#2 of the lessons learnt series
My career journey so far has been a wonderful and challenging learning experience. In this content series I am sharing some of the important lessons I learnt along the way that may resonate with your current situation and influence your existing or future marketing strategy.
Previously I worked at a Global Digital Product Studio, which you can read more about here, but once I had established myself as a credible B2B tech marketer, I moved to a Global Technology Consultancy. The company focused on accelerating growth with a specialism in building intuitive digital products and services at speed to enable rapid scale through a blend of user research, strategy and pragmatic delivery. This included servicing Brands from Fujitsu to Vitality. The consultancy had 31 global offices with a headcount of 1,300 ambitious strategists, creatives, designers and engineers and gave me the opportunity to work with a larger marketing team and deliver campaigns to global marketing.
I started at UK Marketing Manager which then expanded into European Marketing Manager with some support for the US. Here’s four key learnings from my time working in marketing in a Global Technology Consultancy.
Prioritisation
In a global business it can be overwhelming to prioritise areas of your workload, especially when you are working across markets and multiple time zones and it feels like the world never sleeps. It’s during this part of my career journey that I used the business plan and strategic goals of the company to focus my time. By having clear ROI and targets to achieve, that linked directly to the commercial target of the company allowed me and my superiors to see my impact and value in the team.
Customer Insights
During a rebrand, customer interviews were an integral activity to help inform the new brand proposition. Through these interviews, which were conducted across Europe we were able to ascertain how the brand was perceived, their understanding of our service offering and where we were able to open new work streams. I used my experience from my previous company to run a trial of win/loss analysis. This was extremely well received by the company and integrated into the customer experience process.
Process
Processes need to be understood across teams with different first languages, levels of experience and seniority. This role is where I learnt to check my own biases and remember that any process that were introduced or changed needed to be documented and briefed on properly. This global model refined my project planning approach, a global company, planning for IOP meant that processes were more complex and more time consuming. When starting in a new role make sure you take time to understand the timescales of relevant work streams.
Continuous learning
Learning will always be a part of my career journeys, along with sharing my knowledge with my peers and key stakeholders. At this stage in my career, I was able to benchmark my knowledge against other marketers which grew my confidence in my ability as a great marketer. I was able to put my hand up and lead learning sessions, internally and externally on technical and non technical marketing subjects which also resulted in raising my reputation and brand in the company.
What next?
This was a pivotal role as a B2B tech marketer for being able to benchmark my skills in marketing communications and strategy. Being able to lead global campaigns demonstrated that I was able to scale my ways of working and work at a strategic level. It was also where I learnt the hard way by burning out that you can’t be “on” all the time and need to set clear work/life boundaries and ask for help when you need it.
You can read how my journey continued here, at an Experience Design Agency or read about where I laid the foundations as a B2B marketer at my previous role at a Global Digital Product Studio.