party competitive, what is third party?

Mark Bundle 11:39

I always feel bad for second party, who just get left out of the circle entirely.

Haydn Woods-Williams 11:42

Yes, let's talk.

Mark Bundle 11:42

second party too, I have no idea what second party even is. Someone go on Google quickly. So first party cookies are things that basically the site owner is essentially using. So if you go on broodigilcom, there will be a cookie from Broodigil and that is a first party cookie. However, if there's a Facebook cookie on there as well that's trying to follow you around the internet, that would be a third party cookie. It's from literally a third party. That's not the website owner. It's third party cookies that are kind of the big talking point and are being deprecated by Google, although they're already deprecated elsewhere. They have been for a few years.

Haydn Woods-Williams 12:15

A second party cookie apparently this is straight from Google, just so we've got that thrown in here as well is the information gathered from the website you visited will be shared with another site because of an agreed upon data exchange between the two sites. Third party cookies gather the same information. First party cookies. There you go. When we talk about cookies at the moment, the big news story is Google is phasing out third party cookies. Right, we've been talking about this now, for it must be going on two years. What does that mean? Should people be scared of this, or is it a good thing?

Mark Bundle 12:55

I was going to say. I get to feel smug and because I work in Sierra and we work in almost exclusively first party cookies as well, I do, however, feel for Aiden Yu and the rest of the pay colleagues around the world that obviously, this means that we aren't going to be able to do so much. Things like HubSpot aren't going to be able to track people. Linkedin, things like that I'm going to be able to track people. So targeting options are going to be drastically reduced in terms of things like funny lookalikes and that, I imagine In certain parts of digital marketing. There's not going to be an awful lot of impacts For those that are relying on third parties to broaden their efforts beyond the first party. That's where I think people are going to essentially struggle.

Haydn Woods-Williams 13:30

When it comes to using third party cookies, actually, mozilla Safari, those browsers, people using those browsers, which is probably around 30 to 40%, but people who are not using Google Chrome, which is a significant part of the internet actually cookies haven't been available for a long time. This isn't an issue that is going to impact you this year. When it comes to paid media, this is an issue that has been happening for the last hour or the long. Targeting is one thing, but actually I think LinkedIn came out of the stat recently. It was like 60% of third party cookie data is accurate anyway. So losing that much by losing cookies.

14:14

I think the reason that it's being pushed as this end of world thing is because, with one technology being phased out, there's an opportunity for replacing technologies and that's a market opportunity for people. I think where it will be more challenging is going to be on measuring performance of your campaigns. That's something that you may need additional tools for. Just rolling through into that kind of talking about companies taking advantage of cookie sun setting, Do you think there's going to be a big need for the hoods of new software to tackle this, or do you think people are just being marketed to?

Mark Bundle 14:58

Hey, of course they are. Like we said about blue Monday last month, these was a thing that was made up as to be a marketing ploy and sell holidays Very much. The sunsetting is a ploy to sell new technology that people don't need. But ad networks wanting to maintain market share by doing a new thing who would have thought? It's not like they inflate and bloat their metrics and lie to their users at all. But yeah, as you said, they've already not existed on mobile browsers and the more need to desktop browsers for years. It really is. Although Google has that massive market share, it's, it's still not the be all and end all and there've been solutions on the other networks for years, so those solutions are still up light. People have definitely made, I think, more of it than needs to be in an effort of Trying to catch us. I mean no.

Haydn Woods-Williams 15:43

We've mentioned it already. So as party data and when we look at this for a paid media point of view, first party data is actually kind of been the key to, or the cheat code for, high performing campaigns for a long time. If you've got good first party data, you can feed that to the platform as you can create Solid audiences throughout your customer journey. Firstly, can we have a little bit of an explanation of what first party data is and then can we have kind of a tip each, just sort of how someone can make sure that they use theirs and Make the most of it? Mark, I feel like you may be best, so it's just talk first party data.

Mark Bundle 16:23

Yeah, so your first party data is anything you are directly giving to a website yourself. So if you're filling out of the contact form, broodigitalcom to ask us tell me with your market strategy, that's first party data. You are directly giving that to us. The first place I was very much there the direct go-to stuff. It really should be the bread and butter of what most people are using and because you know it's the most accurate, the the people involved are actually giving it to you themselves and is most likely at the most accurate. That way it's not being filtered through different networks.

Haydn Woods-Williams 16:51

Anything you want to add with regards to kind of tips on on how People can look after their first party data the best in the best way.

Mark Bundle 16:59

Oh, I'm looking at first-party data. I make sure you get a reliable CRM. Invest in that is worth doing. A lot of the big providers do provide free or very cheap starter kind of tears to work with and that kind of give you a slope to Build and grow and also, as you grow and get bigger, they start to charge you. Yeah, that's probably the best tip. Make sure you find so reliable, do it. Don't try and manage all your data out of spreadsheet. It's just it's gonna do you badly in the end.

Haydn Woods-Williams 17:26

Google a rolling out third party deprecation. I think it actually happens tomorrow. We're recording this on the 31st of January. It happens on the 1st of February.

Mark Bundle 17:34

Different thing they're doing on the 1st of February if your deprecation has started for the first 1% and more rolled out later in the year. Tomorrow's Google change is all about email authentication.

Haydn Woods-Williams 17:43

Hey, then go do your research team and that deprecation to the stat, the 1%, though. What does that mean for general marketers? Is it something to worry about, or is it just something to kind of keep an eye on?

Mark Bundle 17:57

You haven't heard of any major panic yet and you've got a feel. If it all went horribly wrong, some of the bigger people that being invested would have been shouting very loudly about it and morning Google rollback. The fact we've not heard any massive panics suggests it's a good start. That's definitely what I've done. Is that one cent, as well as a testing group, so it's it's good to not hear anything.

Haydn Woods-Williams 18:23

Cool on to our third topic. Data is boring. No one wants your ball data. Here we're going to look at how you can take raw data be that data that comes from surveys, data taken from your customers and actually turn it into interesting and Educational, entertaining content, hopefully with examples as well. This is usually where we talk about a campaign, so I do want you guys to fill in some examples of companies You've seen do this really well. On our panel today, we have rich Harper coming back from our first topic, our head of digital marketing services, kieran and Debbie, actually all coming back from our first topic. We've got quite a small pool of people today, but they're all superstars, so let's kick things off One at a time. Can you walk me through an example of where you've seen a company presenting data in an interesting and engaging way? I'd love to do like a rock paper scissors on who goes first, but I feel like that's just wasting time, so I'm gonna go, debbie.

Debbie Gacutan-Jardim De Oliveira 19:26

Yeah, this actually came in at a good timing because we are currently Preparing for another pitch and so I am in love with we try this first ideas reports. I would love for you guys to check it out and have a comparison between their 2021 report and their 2022 report and it just basically showcases to you how much we transfer, understands their users. 2021 report showcases much more of a dynamic scrolling type of landing page that basically Visualizes the data that came out of the report and then comparing that with 2022, which is a bit more interactive and plays a part in the societal you know, is it a myth? Is it like a true report? I think it also tries to engage with the users with some tools and features. It's just great, kieran.

Haydn Woods-Williams 20:15

Can you take us next, please?

Ciaran O'Neill 20:17

What are the ones which I was I Really enjoyed and as stuck among my mind was WWF not the wrestling one, but their climate change video, which is it's a hand-drawn animated whiteboard video, basically about the doom and gloom about climate change, but actually talking about the things to celebrate. It's all around the Paris accord and so on, but the storytelling is fantastic that you don't even realize you're being given a huge amount of data. I mean it helps that William Shatner is doing the voiceover for it, but I found that to be such an engaging way of presenting quite a lot of dry data, but in just this fabulously interesting way.

Haydn Woods-Williams 21:00

Rich. What's your, your campaign?

Rich Harper 21:03

I will Refer back to something we talked about previously this topic. It would be wrong not to mention Spotify rap as an ideal Campaign in terms of presenting data that they already have. It's not survey data, it's not them having to do anything extra. The data already exists. I for one, and the rest of the team Hopefully agree. Last year, we couldn't wait for Spotify rap to come out, and it became a kind of competition to see who'd listen to the most hours of music and what percentage of listeners were you in in terms of how much and you consume, and that therefore turns into an amazing Social campaign people snipping that, copying it, sharing it online. So that representation of data. I think Spotify have absolutely got it bang on for listeners.

Haydn Woods-Williams 21:55

Tom was the the highest volume of music listen to in the team for all three of you. Now, and just because this is probably into my head because of that Spotify campaign what company that has copied Spotify? Who's made you go? What are you doing? I know for me I'll start while you guys think, cause I put you on the spark train line. I got a spot I wrapped from train line telling me how many hours I spent on the train, what my CO2 saving was from not driving, and they didn't tell me how many minutes I'd wasted waiting on delays or how much money I was able to claim back from delayed repay. But yeah, that one really made me giggle.

Rich Harper 22:39

I can't really think of one, but at the moment it's off of my head. I'm just going through the ones I received and I got like a rat from Monzo in terms of my spending habits, which actually was quite insightful. I clearly spend way too much money in Starbucks, as people on this call will probably attest to seeing me on most mornings with Starbucks in my hand. That was pretty good, and also Strava they were pretty good at it. I think people that are into their fitness and stuff like that, again, they kind of I guess to answer your point, I don't have a bad example but the ones that are good are ones that kind of revolve or revolve around your social aspect music, society, that sort of thing, fitness, spending, that sort of thing. They really work. And, to your point, something like train line. Do I need to know how many trains I've been on in the year? Probably not.

