8 Ways to Get Ahead in Your Marketing Career
Tags: Social Media Marketing, Marketing

8 Ways to Get Ahead in Your Marketing Career

By Heike Young

Marketing today is undergoing a career revolution. It’s the most exciting time to be in marketing, but also one of the most challenging from a career-advancement perspective.

We have more tools and technologies at our disposal to reach customers, but we also need to spend much more time learning those tools and skills. Plenty of new job choices are available in marketing nowadays, from content marketer to analytics professional, yet it can be difficult to keep up with what so many other marketing teams are doing.

On this week’s episode of the Marketing Cloudcast — the marketing podcast from Salesforce — we focus on how marketers can get ahead in their careers despite changing complexities and what it takes to excel. Our guest is Jesse Noyes, Senior Director of Marketing at Upserve, who has held a number of impressive marketing roles, including Director of Product Marketing and Inbound at Kahuna and VP of Product Marketing and Content at Kapost.

In this episode, Jesse shares his expertise on job searching, key marketing skills, and how to start a new job while setting yourself up for long-term success.

If you’re not yet a subscriber, check out the Marketing Cloudcast on iTunes, Google Play Music, or Stitcher.

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You should subscribe for the full episode, but here seven ways to get ahead in your digital marketing career from our conversation with Jesse.

1. Know that it’s okay to change jobs — wisely.

A new study from LinkedIn shows that millennials tend to change jobs four times in the decade after college. Staying in one job or company for your entire career is no longer the norm. Jesse speaks from experience: “I’ve had a number of changes — not only in job title or company, but in industry. I think that’s something you’ll see more and more, not just in the marketing industry, but in work in general. People are less inclined to stay in one place their entire life.”

If you’re following your passion, it’s okay to change jobs, but make sure you’ve learned all you can from that job and manager before moving on to the next one.

2. Prioritize relationships.

Whether you’re just starting out or have twenty years of experience, you’ll be presented with the best career opportunities if you build your network. Don’t leave behind a trail of broken relationships every time you switch jobs or careers.

Jesse, who was a paint chipper and, later, a journalist before moving into digital marketing, says when it was it was time for a career change, “I was able to leverage the relationships I had to find this crazy opportunity to do content marketing.” You never know when a past working relationship will help you in the future, so focus on the people, not just the responsibilities.

3. Maintain a student mindset.

Today’s marketers must be a Swiss Army knife of skills and knowledge. So how can marketers keep their edge and make themselves attractive to employers? Be endlessly curious. Jesse explains, “I’m a student of marketing. I am extremely interested in what marketing does — and not just one aspect of marketing.”

He continues, “This is the best time for career development that we’ve seen. When it comes to skill sets you want to pick up, when in history has so much been free and available online?” Take advantage of all the chances you have to learn more, get new certifications, and become an expert in new topics.

4. Get experience in all areas of the marketing funnel and process.

When Jesse reached a point in content marketing at Kapost in which he felt he’d learned a lot, he began looking into other areas of the business, like product marketing, to understand the entire sales and marketing process.

Jesse urges marketers not to get tunnel vision and only focus on just one aspect of marketing. Understanding the complete ecosystem is important, and “continual learning is the key to that.”

5. Pursue marketing for an audience you’re excited about.

“Are you doing work that you find impactful? Is it for an audience that you’re excited to talk with and spend time with? And are the people you’re working with people you really enjoy being around?” Jesse says it’s important that marketers ask themselves these questions when considering working with a new company or team.

“If you get these three things right, you couldn’t really ask for more,” he says.

6. Talk to as many people as possible before accepting a position.

Make your interviews just as much about you interviewing the company as them interviewing you. Vet the audience, the C-suite, and the day-to-day managers. Even people with whom you wouldn’t be working directly can provide valuable insights into the culture and employee experience. Ask the hiring manager to fill your interview time with as many interviews as they’ll give you.

7. Become the #1 expert on the customer in your organization.

“The more you know about the customer, the more your insights are going to be taken seriously and be impactful,” says Jesse. This should be a priority for any marketer — especially those who are new to the industry and trying to find their footing.

8. Don’t keep one foot out the door.

You’ll never know if you really like your job if you only go 50% in. “That’s not the way to advance, even if you change industries or jobs,” says Jesse. This is why Jesse encourages people to throw themselves into whatever they’re doing, even if they’re not 100% sure whether it’s the right career path.

As Jesse shares, if you’ve thrown yourself into something and are proud of the work, “you’re going to carry over skills into what you do next.” You’ll also have a resume of references of people who can say “that person is a go-getter. They threw themselves into this entirely, and I think they’re going to be successful in this next venture and I now want to help them,” explains Jesse.

And that’s just scratching the surface of our conversation with Jesse Noyes (@noyesjesse). Get the complete scoop on the power of social influence in this episode of the Marketing Cloudcast.

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