I'm in the home stretch of my rookie season as a digital marketing professional at our little agency. But although you might still call us a startup, we're not so little anymore. The fact is that we're growing. And we won't be the only ones.
As the services that comprise "digital marketing" evolve to dominate the marketing landscape, more agencies that have embraced social business, earned search placement, content marketing, inbound lead generation & nurturing, and results-based communications strategies will grow and, thus, will hire.
On the flip-side, socially aware digital natives-fully expecting their youth to be treated as a professional liability-will begin to see the tide shift from their perspective. Companies and agencies have already begun looking to their younger employee base for help navigating social media. How long will it be before young writers, videographers, and graphic designers are among the most heavily recruited by employers?
My guess: not long. And I'd venture to say that there are some of you out there in the halls of higher learning who've gotten wind of this shift. And I'm thinking you might want a cool job once you're done.
So in honor of my upcoming sophomore year in the industry, following are four points of advice I wish someone would have given me a year ago. If you aspire to work at a digital marketing agency, heed them well: your competition is about to get a lot fiercer.
Network Early. Network Often.
You've heard them say that it's not what you know but rather whom you know? They're not lying.
Connecting to potential digital agency employers must begin well before you finish school. To give you an idea of what I mean, we've only ever hired professionals straight out of college. And these hires interned for us before we made them a formal offer.
This recruitment model tends to be standard. Agencies like ours are a new breed, which means they don't always have the capital to hire seasoned veterans. Furthermore, because our operational structure is unique, we like to get A-players fresh out of school in order to groom them in our systems.
So do exactly what you do best. Engage us-both individually and the agency proper-on social media. Tweet at us. Connect to us on LinkedIn. Like this post? Comment on it. Really want to impress us? Pitch a guest post idea of your own.
Don't ignore the career fairs and in-person meet-ups, but be smart about them. Knowing what you do about our agency, where do you think you're more likely to "bump into" me: the Elk Lodge or the incubator launch event downtown?
Write Professionally. Now.
Every professional at our agency had either written or designed in a professional context (or close to it) before they arrived.
You have options for "writing for real": you don't have to write for a college paper or edit a lit review, although those are still great bets. Basically, you need to get yourself in a situation in which you're...
(A) Under deadline: you owe someone pages (or a design file or video) at a specific time, and there will be consequences if you don't deliver.
(B) Forced to produce within a specific word or time limit.
(C) Writing in a situation in which readership has a direct impact on revenue. This is a good one to experience early because it's pretty much going to this way from here on out.
And while you are still taking classes, be sure to practice a variety of writing skills. If you're a Journalism major, take a Rhetoric class; if you're an English major, learn technical writing. At a digital marketing agency you will produce content for many different industries, and your clients won't be patient enough for you to practice on their accounts. Study as many styles as you can, while you can.
Start a Business
This point really goes with the point that preceded it, which I'll get to in a second.
But first, try to understand that the marketing industry is currently in a state of flux. Where before marketers might have been able to rely on clever ideas to earn their bread, it doesn't work that way anymore. You are now expected to demonstrate a bottom-line result for every service you provide.
In that spirit, put yourself in a situation in which you're seeing the world from the client's perspective: Marketing is an essential aspect of business. Marketing costs money. Ergo, my marketing should produce more money than what I'm spending. The world looks a lot different to a CEO than to a marketing consultant.
Here's what you do: while still a student, create profiles for yourself on oDesk and Guru.com. These are online content marketplaces for soloists and, believe it or not, great sources of revenue for a lot of freelancers.
But we're more interested in the business lessons you're likely to learn from this.
Lesson 1: Finance
Figuring out how to price services is one of the hardest things about business. Find out what others charge and go from there. And ideally at some point a client is going to try to stiff you on payment. Figuring out how to get them to pay will be one of the most valuable things you'll ever learn.
Lesson 2: Marketing
Next, you're going to have to figure out what sets you apart from the thousands of other professionals on these websites. At what are you better than anybody else? That's your main offer-expand from there.
Lesson 3: Sales
Now you're going to learn that people, in general, want to pay you less than what you feel you deserve. Figure out how to negotiate with them. When you get to the agency world, you'll find out fast that almost everything is negotiable. Learn now.
Lesson 4: Operations
How will you communicate with clients? Do you require an outline? Do you need to have a spoken conversation first? What conference call service are you going to use? How are you going to schedule communications? Is there a sub-contractor or partner involved? How will you pay them?
Good business is in the details, probably to an extent you never previously imagined. Start experimenting now.
Learn to Speak Tech
I cannot stress this point enough. When you enter the marketing agency world, you'll notice immediately how valuable a tech-savvy professional can be. It's the one trait that can launch you and your agency to an elite level.
Some resources:
Code Academy
In my opinion Code Academy is the best introduction to coding there is. Theirs are practical lessons in which you'll start writing code immediately. Start with the HTML/CSS lessons-those skills you'll use your first day on the job-and then see how far you can get.
Treehouse
Treehouse is a popular monthly subscription service. The video lessons are followed by short quizzes. Check out "Data, Databases and SQL" and "Build a Simple iPhone app."
Lynda.com
Lynda is also a paid service, but if you attended the UW-Madison like we did, you should have a student subscription. (Search your MyUW.) Check out "Google Analytics Essential Training" and any of the Adobe Web Design courses.
In addition to learning about tech, learn to love it. If you're aiming to work at an agency like ours, you're likely going to have tech-savvy clients-they may even be software startups themselves.
Add the following feeds to your RSS reader:
Blogs like these will keep you up to date about what's going on in technology-who's coming, who's folding, and who just took a round (i.e. who has marketing dollars to spend). Learn to speak tech.
In the end, getting your foot in the door at an agency is the easy part. The hours can be long. The learning curve can be steep. But if you love it, it can be one of the most rewarding experiences you'll ever have.
Happy hunting.