If you’re on the outside of the marketing world looking in, you’re likely curious as to what a marketer does on a daily basis. But truth is, there is no typical day. What the workday looks like will depend on the size of the company, whether the company’s product or service is B2B or B2C (or both!), the company’s overall goals and where the marketer is in their career! Very few people outside the world of marketing know exactly what it is that a marketeer does.
The same activities may be performed every day, especially true for entry level positions. It is found that repetition builds experience, skill, and efficiency. But for the more experience and senior roles, the day will become more diverse! One thing is certain, regardless of experience, you need to be fast at everything you do. To provide a glimpse into what it means to be a marketing professional, we are going to break it down by task instead of by day or time required; remember, it varies from business to business.
Content Creation
This covers all media outlets; from social platforms to email marketing and automation to paid advertising campaigns and content marketing. All these pieces will work together to meet the goals that have been set by the marketing department to meet their strategy. But to meet these goals, quality planning and excellent communication are essential. Within content creation, you will be responsible for at least one of the following;
- Write, edit, and produce original content.
- Create graphics to support written content.
- Build email marketing campaigns.
- Plan and schedule social media posts.
- And much more.
Of those mentioned above, strengths and weaknesses will be found within an individual, but many of the tasks will collaborate together. The content being written for your blog can be shortened down for your social media, and snippets taken for email marketing. And the graphics slotting in anywhere necessary. Whatever a person thinks their strength is, marketing challenges that and takes the strength to a whole new level.
Monitor & Respond
Within marketing, analytics is your new best friend, especially Google Analytics. Learn it, love it and monitor it on a regular basis. This allows you to check the performance data and determine customer patterns; providing opportunities to increase customer satisfaction, engagement, and sales. Social media channels should be observed on a regular basis for activity and comments should be responded to appropriately. And very importantly, keep an eye on your competitors. This allows you to see their strategy and what content works / doesn’t work for them! In any marketing job, use this to your advantage, and keep up with content and trends that will work for your industry!
Regardless of the business you work for, every day starts with emails. This practice helps arrange time in accordance to the priorities. In today’s working environment, many requests are made via email. Therefore, by firstly checking your emails, it allows the schedule to be adjusted to meet any new tasks. There may also be programmed reports sent to your emails. This gives you a look at the campaign performances; allowing you to know whether attention is needed in a specific area. Additionally, a glance at some industry eNewsletters will keep you on top of the trends. Be one step ahead in marketing, and this will help you succeed.
Website Management
This area of marketing is not for the faint hearted. Strong knowledge of HTML is highly recommended, as even if you have a website development team, being able to communicate at their level will eliminate a lot of misunderstandings. In marketing, if you’re part of website management, you must check that all pages are fully functional and maximised for SEO management. You may also be responsible for creating new content such as blog posts, which is mentioned in a section above.
Keeping Up To Date in Marketing
As mentioned above, in one of the opening paragraphs; in marketing, one thing is certain, regardless of experience, you need to be fast at everything you do. Often, there is no other industry that changes as quickly as the marketing industry does. There’s always a new trend, a best practice or tool to learn about. But, we don’t have time to be spending hours of the day reading articles, news and browsing through blogs. Therefore, the best thing to do is subscribe to good industry newsletters. This allowing you to keep up to date with the current trends in marketing. As the trends change, so should the marketing strategy; if you fall behind the other companies, the analytics of your publishings will fall. Something that should always be avoided.