Exclusive: What My Job in Marketing Actually Involves
While I love answering all sorts of questions from my readers, I get especially excited when I receive emails from you asking for help with your career. This could be what path to go down, talking over your CV or just a general chat.
Recently, I’ve chatted to a few of you about jobs in marketing and what that actually involves. And since my posts on “The Pros & Cons of Being a Social Media Marketer” and “A Journey down My Career Path so Far” resonated so well with you, it urged me to share more about my day job – which is why we’re here today!
So I hope for those of you looking for a job within the marketing industry, that you gain something from reading this post. Here’s an exclusive look into what my job as a Marketing Coordinator actually involves.
I figured it would be best to start off by giving you a brief overview of what I do for those of you who have no idea! And if this is your first time reading this blog, then welcome :)
I work for one of the top sixth form colleges nationally in a Marketing team of four – there’s me (Marketing Coordinator), we've currently got a temp until September as a Marketing Assistant, then there’s the Senior Schools Liaison & Marketing Officer, and our Marketing Manager. It’s a small team for all the work we do, but we get on really well together.
My main purpose is to promote the college brand to prospective students and parents, whilst also communicating and building relationships with our current students and wider community.
The best thing about the team is that each of us has completely different responsibilities. There’s absolutely no crossover and we've all got different skills, which is one of the reasons we work so well together.
I absolutely love the things I get to do for my job. So let’s dig into what they are!
Brand Promotion
Everything you do to promote your blog? That’s exactly what I do to promote the brand I work for. Like you all know, word of mouth is one of your strongest marketing tools. Something that really contributes to growing your online presence is how many people actually know about you.
The good thing about where I work is how local it is. Generations of families attend the college and we've done surveys that have proved how strong word of mouth can be. But we’re also planning to branch out further afield so we can get even more students. That means a lot of brand promotion, and here are my daily responsibilities within that.
Social Media
I came into the job with a really strong knowledge of social media that I’d developed through running this blog, and now I'm solely responsible for managing the social media accounts for the college. That means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and potentially Snapchat.
As a blogger, you don’t just want to shout about your blog. You want people to get to know you – the person behind the blog. This is just as true for a business. You don’t want to come across as corporate and professional all the time. It’s really important to remember that I'm targeting both students and parents, so finding a balance is key.
I would love to tell you that I spend my whole day browsing through Twitter and Instagram, but I don’t. Although I do LOVE how big a part social media plays in my daily life!
Just like for this blog, I update the college’s optimal posting times every week using Followerwonk, so I'm sending tweets out when our audience is most active. Whereas I tweet over 10 times a day for my personal brand, I schedule about seven tweets to go out per day at work.
The content of these ranges so much and what I post depends on what’s going on each day.
For instance, it’s always Pizza Day on a Friday at one of the food outlets on campus, so I always tweet about that. It really gets a lot of interaction from the students! Events, important notices and education news are all things you’ll find on the college’s Twitter feed.
Again, we’re targeting a mixture of students and parents with Facebook, but more so parents due to Facebook’s demographic. I schedule three updates a day for Facebook. Two of them will probably be important notices but I always make sure the other one is more light-hearted.
I’ve also been experimenting with Facebook adverts and let me tell you – they make SUCH an impact. Our community increased by hundreds purely down to using Facebook ads.
I decided to totally revamp our Instagram strategy as of January this year. We were just posting as and when, but I think you can get much bigger results with your Instagram presence when you have a plan.
So far, I’ve been researching content ideas and experimenting with uploading three photos a day, one around 10:30, another around lunchtime and then one in the late evening. This means we get to target our whole community.
The great thing about working with social media so much is that I'm always learning and coming up with new ideas. Managing these channels for both myself and the college brand really pushes me to think outside box. Plus, I'm always keeping up to date with changes in the industry.
Email Marketing
My other responsibility when it comes to brand promotion is email marketing. I send out a newsletter once every fortnight to our subscribers all about the latest new stories and important notices they need to know. One of the other girls in my office is responsible for coming up with all the stories and then I get to lay it out in Dotmailer, our email platform.
This is a fun job too and we get people subscribing to our list daily.
Website Management
This will be really similar to how you manage your own website. We update site content, add news stories, update images, add pages – anything and everything to keep the website ticking over. I also make sure to note down all the analytics at the end of every month, just like I do for ABOH.
Design
We produce a lot of materials throughout a year. The annual prospectus, leaflets, posters, postcards, billboards – the list goes on and on.
My main design responsibility is the Student Bulletin. I create this in InDesign to be sent out internally to staff and students every Monday morning. Like you can probably guess, this contains weekly college information that will be valuable to staff and students. Different members of staff send me what to put in, so it’s usually pretty straightforward to put together.
School Liaison
Part of my job that won’t come with every job in the marketing industry is School Liaison. We don’t just promote the college from our desk – we’re always going out into schools across Lancashire to speak directly to the people who might be submitting an application.
This is great, because we get to actively build up a link within so many schools. Throughout a year we can attend Parents Evenings, Assemblies, Careers Fairs and any other events we’re asked to go to.
This all sounds great – getting out of the office, producing so much great content. But let me tell you. Man, is it tiring. Take this week. I was at work until 8pm on Tuesday and tonight I’ll be getting home about half 8 due to events. This is what it’s like at this part of the year, because it’s our busiest time.
Do I enjoy going to work every single day? Yes. Are there ever times when I want to complain about my job? Of course! That’s natural and that’s life. I might have a last minute event to go to and have to cancel plans, or something I’ve designed might come back needing a lot of changes. No job is completely perfect – the most important thing is making sure you can use all your skills and that it’s right for you.
If you’re struggling with your career at the moment, I just want you to remember a few things:
Work hard. Things don’t come easy. The job of your dreams won’t appear in front of you asking if you want to take it. If there’s somewhere you want to get to, work hard for it. It really does pay off.
There WILL be bad jobs. I had one bad commute and two not nice jobs before I landed this one. If your career path is plain sailing you’re very lucky, but you’ll find things never go the way you plan them to.
Remember your values. Don’t let anyone undermine you. If you’re more experienced or more qualified than someone and you’re being put down, don’t let them. Remember how hard you’ve worked and how far you’ve come. Your career is a huge part of your life. You need to make sure it’s right for you.
Do you enjoy your day job? How much does it relate to your blog?