Should you work with an agency that’s not local?

We have clients in all continents of the world as well as all over the UK. This means there are many clients we have never met in person and even the ones we have met work is largely undertaken remotely, rather than face to face.

This blog explores the businesses that remote working works best for (and ones that don’t), how to have a productive remote working relationship and the tools we use to work remotely.

When is working with a local company best?

Working with a company not in your city, region or country isn’t always best when:

• You are marketing to a local audience and knowledge of the local area is important
• A local company can do the best job, or as good a job as a company that’s not local. Generally, if you can work with a company that’s local and they can do a better, or as good a job as any other agency in the world for the same price then having an easy face to face option is beneficial. This may be better if you want a general marketing agency and one that doesn’t specialise in your niche
• You enjoy face to face meetings and think that is more important than other aspects of an agency relationship
• You don’t like communicating virtually for example through phone and email

Why work with a marketing agency that isn’t local

The primary reason is that a marketing agency is a better fit for you than any other agency. Fit may be defined by experience, services, size, price and the relationship you have with the team.

In the case of Xander Marketing for example we specialise in working with SaaS businesses and that expertise and sector specialisation tends to be the primary reason companies partner with us.   

To summarise the reasons:

• Experience in your sector or working with similar companies
• The services offered
• The price – if you’re in a big city like London or New York it’s likely to be cheaper to engage with an agency not in a big city and one that has lower overheads
• You want to break into a new market. A US based company may work with an agency in the UK if it wants to break into the UK market

How to have a productive remote relationship

In practice there are differing levels of client/agency partnerships. Some will be 100% remote, others will have an initial meeting and be remote where as others will have regular face to face meetings.

Whether your agency is local or the other side of the world most of the work will be undertaken offsite anyway. The keys to success are to continue to communicate with each other as and when needed. This may be a weekly or monthly call, it may be daily, or it may just be update emails.

Supporting this communication are collaborative tools and software…

Remote working tools

There are many tools aimed at collaborative and remote working, and yes lots of SaaS tools. Whilst we could write a book on all the available tools here’s the key tools we tend to use on a day to day basis:

• Email: This is fairly obvious but still the primary tool of communication
• Phone: Again an obvious one and no more needs to be said
• Zoom: Zoom can be great for calls (especially internationally), video calls, screen sharing and quick instant messages
• Basecamp: We manage all our projects in Basecamp. Some clients find it easiest to have access to Basecamp as well to collaborate on projects and set tasks. It can also take communication out of the email inbox
• Google Docs: Docs and Spreadsheets are great for collaborative work
• Calendly: We use Calendly for setting appointments. This saves going backwards and forwards finding a meeting time, just click a link to someone’s diary and book a free time
• Dropbox: For storing files and organising work

And that’s it at the moment – nothing to ground breaking there!

Local, national or international – grow your SaaS business with Xander Marketing 

If you need support with any of the above, or in fact any other marketing for your SaaS business get in touch.

Xander Marketing works in partnership with SaaS businesses around the world to support growth through new customer acquisition, increasing leads, generating more website traffic and raising industry awareness.  If you lack the time, resource or know how to undertake marketing then get in touch and book your free 30 minute consultation.