We all have felt downsized by someone at some moment in our lives. I know I have. I just never thought that following a career in online marketing would make me feel that way.
Recently I moved from Portugal to Kuala Lumpur to work for an online marketing start up. SEO, SEM, Facebook ads are still unknown concepts for a lot of people.
“Online Marketing? You mean like telemarketing? Why are you going to Asia to work in a call center?”
This automatically crossed people minds every time I tried to explain why I was doing what I was doing. After all the failed explanations I simply gave up. I followed an easy decision tree: adapt the truth to the occasion (or in this case the type of person I was explaining it to).
The Basic: Something Related To Business Management
This is the quick one. No one bothered me with a lot questions because no one understood well what I was exactly going to do. “I am going to Asia to work for a capital venture company, which is basically a company that invests in other companies.” Sounded smart and complicated enough to deter anyone to ask any more questions. And although this is not a lie, my company works under a capital venture building enterprise, it feels deceiving.
The Half Way: Something Related To Marketing
If we compare business management and marketing the first one always sounds “better”. People don’t seem to know that business management consists in a lot of different fields and marketing is the example of an important one. It was possible to feel the difference in the excitement when I changed the Business Management version to this one.
Get Real: “Online Marketing Startup”
After explaining what the term start up means, I get to the real challenge. How can you explain the concept of online marketing in a simple way without being perceived like telemarketing or just something that sounds a doomed idea from the beginning? I know now I approached it the wrong way. Don’t just use the result; explain the reasons and the journey.
Look around, do you live in a world similar to mine, where it is necessary to adapt the truth due to other’s ignorance? I am not ashamed of what I am doing, I am actually really proud.
Internet users are growing at an incredible pace all over the world. Online Marketing is the future.
These tools allow you to reach millions of people in seconds and to target those people who are most likely to be interested in buying your product. 89% of people that has intent to buy something go to a search engine and 33% of them end up going to the first result that shows up; this is why SEO is important. There are more than 700M daily active users on Facebook and they are working on the tools to make it easier and more accurate for us to advertise. The “annoying” ads? Get millions of clicks every day.
I (as I believe I speak for many of us) want to achieve something in life. Planning to build your own start up, be the CEO or Marketing Director of a big company, get to be respected in your professional life not only by the people inside your professional circle but also by everyone that crosses your way. Believe in the steps that you are taking in order to reach the place where you want to be.
Looking back, I only regret not spending enough time educating people about online marketing and what I am really doing in here. Don´t follow my example as I don´t intend to do it again. Spend five minutes educating the people that surround you. Show them examples, show them numbers and statistics. Be an ambassador for what you really believe in.
Things are changing and it is our job to teach them now.
Marta Velez, 21, has a Bachelor in Business Management from Nova Business School in Lisbon. Currently she’s an intern for a digital agency start up but she dreams to go higher creating her own successful startup.
Image Credit: www.optimum7.com
