My Top Tips For New Marketeers

Top Tips For New Marketeers

It is after much deliberation and even consulting with colleagues, that I have decided to write a few of my top tips for people starting out in a career in Marketing. Marketing can be quite daunting to outsiders or those about to embark in a career in the discipline, so help is always needed.  I was worried that younger people setting out on their journey might look at something from an old fart like me and think, how is that relevant. But people did say, “your experience is amazing and to have advice from a well respected professional would be valuable” to quote one person.

So here I am, with a feeling of endorsement for the post in hand, I bring you my top tips. If you want text book, intellectual, corporatisms you can quote to show everybody how smart you are, look elsewhere. This is real and personal advice from the heart and just playing to my experience.

Feel free to comment. Add your own. Or even just criticise this, I have a thick skin.

1.Don’t chase money or titles

It can be really tempting to chase a job with a great title or the most money.  That is sometimes the case even later in your career, but its not the best thing.  Your first job is critical, but ever move you make throughout your career should be for a reason. Pick a first job you believe you will be passionate about. Good employers will forgive a lack of experience or naivety for somebody that is passionate about their role and their company.  The next step is one that is critical. I have seen many people early in their career demand more money or a promotion so early on, often before they have really proven themselves. Early on, sacrifice money and titles for the space to learn. If you aren’t developing or improving thats the time to think about a new role either within the company or elsewhere. But as with that first role, pick something that is right for you and plays strategically in to where you want you career to go.

2. When negotiating with third parties never accept the first offer

Salespeople, agencies and pretty much anybody in a commercial role will be trying to maximise the return for their employer and often for themselves. Us Brits aren’t great at negotiating or bartering.  But this is key. Create value for your employer by never accepting the first offer and rarely accepting the second. If you can’t move on price, try to negotiate something extra. Its not cheeky. Its nor insulting, its business.  The place I most learned what is possible was at boohoo, where every penny was counted as if it was our own, and possibly the best (and cheekiest) negotiator I have ever encountered was the then CEO Mahmud Kamani. I would sometimes cringe at his approach and think demands were unbelievable, but it nearly always got results.

3. Don’t compromise yourself

In any situation, never forget who you are. Yes it can be difficult climbing that corporate ladder. You will see people creating fake friendships to help them get on. The corporate laugh is penetrable when the boss makes a laugh. The tell tale brown nosing is visible from a mile off. It might help you, but you need to feel you have earned what you get and on merit. You need to feel comfortable that you have been true to yourself. If you can’t be, maybe the place isn’t right for you.

4. Build your network

As you progress in your career, a network is really important. I don’t just mean loads of connections on LinkedIn, take the time to speak to people, learn and show a willingness to listen.  Your contacts will help you in future career moves, but more importantly a network of relevant people you can trust and know will do a good job, is priceless as you move onwards and upwards in your career.

5. Lose any arrogance

Arrogance and thinking that because you have an amazing degree or some experience, is one of the worse traits. Have confidence in what you know, demonstrate your ability and knowledge but don’t push it further than is necessary, which links in to

6. Always learning

Accept you are never the finished article. I have been doing this for years, across various roles, business and industries.  Even at a Director or CMO level I am still learning. Never refuse opportunities to develop, even if you feel it is outside your immediate discipline always learn. It could be from your colleagues in finance that can shape your commercial acumen. It could be colleagues in the HR department that help you understand have people behave. It could even be as simple as the receptionist who has a different view of the world to you, which helps you have a more rounded perspective.

7. Understand your offer and your customer

The text book definition of marketing, effectively focuses on identifying customer needs and responding to that need with that they want.  So to play true to this, take time to learn about the company and products or services you are marketing. Go above and be the most informed person you can be. Ask the stupid questions, that everybody else won’t ask.  Really live who your customer is, learn what makes them tick and understand what is relevant to them. You can do this without masses of research as long as you understand who they are.

And finally

8. Be results focussed

When I mentioned this to most people, they immediately think about the trackable, e.g. what sales can be achieved or what ROI is acceptable. With any spend quantifiable objectives or targets should be set. But this is equally show you are somebody that can deliver. Find out the pains of your team, your manager or the organisation and see if you can influence solutions to those.  Or simply show a great can-do attitude, rather than being that one that finds a million excuses or reasons why something can’t be done.

