I work at ConsumerAffairs as the Director of Paid Marketing. I directly oversee all activities related to our paid advertising with Google & Microsoft. I also act as a liaison between my marketing team and multiple internal departments such as Product & Engineering, Data & Analytics, and our Business Development teams.

How big is it?

The search engine marketing squad specifically working directly with me has been around 6-8, though we’ll be adding potentially that amount of additional employees in 2022. Plug: ConsumerAffairs Careers. Largely, our group is made up of highly skilled and very senior digital marketing folks, with the intent on staffing more junior level analysts to train and level up in the near future.

Where are your teammates located?

My team specifically running search engine marketing is mostly split between (3) in Tulsa, OK at our Headquarters and (3) in Austin, TX, and we have one outlier of a rockstar currently located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Having said that, our performance media team we also work very closely with is dispersed between Tulsa, Los Angeles, Seattle, and soon to be other remote locations. ‍

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

My team runs extremely sophisticated search engine advertising campaigns in some of the most competitive and costly categories in Google. We are a brand constantly striving to help better serve our customers in life's most difficult moments. We are directly responsible for achieving the best outcomes for our visitors by providing the best fit solution for their current time of need, which often tends to be very complex and lengthy buying processes.

Continued check-ins. It’s more difficult to communicate freely in the remote world; let’s not kid ourselves. Communication is never perfect and always mentioned by people it needs improving, so staying on top of that to the best of your ability is paramount. With any remote first company, we’re no different on extensive Zoom meetings & Slack communications.

Nevertheless, those are just the basics, then we have our daily standup that is guided and managed through a Trello board in some mini-Kanban style for general accountabilities on a weekly basis. 

I also have 30-60min one-on-one meetings with each member on my team on a weekly basis. 

Wrapping all that up, I also delineate between Jr & Sr talent. I must intentionally set a bar for the Junior level talent that represents what the Senior level talent produces, and until they get there that is their objective each and every day. For the Senior talent on the other hand, it's a very hands off, zero micro-managed atmosphere. They’ve gone through basic training, and have the benefit of me constantly and casually saying “that's ok, thanks for the heads up” when they inform me they’ve got something that needs to be addressed personally.

Ask them! Sounds bizarre, I know. I end my weekly one-on-one’s by asking if they need anything from me this week, if they’re doing ok, or need any assistance on any projects, advice, etc. Also, positive reinforcement is extremely useful for anyone's psyche. Tell people the great job that they are doing, it's extremely impactful for progress.

The inability to casually go have an offsite beer with my team. Everything for remote workers must be planned well in advance for flights, stays, eats, etc. 

Also two other small things, opposite time zones and absence of casual water cooler chat.

We started a Marketing happy hour in the instant we mandated work-from-home orders March 2020, and somehow still have continued that to the current day. Initially I had implemented a ‘Question of the Day’ for our Happy Hours, which was quite the hit for a solid 9 months or longer. I believe the best question I had came up with was “You can bring back anybody that has ever lived, and you get to pick them at whatever age you decide they will be, but they will live for eternity and at that specific age, who would it be?” … lots of Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Mother Theresa’s of course, but also some Grandmothers/Grandfathers, Einstein, Chris Farley, Steve Jobs, etc. votes were tallied.

Yes, Jackbox would likely be the most popular, though there are some others that offer larger parties that have been super fun as well.

Well, as previously mentioned the happy hour question of the day was my go-to for icebreakers for nearly a year. But for a separate example, my wife got me a 2021 Dad Joke calendar that has been mildly entertaining on multiple days this year as icebreakers in particular days of the week. It’s the little things that matter the most.

I have done my best to build an internal subculture within my team that just so happens to mildly mimic our overarching company culture, thankfully. What would that be? Simple. Overall accountability, be great and be great at what you do, leave no stone unturned. We manage these accountabilities via daily standup calls on Trello, weekly meetings on performance of individuals and their accountabilities, etc.

Yes and no. This is similar to multiple questions that I ask interviewees centered around proactive learning. What have you taught yourself in the last 6 months, how’d you go about learning it, what was the result? What are you interested in learning in the future? Those types of questions I’ve always asked others and myself. I only want to hire people that can answer those questions in an instant. If I had to answer this particular question on resources, it's inevitably Google and the ability to bookmark sites, and I’ve got far too many of them.