Question

Topic: Career/Training

Overcoming Obsolescence!

Posted by Brit Darren on 8/17/2012 at 1:03 PM ET 250 Points
Hello all. After 13 years of marketing experience within both the UK and the US, primarily in branding and strategic roles, I now find myself seeking a new role in the Bay Area, and for those familiar with that part of the world you might be familiar with the currently quite narrow view of marketing that exists there.

Namely, digital display is everything. SEM / SEO is everything. Growth Hacking is the new future of marketing. TV ads don't work. Optimisation and running multiple creative is how you acquire customers. Branding is irrelevant and so on...quite a battering to the ego of a man on the edge of turning 40! Here I was thinking that I had some idea of marketing......

So having dusted myself down and taken innumerable deep breaths I have fallen back on my training and realised this: the market is not wrong, the product I am offering (Me!) is not fitting what the market demands.

Therefore I need to reformulate my offering and this is where I would love some pointers. I was most recently at Senior Director level and while I have zero aspiration to become a media guy nor to personally run adwords campaigns, I do need to skill up and be able to talk more intelligently and authoritatively about digital display, customer acquisition, SEM and optimization.

Training seems key, so I have two questions:

1) For those who know the Bay Area, are there clear favorites in terms of professional certificates or certifications?
2) More generally, who stands out as the most respected training providers?

I'd imagine that we've all been challenged by the rise of digital marketing and so I'd love to hear how others have remained relevant or overcome their skills/knowledge gaps.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 8/17/2012 at 7:07 PM Accepted
    1. You probably do need to have at least a touch of hands-on Adwords experience, just so you understand the issues. Start by reading Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords, by Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd ( https://bit.ly/dmlZeH Click the link to the 3rd Edition and read some of the reviews.). There are three different editions, all of which are obsolete before they hit the bookstores. My personal preference for strategy and general understanding is the First Edition, but obviously the Third Edition is more current.

    2. The MarketingProfs site is pretty good for seminars and training. There's a lot of material, so you'll need to plan your curriculum carefully or you can spend weeks or months slogging through everything.

    3. Don't totally throw out your strategy and branding know-how. It's still more relevant than most folks realize. They have just changed some of the words, found clever new ways to research everything, and move with amazing speed. Once you've caught on, you'll start to see that for everything that has changed, there's still a lot that's the same as it always was. Differences are more industry related than universal. (People still use toothpaste to brush their teeth.)

    4. It would be ideal if you can find a mentor to guide you through this. There are a bunch of things to learn, but it's not impossible ... especially if you're motivated. I suspect some of the folks on this forum would be willing/interested.
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 8/17/2012 at 8:28 PM Member
    What you say holds true for much of the online side of the Bay Area (so a lot of SF and Peninsula companies), but not true for the hardware/chips side of things (much of Silicon Valley) and definitely not true for the more old line consumer goods products we have in the East Bay (Clorox, etc.). Growth hacking only works with online. Branding is not such a bad word with the silicon valley and east bay companies.
  • Posted on 8/18/2012 at 7:08 PM Accepted
    Marketing Profs has excellent resources, of course! But I also found that HubSpot's Inbound Marketing University is a great place to take free courses that connect the dots between content creation in the digital world. And it is set up with an 18 course module that leads to a certification. www.inboundmarketing.com/university/
  • Posted by Brit Darren on 8/18/2012 at 7:20 PM Author
    Thanks all. Very good advice and some good action points for me to consider
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