There are two types of people. Radiators and drains. Don’t be a drain

If you got this far, well done, thats quite a lot of commitment. I hope you found it useful, interesting or at the very least allowed you to lose some time.  Please let me know what you think and share with anybody you think might benefit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attention Planning – Social Media

Attention Planning

There is always a mass of hyperbole surrounding social media and branding.  This can be due to lack of understanding, the fact that few hard measures are put in place or just the fact it is in the interests of some marketeers to keep the mystique around these subjects.  Whilst both areas may not be as simple to analyse as an immediate ROI from a PPC campaign, or coupon redemption through DM, there are ways to measure their impact and effectiveness.

This post looks very simply at some of the methods of measuring social media campaigns and in a way, branding campaigns online in general.

Desirability

This is the section that traditional ATL or brand advertisers would call consideration.  Essentially it is the measure to ascertain if people actually like your brand or not.  Traditional advertisers will run surveys, perform focus groups or take a spurious number from a third party research house.  However, these are sometimes the route of the reason why we never truly know the impact of our activity.  How many times have you been asked to take part in ‘research’ and declined the opportunity.

There is a (relatively) quantifiable way of doing this online.  Tapping into the social media cloud around your brand, you can see how people view your brand, both positively and negatively.  This can be done through buzz metrics (reputation management) which effectively analyses all the commentary your brand receives through social media channels.

Awareness

The central point for any brand has to be has your target audience seen the brand and are they aware of it?  These are important (although not necessarily critical) questions to answer prior to your campaign, as it is easier to raise awareness if there is existing rapport.  As users become increasingly sophisticated and engaged with your brand, campaign materials will be spoken about, distributed by users and eventually searched on.  Again as a brand you need to extract these conversations, it not only allows you to evaluate awareness, it also allows you to understand impact and perception.

A great example of a campaign that has generated large levels of awareness is ComparetheMeerkat.  The TV ad aired and created a stir.  A microsite was available that was then promoted via the majority of online channels, social and other.

Frequency

The old rule of traditional advertising was developed in the 1970s by Krugman.  He stated that you need to expose your target to your message three times. What? Why? and the payoff.  Essentially this still rings true.  Potentially even more relevant in social media.

Be aware when developing campaigns or activity for your brand you need to have a sufficient campaign base and content to maintain users engagement and buy-in.  Users aren’t willing to see and review the same content on a regular basis, they are even less likely to be interested in distributing this to their friends.

Engagement

This is quite simply how deeply entrenched your brand is within the consumers’ minds.  How often are you referenced in blogs, on forums or other social media platforms.  This is how many times are you commented on, how long were the conversation strings and were the messages postive or negative.  The ultimate and potentially more difficult to measure is did the activity spark other activities.  A great example of this in action can be found on YouTube, where users in the YouTube community post video responses.

Pay-off

With more media becoming available at an accelerated pace both online, in print and on broadcast media with the advent of digital TV and Radio, users attention is becoming more and more difficult to obtain.  Key measures to see if you have grabbed the attention are simple methods such as click-throughs, UVs and repeat visits.  This indicates your content is engaging enough to offer users some form of pay-off.

Another measure (depending on your content) is time spent interacting.  Generally in brand building (social) campaigns the longer users spend on site, the better.

Spread

Traction is key here.  As an advertiser you can only target certain media channels, it would be impossible to target all possible channels.  Therefore organic spread is a great measure of success.  Your campaign needs to spread from mailbox to mailbox if it is to progress.  Perhaps more importantly does the campaign spread from social network to social network?  Another great track is to see if your campaign gets bookmarked on social bookmarking sites such as Digg or Stumble.

Reach

Remember you need to track your campaign.  Remember review how many people have seen your campaign and are they in your target audience?  Reach is important and the more people that see your campaign the better.  However it would be better to sacrifice some numbers in order to maximise your reach within your target audience.

Summary

Whilst none of the points raised in this post are as complex as rocket science, they may seem obvious, many organisations forget these principals when placing their brands in social media.

They often believe just because they are established brands or are well known, they deserve their place in people’s everyday social networks.  If that was the case the job of the Internet Marketeer would be a very simple one.  However, social media has made the landscape more complex.  You must have a reason for being in social media and above all track what you are doing.

To enable this, you need to set out some clear objectives that can be measured.  In my opinion I would also suggest employing a reputation management specialise.  Somebody along the lines of Market Sentinel that could also analyse the benefits of all your activity on SEO and overall marketing efforts.