In the world of digital marketing and advertising, as the industry evolves things change very quickly.
This is no exception for the evolving agency model.
Try to search the “death of the agency model” on Google and you will be given more than 200 million results.
This does not mean that we are witnessing the tragic end of the agency model. Our own experience is proof that we are actually witnessing CHANGE.
Distributed Agency Model:
In recent years the model of distributed agency gained a lot of popularity, particularly within web design, digital marketing, and advertising industries. Centered on various benefits such as low overhead costs, unlimited talent pool, and more availability in specific cases, more companies are adopting this system.
The distributed agency model or as it’s sometimes also known as the “virtual agency” model refers to the agency that collaborates and hires workers remotely. This means that the company may have freelancers, partners, part-time or full-time employees, contractors and more. In any sense this model is location agnostic, as it’s members can be spread all over the world, empowering the system with several important benefits.
Digilite has offices in Toronto, Sydney, LA, and Yerevan which makes us available across time zones worldwide.
In a sense, the sun never sets on Digilite!
Motivation To Having a Distributed Team.
While every company operates differently there are various fundamental elements that bring distributed agencies together.
Benefits of Being Distributed:
- Wide-ranging talent pool: Distributed agency model enables you to look for your industry talents beyond your local area. This means you have access to unlimited resources across the globe.
- Time zones: While some can consider the differences in time zones to be a disadvantage for communication, Digilite’s team proves that in case of strategic planning and communication availability in different time zones can benefit you greatly.
Coming from our own experience, when we have clients all over the globe, being available 24/7 maximizes our effectiveness and improves the communication process with our clients.
- More productive team: Distributed agency model enables you to easily switch to remote work, or partnering with freelancers. When your employees are able to work in their preferred hours, with their own equipment, in their own comfortable environment, this leads to having healthier and more productive results.
- Flexibility: Flexibility is the bottom line of this model. The management system of this model assumes communication between different cultural backgrounds, geographical places, and time zones, which on its turn presents a wider range of alternatives when it comes to managing a global team.
Digilite’s experience proves that remote workers are inherently self-motivated to show the best results across their allocated projects. Effective collaboration and communication over long distances are in the DNA of this model.
Tips To Having a Successful Distributed Agency:
Managing a distributed team isn’t the easiest task though. You can often run into communication problems, feel disconnected from the team then, of course, add the cultural and time zone differences and it could turn into a nightmare. This said if you strategically plan and are organized it could do wonders for your business and overall team culture.
If you really want to make it work, be sure to make good use of these steps!
Organize Regular Meetings:
Organize a daily standing meeting, when each team member lists the main tasks of the day. This will take only around 20 minutes a day but will make a huge difference in terms of feeling like everyone is keeping track of where they are and what other members are working on.
You can also consider having weekly more in-depth meetings where the whole team will give a brief report on the highlights from the previous week, and you will all decide the priorities for the upcoming one.
Constantly Remain Accountable:
Keep in mind, the right communication becomes the strongest pillar for developing a distributed agency model.
Make sure to be available for your international coworkers, and always make updates on your progress.
Use the Right Software:
Using the right software, some of which are specifically designed for distributed teams will make your life much easier.
Slack: It’s a platform designed specifically for communication. It allows you to create channels related to different projects, topics or teams while equipping you with relevant management tools for online meetings, calls, and messaging.
DropBox: Wonderful platform to share common resources like stock photography, videos, presentation, and other files.
WorldTimeBuddy: With this tool, timezone should never be a problem for you. It helps you schedule when to have a call with your client considering the various time zone differences.
Google Docs: Simply write, share, edit, save, collaborate using these tools.
Wunderlist. This for simple and quick to-do list management.
Having a distributed team can be full of challenges, but in the long run, it might become one of the most beneficial decisions for your company.
Want more tips and tricks about company culture and management? Keep up with our blogs.
