Virtual Marketing Success: 60 Employees, 3,000 Miles, 25 States, 2 Provinces, & 4 Time Zones

Ryan Malone, Founder and CEO of SmartBug Media, an inbound marketing agency, HubSpot Diamond Partner, and winner of more than 100 awards, founded his company on this premise: That clients would be best served by providing them with marketing strategists who had in-the-trenches P&L, product launch, skin-in-the-game experience and an understanding of the impacts of wrong decisions.

Ryan started his career leading marketing teams for publicly traded and early-stage technology companies. He saw agencies that threw any available talent at the strategic function – using interns, copywriters, and graphic designers to develop marketing plans, then blaming poor performance on his company's failure to provide the correct inputs for the marketing agencies' "whiz-bang" strategic processes.

Ryan wanted to build his agency with the best veteran marketers he could find. But, how could he do that in Orange County, CA, where local talent would be limited to those who would be willing to drive in community that ranks first nationally in stressful (nightmarish) commutes?

Ryan decided to hire the best-fit marketers for his agency, regardless of location, and to put his strategists front row with clients, instead of interjecting "account managers" into the company-client relationship. Today, his company has almost 60 employees, all completely remote . . .located in 25 states and 2 provinces. He warns that the idea that companies will save money by hiring remote employees is a misconception – the cost savings of not having physical facilities is more than offset by the added costs of building a strong team and company culture.

Every year, SmartBug brings all the employees and their families together at a top West Coast resort for a training, team-building, quality-time event, SmartBugaplooza. Ryan believes the quality of talent he has been able to acquire through hiring remote is a strategic advantage – but, focusing on culture is critical to making the long distance relationships work.

Another practice that Ryan has found to be effective is that he interviews prospective new employees ahead of need (SmartBug is always hiring) and queues up candidates with scheduled onboarding. Again, his hiring field is not local . . . it's all of North America . . .and having potential hires "ready" means he is not forced into making potentially risky "emergency hires." Ryan also explains why it is important to establish corporate policies when a company is small.

Ryan talked about growing his agency and covered some of what is in this interview in more depth when he presented "Building a Remote Agency at Scale: The Big Decisions You Will Face and Must Conquer" at Hubspot's Inbound 2018 conference.

Ryan can be reached on his company website at: smartbugmedia.com, by email at: ryan@smartbugmedia.com, and on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmalone