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Me, 10 years ago: Mad Men is so cool! I want to switch careers and get into marketing! Me, now: Why can't I get this loving blog image to be centered  It's the Marketing Megathread! Feel free to vent about your overdemanding boss, lack of leads, antagonistic sales people, insufferable clients, or anything else that comes with the territory of being a ~ * ~ CrEaTiVe TyPe ~ * ~ in a corporate world. You can also consult with other marketing goons here. Personally, I intend to ask a bunch of questions about HubSpot and other MarTech that To start, I'm curious to hear what other kinds of marketing goons are kicking around this forum. Agency grunts? Copywriters? Account Managers? Graphic designers? More middle management like me? I'm a marketing manager at a small business of ~50 people in a department of 2; myself and my direct. The CEO is also technically the marketing director, though he'll be stepping away from that role soon. I'm sure I'll be sharing a lot more about my situation (which seems to be a bit unorthodox, as I've learned) but I'll save some of that for future posts. (Last thing: if people want an informational OP with lots of links and resources and advice then ummmm.................write it up yourself and I'll put it here. Unfortunately I'm probably going to be less of a source of knowledge in this thread, and more of a vacuum for one. Hey, being upfront about my incompetence has gotten me this far, so I'm going to keep riding that wave!)
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Jan 19, 2023 16:05
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Quarterroys posted:Sweet, a marketing thread! Regarding my unorthodoxy...I'll try to keep this brief, both for brevity's sake and to avoid doxxing myself. I was hired as the Digital Marketing Strategist (read: SEO guy) at this company in Jan. 2020 by the then-Marketing Manager. The two of us, along with a Digital Marketing Coordinator, made up the entire marketing department. In Nov. 2020, the Marketing Manager resigned, then in May 2021 the Coordinator left for another opportunity, leaving me holding the bag. To further complicate things, our CEO (who also technically holds the title Marketing Director) moved back to his home country in Europe during the Summer of 2021, so now I'm at a point where I am: - The only person in the marketing department - Reporting to the CEO, who lives 6 hours ahead of us here in the US - Not actually trained in running a marketing dept. (my degree is in music composition LOL) So for an entire year, I did it all myself: adding products to our website (which involves prodding the Product Management team along), producing 2-3 blogs per month, sending monthly newsletters to all customers, project-managing all website updates, and then of course all the other stuff that always comes up: random ad campaigns, video production, being responsible for our lead count (and quality), and of course participating in all the manager-level meetings and stuff. OH and I also coordinated our appearance at a giant medical trade show. Last summer I finally got to hire a direct, a new Digital Marketing Coordinator. And much like you, I'm thankful that she's so solid—really makes the overwhelming amount of work that needs to get done feel a lot less overwhelming. For over a year the CEO has been saying he wants to take a step back from US operations and focus on ramping up a Europe office, meaning he needs someone to take on his Marketing Director responsibilities. For a while it was a question of "do we promote timp to this inner executive circle, or hire someone else?" and I was told last week that they've opted to recruit someone with more marketing and industry experience for that role. I'll stay on as manager, but I have no idea how responsibilities are going to be divided up going forward. So that's that! I actually wrote a bit more but decided to edit for now; there will be plenty of time to complain in the weeks to come  (Also thank you to the mod that stickied this thread!)
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Jan 23, 2023 17:06
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Sent an email to ~20,000 people today, our first one sent via HubSpot. I’ll never get over that feeling of dread that starts about an hour before sending and lasts until about an hour after hitting send  This one seemed to have gone over without any fatal flaws or anything so all’s well that ends well. Even seeing evidence of new leads as a result of sending it! Now let’s just hope one of them turns into a million dollar deal so I can take full credit for it
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Feb 7, 2023 23:53
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Jumpsuit posted:What project methodology/tracking software do you guys all use at work? I've gone through Monday which I loved, Microsoft Planner which I hated, and at my current role we all have to use Jira (but not Jira for Marketing). Have also found that every place I've worked in the last 10 years has had the marketing teams do software Agile training and then have to rejig it entirely to make it relevant for marketing campaign management. We use Asana and it's...fine. I spend a good deal of time in it since most of the work I do consists of managing and executing on little projects. When I was at my last job (a marketing agency) we used Accelo, and I actually kinda liked it. I've also dabbled in Monday and Trello but I'm sure I barely scratched the surface on those
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Feb 16, 2023 20:09
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Need to vent a bit. At the beginning of this year the executive team (CEO, COO, Director of Sales and Senior Product Manager) was debating whether or not I should be called up from Marketing Manager to Marketing Director, and become part of said executive team. The CEO is currently holding that title but he really doesn't have the time required to do it the way it needs to be done in addition to all the other stuff he's doing/wants to be doing. CEO tells me that they like my work and consider me an asset to the company, but they're concerned I don't yet have the experience needed to make big picture strategy decisions. To be honest I don't entirely disagree with the judgement. As I've mentioned before in this thread I came into Marketing in my late 20's, starting at entry-level and slowly working my way up. To be considered at all sort of felt like being seeded #16 in a bracket, advancing all the way to the championship, and losing the final game: Sure it stung a bit, but I never expected to be in the running in the first place so ultimately it's fine. They find a suitable candidate and extend an offer to a new Marketing Director, who starts on March 27th. When she starts I'll report to her instead of the CEO (hope she's cool, never met her before!) One thing I make sure to clarify as soon as he breaks the news to me: Will I still manage Sarah, the Marketing Coordinator I hired last August? He thinks about it for a second and says yes, no reason why you wouldn't continue to be her manager. Cut to my annual review with the CEO one month ago (a month late lol). The review went well, got a respectable raise and decent performance marks and all that. We get to the goals to work on for the next year, and I mention that one thing I want to work on is developing more as a people manager. Things have been going well with Sarah since I hired her. She gets all her work done on time, has a positive attitude, never shows up late, etc, but even more importantly, she recently disclosed that she likes working here and having me as a manager, which was nice to hear. CEO agrees and we make soft plans for me to attend Manager Tools conferences as a way to work on the goal. I mention wanting to grow the department and get more directs and he agrees that will come eventually. Meeting ends. Cut to yesterday, at the end of a standard weekly Marketing meeting with the CEO. He's like, "Hey, so I've been thinking about it, and it really wouldn't make sense for Sarah to report to you, and then you to report to the Director. Instead, you'll both report to the Director". Here's the thing: Like the decision to hire a Marketing Director rather than promote me up, I actually don't disagree with this choice. It'd be weird to have this unnecessary chain of command where we're basically playing telephone for no reason. But like...what the hell, man?! I'm trying to manage over here! We all agreed a month ago that I was doing good as a manager and wanted to develop that skill. And now you turn around and take my one and only direct away from me? Shitballs! I have to break the news to Sarah later today and I know she's going to be bummed about it. When I told her about the Director being hired, her first question was whether or not she'd still report to me and I said yes, because that was what the CEO said when I last asked him. I feel like there's more I could say but this E/N post has gotten long enough. And I do feel a bit better about things after typing that all out, so...mission accomplished? 
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Mar 16, 2023 17:10
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