The world has been hit hard by COVID-19. The virus has already spread to the point where the World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a “pandemic” and naturally, companies all around the world have taken measures to ensure that their employees are kept safe. One of the more popular measures that undoubtedly most of us are going to experience is a work from home arrangement. Today, MarketingGuru will be sharing with you 5 effective tips to work from home as a marketer based on our work from home experience.

A work from home arrangement is certainly something that doesn’t come too often and to be very honest…it is fantastic. Gone are the days where you have to be subject to your colleagues’ constant bickering and whining on how little sleep she got yesterday night because of her baby’s crying. Working from home entitles you to perks like working in your pyjamas and sitting comfy on your couch barefoot with your lo-fi hip hop chill beats playlist blasting through your speakers!

Tip #1: You MUST Absolutely Plan for Your Day/Week

Are you in charge of multiple client’s digital marketing projects? Do you still have your company’s marketing, SEO and PPC efforts that you have to deal with? If you answered “Yes” to any or both of the questions, then you definitely must have a plan for the day.

The difference between working from your own home and being at the office is the fact that you can do whatever you wish to at home and nobody would know. This, coupled with the absence of live meetings with other people, it is very easy for you to lose track of your goals for the day.

For starters, you could use personal reminders and create events throughout the day to notify you of when you should start on what tasks. If the work-from-home arrangement is to persist for a longer time, project management tools could also be used to help teams stay on schedule and track their work timing. For personal use, we would recommend using Google Calendar One recommendation that we could give if you have a team to manage and track is to use a project planning software like Jira, which allows task completion timings and track your projects. With your team onboard, it would be just as efficient due to how everybody is able to understand the project’s progress and requirements daily by looking at the timelines and project board. Planning was definitely a crucial aspect of making the work at home week productive for our company.

Tip #2: Couch, Bed, Café, Wherever. Find a place where you are the most productive

Does it sound way too comfortable for your boss’s comfort that you’d be working on your bed during the work from home? Truth is, even if it does, you probably should continue doing it if that is really where it helps you work the best. If home doesn’t work for you due to how big a distraction your surroundings are, find a café, although it might not be exactly advisable at this point in time with Covid-19 being this widespread.

What our Gurus realized is that it is essential to have an established spot at home where you can properly sit down and be productive every day. Be it, on your bean bag, in the kitchen or anywhere else. It is important that you have a nice comfy workspace where you can be productive.

Tip #3: Establish Tools for Collaboration and Meetings Beforehand

This is particularly important for marketers because while COVID-19 persists, brainstorming meetings, meetings with leads and clients will still continue.

Interaction is definitely a key aspect of working in a marketing team. Decisions have to be made, jobs have to be delegated, things have to be discussed with constant back and forth from the parties. For your marketing company to have a seamless experience working from home, face-to-face video conferencing should be considered. From our experienced, we used an easy to use, free videoconferencing software called Zoom, which allows up to 100 users in a video conference at the same time. For collaborations that require remote access, we used TeamViewer, which allowed our IT team to helped our graphic designers and staff troubleshoot their computers whenever something goes wrong.

While we understand that some companies may be very used to the formalities of having to send emails to get work approved or pass information. We would encourage the use of instant messaging collaboration tools like Slack to get the message across. You wouldn’t want your inboxes to be flooded!

 Tip #4: Your Home, YOUR MUSIC!

Now that you’re in the freedom and comfort of your own home, why not just blast some music that can help you set the mood for work? This could be useful since you’re a marketer who might require different kinds of music to get you in the mood for the array of tasks that you could handle.

Personally, I’d like to play some lo-fi chill hip hop beats to get me through the tasks that require more focus such as editing a webpage’s code for Search Engine purposes. But for tasks like content writing? I would blast myself some good old hard rock music to get my gears going for inspiration. Setting the mood correctly with music can significantly increase your productivity. Research has actually shown that 90% of workers perform better when listening to music.

So now that you’re given the liberty to play your own kind of music, do it and boost your productivity at home!

Tip #5:  Prime Yourself for Work by Creating a Routine

When working normally from the office, we all have our usual routines. Waking up at a set timing, feeding the dogs before brushing our teeth, washing up, getting dressed and then heading over to the subway station via a 15 minutes walk. This routine is what helps set the tone for the day and makes us productive as these are habits that we are used to.

Working from home breaks this mould and because of that, some of us actually found ourselves very lost with the spare time we’ve had. This resulted in feelings of sluggishness when we drag ourselves to the laptop screen. However, after creating a set habit that’s different from our usual work from office habit, some of us feel that these feelings of laziness get shaken off.

Creating structure is essential for helping you start the day. It helps you to get prepared and gives some form of certainty to your work. This resulted in enhanced productivity. The perks of working from home are that you have more time for this routine and structure since you remove the need to commute to the office.

Conclusion

Work from home does pose its own set of challenges, such as communication issues with colleagues. The idea may initially sound unproductive, but trust us, it actually can be just as productive or even better than in the office. We hope that with these tips that we shared from our experience working from home during this COVID-19 period can help you become a more effective marketer working from home!