Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company.
Cheers everybody 🙂 My name is Katerina and I am CEO of LocalWeb, a leading digital marketing agency in the Italian market. I started the journey of the digital marketing world 8 years ago and now I proudly manage a dream team of young people mastered in offering digital solutions for SMEs in Italy and not only. I am so happy to share with you today the vision and the attitude of LocalWeb for standing out of the crowd.
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
Well, well. Our agency during the COVID-19 pandemic changed definitively to the new rule: Tough Times Create Tough Teams. This situation impacted the daily lives and routines of people across the globe, and for sure it has been an unknown situation even for #humansofLocaWeb. The rapid adoption of smart working and the focus on offering the best solutions to our clients were the two key factors that made the difference for us. There were a lot of infrastructure difficulties, we missed face-to-face meetings and coaching, but we managed to build a new attitude of hardworking teams in order to continue achieving personal and professional goals.
How does your company innovate?
The digital world is changing rapidly and in order for us to continue being a lead agency, it is very important to stand out of the crowd with our product offering and the tailored support we give to our clients.
We offer digital and unique solutions to clients to grow their business, revenues, and brand awareness. For us, communication and relationship with the client have the same importance as product delivery. They have to be concerned about the return on investment, so keeping them up to date with their results is a priority.
How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?
The epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic moved from China and East Asia to Italy, our primary business scope. This was associated with the lockdown of almost all businesses. It was difficult to keep businesses online during all these insecure times.
We reorganized our product and divided our clients into two big groups: those who were able to operate online and those who were not. For the last category of businesses, the strategy was focused on finding new funnels and targets, also increasing brand awareness.
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons Learned?
It is impossible to skip difficult decisions, but what makes me happy is the result. Team culture is the lever for moving forward. As long as the priorities are clear and accessible for everyone, success is the result.Â
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
We use our internal CRM but we are also the biggest fan of Google Tools for being organized and always informed about everything around. Google Meet is definitely now our virtual office.
Never is enough, but below I will share our four essential management skills to make smart working better:
- Motivate- Motivation helps bring forth a desired behavior or response from the collaborators
- Delegate- Delegation helps to avoid wastage of time, optimizes productivity, and ensures responsibility and accountability on the part of the team. Every manager must have good delegation abilities to achieve optimal results and accomplish the required productivity results.
3. Communication- It can determine how well information is shared throughout a team, ensuring that the group acts as a unified workforce. How well a manager communicates with the rest of his/her team also determines how well outlined procedures can be followed, how well the tasks and activities can be completed, and thus, how successful an organization will be. - Plan- The planning process includes identifying and setting achievable goals, developing necessary strategies, and outlining the tasks and schedules on how to achieve the set goals. Without a good plan, little can be achieved.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
There are a lot of digital marketing agencies but we never compare them to others. We compete every day to become a better self than yesterday.
- Spokesperson: Katerina
- Company: LocalWeb
- Website:Â www.localweb.it