23:32

This goes back to an act of point note that we made in a previous part of this podcast about the copycat side of things. Just because one company or one brand has done something and it's successful, it's almost an indicator for every other brand and company to go that works for them. Let's copy it and do the same thing, but guess what? It doesn't work for everybody. And it works as Spotify, because they do it. Well, they already have the data and it's really interesting for their users. If you don't have the data, well, your data is not particularly interesting and there's not much of a story to tell. Don't tell it. Love that.

Haydn Woods-Williams 24:08

Another one that I did get donating blood. It didn't give me my individual stats, it gave me the entire stats. So when I read it I was like how much blood have I given this year? Shit. Just to wrap things up, where can companies find unique data that can feed their customers' excess stories and their market?

Ciaran O'Neill 24:28

You can look externally. I would look at YouGov and answer the public. They are the two ones that I found the most trustworthy, reliable. They tend to have quite large data pots and, with Answer the Public, you can also rip the data and drop them into your own spreadsheets and so on, which is helpful. Surveys If you've done your own surveys in the past, that's always good for finding that unique data, because you can get qualitative data, actual, genuine answers to queries, rather than just something from your dropdown. Your social media analytics are also good, and then, obviously, there's your CRM, which is a wonderful place to be looking at all the data that you need.

Haydn Woods-Williams 25:14

Our final topic today is looking at navigating remote working, being efficient, being human and keeping your team as happy as possible, wherever they are in the group. In our panel today, we have Tom Innes, who is our wonderful copywriter. We have Salvin Norr, who is part of our social media team, and we also have Jason Morris. Let's kick things off. What are the benefits and negatives of working remotely?

Tom Inniss 25:45

Well, I'll start with the benefits of working remotely. It's that you are not gonna be stuck in traffic. Having to commute that's always great. You're here to pick up parcels also wonderful, and I think that kind of well actually. No, there's just like how much of myself why reveal on this podcast. What I really love about working from home is that I can roll out of bed, put on some clothes, flick the kettle on and be at work within seven minutes. I couldn't do that if I had to go into an office every day, and those of you who work with me already know that I am barely functional in the morning as is. And if you force me to get up, have me sit in traffic for an hour to come into the office, you're not gonna get anything out of me except venom and malice.

Haydn Woods-Williams 26:38

I think we were speaking earlier about a similar thing and how everyone's routines are different and different things are huge benefits to some people from the remote working Selfie. Let's go to you. What do you see as the benefits and negatives of working remotely?

Saufi Mohd Nor 26:54

I think since Tom talked about the benefits, I think I just tried to kind of talk about not so much negative, but I would say the challenges I guess well seem like Tom. So I guess I don't want to reveal too much to the listeners. But I'm not based in the UK, I'm based in Malaysia. So in terms of that I basically work with people in the UK Europe region and sometimes even not America. So as far as how, the flexibility is great up to me what I want to start, as long as I get everything done, my hours are done. But sometimes the hours can kind of be like I work for four hours and then that's a long break and then I continue working again until late night to just kind of like make it happen. So I would say it's just kind of like challenges. It's not really for everybody. Like in my case I don't have babies, kids, whatever. So it works for me.

Haydn Woods-Williams 27:42

Awesome. Thank you, Selfie, and I'm gonna throw it over to you now, Jason, for your benefits and negatives.

Jason Morris 27:48

So the benefits for me are I spend a lot of time with my campervan same as having it outside and give and work on it in lunch times, things like that. So I quite like that. I have a dog and he's very selfish and he likes a lot of attention. That helps that I'm around. Negatives I guess time with the team is good, but there's also a pro. Some of the pros can be negatives as well. So I quite like a big meetup, like once a month or something. That's nice. Lots of zooms, I guess. As a negative, I think people get zoom fatigue quite quickly.

Haydn Woods-Williams 28:20

That's. The zoom is a really, really interesting point and I'm going to jump to a question that I was going to ask at the end. But for those companies that don't have the ability to meet up often, zoom is often the only way to maintain team culture. How do you think you can do that effectively without having that zoom drain, that exhaustion from being on zoom too much?

Tom Inniss 28:48

Part of it will come down to who is actually in your team. Like your team, culture is reliant on having a solid team. You need to affect the managers who are able to curate that culture well. I think it's about being cognizant of people's zoom fatigue and not feeling as though you have to install a culture through zoom. We don't have that many zoom meetings as a team, collectively, and when we do, it's not always just about work, but it's about trusting your employees to feel like they can come to you when they need to talk, but not forcing a conversation upon them as well, because not everybody wants to sit on zoom all day.

Saufi Mohd Nor 29:27

I think on my end I feel like most people on this call are in that sometimes I randomly work on a coffee shop or something like that. So I think that's just some little things. That goes back to the benefits of the flexibility. And if you need to change your workspace so you don't feel like you're just stuck having the same call at your home over and over again, just go out, work somewhere else and even if you still have to take calls, then at least you can tell your coworkers like, oh, I'm at this coffee shop and all you know. Just tiny little things that you could switch up your routine a bit. Jason, anything to add to that I guess.

Jason Morris 30:01

For me it's kind of how you manage it yourself as well, so you could look at it as zoom fatigue or whatever. But if you're having regular breaks once an hour and you're managing your time a bit better, you're putting your computer in a different part of the house, things like that. If you yeah, it's how you manage it. I guess it's not negative for all people honestly not positive for all people. It's how you manage it yourself.

Haydn Woods-Williams 30:23

That leads me on to talking a little bit about being human, and I think this goes both ways. I know, as a manager, being human is really important in allowing the team to actually. You know what, if they don't want the camera on, they don't need to have it on. It's okay for me to have the camera off on any situation and don't have to talk about that. What is one thing that you find helps you be your best self when you're working remotely?

Saufi Mohd Nor 30:49

I think just really section your time really well because, like when you work remotely, just remember you have the flexibility benefit. So just remember to block your time, go outside, block your time, go to gym, block your time to spend some time with your kids, dogs, cats or whatever, because I feel like that's your flexibility. Try to, like, enjoy the benefits more. So if you block your time nicely, then at least you won't feel just work at home all day.

Tom Inniss 31:17

I think this is encompassing a lot of the things that people have already said around time management and being aware of yourself, but something I've observed I've only ever worked remotely, so I've had to learn discipline over time. But especially during COVID, a lot of people were learning to work from home for the first time and the thing I constantly saw people doing was failing to switch off. That leaving of the office is like closing the book, so to speak, and that is the end of your work day, whereas when you are at home it gets very easy to just keep working another couple of hours. You know, when I first started, I would get up at 10 in the morning and I would still be working eight o'clock nine o'clock at night. So just learning your limits and learning to know when is enough and closing the laptop and walking away from it is really important with remote work.

Haydn Woods-Williams 32:06

If you're a manager in this situation as well, actually making sure that you do check that people are switching off. I think when we talk about checking on people when they're remote working, a lot of people look at it as in checking to make sure people are working. I think if you're hiring correctly, your people will be working, they want to work, they will have projects to work on, so you don't have to worry about that. But actually checking in to make sure that they're not doing late nights, they're not working on weekends, is one of the most important things I think you need to do as a manager of a remote team. Adding to that, I think trust is something that's really, really important. How can we instill trust into businesses if we are maybe just starting out or if we're in that growth period, whether we're office based or remote based?

Tom Inniss 33:00

It requires a cultural shift. To be honest, if you've only ever worked in an office and then you're suddenly saying, okay, you can work from home, we can work remotely, wherever that may be, it does require a completely different mindset. I don't think it's something that you can just develop overnight, unless you have got a really solid relationship with your team. You just have to trial and error it, ultimately, while you are going through that period of transition, and then, as you said, if your team are motivated, they're going to want to work, they're going to have projects to do and it will be apparent those who are working and those who aren't, based on the result that you end up seeing. And that's when you have that conversation. But otherwise, you've hired this team, you're paying this team, you need to feel confident, allowing them to do the work that you've hired them to do.

Haydn Woods-Williams 33:48

It's really worth considering and I think we may have mentioned this on the last podcast that not everyone is 100% every day. It's impossible to expect that, having one having the human side, to not expect 100% from people, encouraging them to actually, if they're having one of those days that are crap, go for a walk, go and do the things that you enjoy, re-energize yourself, but also with that rain, is just not working. I seriously want to. Those days where I'm running out about 20%, there you go, I'm going to drop it and leave it there. Depending on how I have edited this, you may or may not realize just how much of a car crashed this podcast episode really was, and I think that's okay. That's cool. Do you know what? Because not everything goes perfectly and there's still going to be some absolute gems in this session.

34:43

I'm going to finish up just saying thank you to everyone for their research and all of the effort that everyone put in. Thank you, listeners. We hope you found the useful snippets in there and are able to go put them into your own work and hopefully making remote work a little bit easier, and also to help you be a little bit kinder to yourself, because we are all probably our own worst enemy sometimes. I really enjoy that you've made it this far for the lesson. We love making this content and if you could just go and recommend it to even one friend that you think would enjoy listening, that would mean the world to us. Make sure to go check out our past episodes, subscribe on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and we will see you on the next one. I've been Hayden and these guys are the Marketers of the Universe.