I lead the Marketing function here at WorkRamp. WorkRamp is the All-in-One Learning Platform for your employees, customers, and partners. At WorkRamp, we believe that creating a culture of learning and growth is the key to building the world’s most successful teams. That’s why hundreds of market-leading organizations such as Box, Reddit, and Outreach.io choose to partner with us for effective enablement and training.

How big is it?‍

Our Marketing team is currently 9 people large, and we have several more open positions with more to come later this year. Our team is built across three core Marketing functions: Product & Customer Marketing, Brand & Content Marketing, and Demand Generation.

We also have a person dedicated to Marketing Operations (MOPS) that is dotted lined into our org. We're building a central RevOps team here at WorkRamp, and so all of our Operations teams sit together there. A strong MOPS function is central to our growth strategy.

Where are your teammates located?

‍The Marketing team is located all over the US! We have teammates in the SF Bay Area (in California), the Los Angeles area, the greater New York area, and Denver. We’re open to hiring across the US.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

The Marketing team is a growth lever for the company. We’re responsible for generating business results, like Pipeline and Revenue.

We do this by focusing on our customers. We strive to deeply understand our customer's pain points and motivations, and we use those learnings and insights to create compelling experiences and content to help customers solve their challenges. Ultimately, we want to help customers and the enablement and training community-at-large be successful in their jobs, and help their businesses get to better outcomes like more revenue and higher customer retention rates.

On a more functional level, the Marketing team works on a ton of different areas across the board. From messaging and positioning, storytelling and content creation, supporting product launches, and growing our customer community, to activating new distribution channels, and events and experiences, we support our entire Go-To-Market motion.

1. Over-communicate, over-communicate, over-communicate. Make sure you share important information multiple times and through multiple channels, like email, team meetings, Slack, and on the central company knowledge hub (for us, it’s Confluence). Don’t assume people know things, actually, assume the opposite. 
2. Connect with your team on a personal level. Ask people how they are doing, and talk about things other than business all the time. Building an authentic connection with someone takes effort, time, and vulnerability. It’s important to be intentional about getting to know your colleagues on a human level. 
3. Give people flexibility. People have a lot going on in their personal and professional lives, and the more flexibility you can give your employees, the happier they will be. Sure, you may have a few critical meetings each week that are important for people to be at, but overall, give employees the flexibility to work in a way that fits their life. Results matter, putting in the same hours each day doesn’t. ‍
4. Keep a pulse on the team, and keep evolving. It is important for leaders to keep a pulse on how people are feeling at their organization. Regular employee engagement surveys and other check-in points are critical. It’s also important to remember that what’s working now for the remote work environment may not work tomorrow. Your policies and the way you work will continue to evolve. Embrace it!

Set clear expectations for the work people are doing. Whether your team is remote or not, it’s important to set clarity around what success looks like as well as who’s responsible for what for any work being done.

This might seem obvious, but also just asking people about how engaged they are also works. A few times a month I ask my team, “On a scale from 1-10, how are you feeling about your workload? What’s blocking you? What are you excited about?” People are generally transparent with their answers, and simply asking can help spot problems early.

Finally, bring your team along with you. People will always feel more connected to work they feel they helped to shape. Wherever possible and appropriate, get input from the team. This doesn't mean making decisions by consensus, but it does mean people will feel heard and therefore are more likely to be excited about decisions.

And don’t forget to celebrate your wins. Recognition for the small stuff goes a long way. At WorkRamp, we have a #props channel where we celebrate wins across the company on a daily basis. It’s a fun way to show some love to the team regularly.

The small interactions you get in the office are probably what I miss the most about being in person. You don’t run into people in the halls or at lunch online, so it really goes back to being intentional about getting to know people outside of day-to-day business.

At the beginning of each Marketing team meeting, we do an ice-breaker to learn more about each other. Questions like, “What’s your favorite book,” or “Tell me about a time you did X” are a great way to tell fun stories on a regular basis.

We’ve also done some fun experience activities as a team, like virtual baking (decorating Halloween cookies FTW!) or our recent White Elephant extravaganza to celebrate the holiday season.

At WorkRamp, we also have a heavy “chat” culture. In bigger team meetings, we encourage everyone to actively participate in the Zoom chat. It sounds simple but those chats spark so much laughter and fun. It’s a really great way to connect on a regular basis.

LOL see above! We do this every week. My favorite one so far was, “Which Harry Potter house would you be in?”. It really sparked some fun conversation! I’m not even a HP fan and this one was a great one.

We are definitely eating at our own restaurant here at WorkRamp. WorkRamp is a modern learning platform (some know us as a Learning Management System), and our own technology is core to our team being productive and staying connected in a remote work environment. With WorkRamp, employees onboard into our organization quickly, and have continued trainings at their fingertips. WorkRamp allows us to get critical information to our entire workforce at scale.

Slack and Zoom chat are also great ways to stay instantly connected in a remote environment. In Slack, we have channels dedicated to celebrating wins, sharing customer stories, and just getting the team pumped up!

Not so much on the tool side, but worth noting. In addition to our unlimited PTO policy, WorkRamp offers a quarterly stipend and a floating day off for a “Self-Care Day.” This practice encourages employees to take time to do something for themselves, no questions asked. It keeps morale up because we give people the space they need to disconnect and unplug regularly.

I’ve also seen tools like Bonusly work to help celebrate employees. We’re considering those types of programs here at WorkRamp as well.

LinkedIn is my go-to resource. I also talk to my peers as much as possible to stay connected and learn.