Yet being a student of the marketing department I tried myself in different areas including marketing and sales. At that time I clearly understood that a diploma without real experience doesn’t worth a lot, so I was ready to work for free, to be a volunteer, get engaged in different projects, combine full-time studying with a 40-hour workweek just to gain the necessary knowledge.
Before getting involved in a new project, I always checked if I would be able to obtain new skills or develop existing ones that could be useful for me in the marketing sphere. Why marketing? Marketing itself is a very broad discipline - there is a place for creativity, communication, psychology, public speaking, analytics… so even if your interests change you can always find here something to be passionate about.
Work in sales is my new challenge. It is closely connected with marketing and it allows me to communicate directly with clients and to see things from a different perspective. This is what makes it so valuable.
I think to start it would be good to read a few books that explain the basics of marketing and sales. You can start with Philip Kotler, also known as the father of modern marketing. He wrote a lot of books, you can begin with Principles of Marketing, Marketing 4.0, Marketing Insights from A to Z.
In marketing and sales everything changes very fast, approaches and strategies that worked yesterday may not work today. That’s why it is important also to follow online blogs to stay up to date. Here are a few blogs that I am following:
I think this list would be useful for those that just start as well as for already experienced marketing and sales professionals.
Of course, in choosing the best sources for information a lot depends on the type of the market (B2B or B2C), a direction in marketing (content marketing, PR, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, offline marketing, etc.) and sales (lead generation, closing, online, offline, etc.) you are working in. It is hard to be an expert in everything, so it is good to focus attention on an area you are interested in.
My first job as a Marketing Assistant I found via the university I was studying in. Sometimes, when former graduates are looking for new employees for their companies, they gladly send offers to the university they finished. So, I didn’t think too long, I sent my CV, had the interview and got a job :)
When I was looking for a new job in Poland, I subscribed to plenty of newsletters from different job portals and one of those was with an offer from PushPushGo. I liked the job description, responsibilities, the friendly manner it was written… and here I am😃
I think to hire a sales and marketing team, there should be ready MVP and validated at least with a few successful deals.
It would be good to provide a newly hired specialist with some info about the clients: who is your ideal client, what problems your product solves, what barriers they may have, how long is the sales process, etc. And of course, having a positive benchmark will help to sell the product faster.
Also if there is a need to choose where to invest first, marketing or sales, in my opinion, it is good to start with sales when your target market is enterprise and big companies where in order to sell, it is important to build one-to-one relationships.
If the product implementation is fast and easy, the target audience is the SMB or B2C market, the cost of the tool is not so big, it is better to start with marketing to scale and automate the process of client acquisition.
Here are a few Key Performance Indicators that should be tracked:
When we speak about sales, of course, the most important is conversion and if sales targets were met. Here are some of the KPIs that I follow:
We focus on companies with monthly traffic of 100K+ visits from different sectors: publishing, e-commerce, telecommunication, finance, marketplaces, automotive, travel, etc.
Speaking about geographical focus, PushPushGo works all around the world. However, I work in a team whose principal market is Latam, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and recently South Africa. Here are some of our clients from these regions: Decathlon Portugal, Teletica Costa Rica, Essential Nutrition Brazil, TVN Chile, Farmalisto Colombia, SuperSport South Africa, etc.
For sure, blogs that I already mentioned at the beginning. At PushPushGo, every employee has access to the company Kindle account with a lot of different books about sales and marketing, also recently we implemented the practice of doing online courses on Udemy.
Also, after spending all day in front of the computer, it can be difficult to read from the screen for me. So, I prefer to listen to audiobooks. For example, currently, I am listening to Petr Panda “Texts that are believed. Short, clear, and positive” and I am looking forward to starting “Challenging customer” by Brent Adamson that is the next book in the line.
Besides, as we work with many clients overseas, it is important to speak customer language. That’s why I also have Portuguese classes. It opened me many doors that without the language skills would be unreachable.
Hmm… difficult question :) not that I didn’t have fuckups, I would like to share here some funny story, but I just don’t remember 🤔
However, instead, I can share a life lesson that I learned a few years ago.
It is essential to keep a work-life balance in order not to burnout. It is important to know your limits and your resourcefulness.
A few years ago I took too much for myself: finishing university, working 6 hours on the project and also a 4-5 hours job without weekends and all of this in different countries, traveling regularly 20 hours one-way in the bus during winter. Just in 4 months I totally burned out, it cost me my health and energy, it took me many months to recover and I’m still in the process.
So, now I always remember to have “me-time” and think carefully before engaging in a new project.
For Sales:
For design:
For marketing:
Other:
Facing different challenges and overcoming them is what makes work interesting and gives a feeling of growth. I was lucky to have an opportunity to try different things for the first time - organizing webinars and making presentations, preparing for the exhibition and speaking in front of many e-commerce professionals on the stage in Berlin…
But probably the biggest challenge was when I started to work in sales directly with clients and making demo-presentations. Before my first meeting, I was super nervous😅. I spent all weekend practicing the speech and still was afraid that something may go wrong.
Fortunately, it went pretty well and gave me the courage to try more, even in Portuguese :)
Being an introvert and work in sales or marketing adds a little bit of adrenaline to the office work🏄🏼♀️😄 Although, I still have a lot to work on, such small victories motivate to reach for more.
Here are some of the trends that I noticed working with companies from different industries (e-commerce, publishing, telecommunication, finance, etc.) and different countries:
Digitalization
More and more businesses around the world understood the importance of digital presence. It may seem that digitalization was always a trend but it was never before on such a scale as it is now. During the last few months, companies that didn’t have a site - created one; those that didn’t invest in marketing - started to do it, those that invested - started to invest more online.
Omnichannel communication
On one hand, for businesses it is important to understand their own customers, companies are more interested in having a unified customer journey and providing them with an omnichannel experience. Expanded analytics about customer’s interests, behaviour, characteristics… is in focus now. On the other hand, the omnichannel experience is already something that customers expect to receive from the brand.
Personalization
Following on from the previous point, being able to personalize offers is extremely important to winning customers over from the competition that is quite severe online.
Faster, better and more available internet
Telecoms around the world are working hard to make it possible to access the quality Internet for all stratum of society. Implementation of 5G, growth of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), improvement of energy efficiency, etc. contributes to the growth of the number of internet users. At the beginning of 2021, 60% of the world population already has internet access and it continues to grow.
Mobile
The number of mobile users was growing already for many years and will continue to grow. However, now more users use their smartphones to make purchases, read the news, stay in touch with friends, etc. This means an increase in mobile ads spendings, investments into the development of mobile applications and the mobile-first approach gets more essential today.
Privacy
The legislation is forcing companies to respect users' privacy. GDPR in Europe, LPDP in Brazil, POPIA in South Africa, PIPEDA in Canada, PIPL in China, PDPA in Singapore… I think it is just a matter of time when other countries will implement similar laws.
Privacy is also something that customers expect from brands.
Passionate about advertising, digital technologies and marketing itself. Life motto: "Growth starts out of the comfort zone".
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