Molly Spiers (marketing manager) and Joanne Goldy (marketing specialist) make up the marketing team at CoinCorner, a Bitcoin exchange based in the Isle of Man. With almost 10 years’ worth of marketing experience between them, they spend most of their time educating consumers about Bitcoin and promoting CoinCorner’s Bitcoin services.
Below, Molly and Joanne have shared a day in their shoes in diary form, to give jobseekers a better idea of what their marketing roles entail:
A Typical Day
What is a typical day? When you work in the Bitcoin industry, this isn’t really an expression that exists! Constantly shifting and evolving, our industry is still very much in its infancy. Marketing in an industry that is in favour one minute and not the next does bring its challenges, however, we love what we do and certainly never have a boring day in the office.
08:30 – 08:45 – Although every day in the world of Bitcoin is different, we try to start each day by creating a task list and prioritising what’s most important to do that day. Marketing is a busy career and keeping a task list is a very helpful way to stay on top of the workload.
08:45 – 09:00 – The good old checking of emails has to be done! Emails that only require a quick response will be dealt with first, with anything more involved being handled separately.
09:00 – 10:00 – There are no hard and fast rules to marketing the crypto industry (that’s because it’s so new!) and this is amazing as it means that our projects are extremely varied. While we’re at our freshest, we usually tackle as much writing and drafting as possible.
This could be drafting content for a media opportunity, the CoinCorner website and blog, or creating text for an upcoming campaign, and more. Writing is a huge part of most marketing jobs, so it’s useful to consider how much you enjoy writing when considering marketing as a career.
10:00 – 10:30 – Although our graphic design team sits close by, we do try to catch up on any ongoing projects. We typically write the content that is used in any campaign designed by our graphics team and we also often provide ideas and feedback on design work.
10:30 – 11:30 – Marketing meeting – This is where we discuss the weeks/months/year ahead and sketch out planning required to execute campaigns. We also discuss the progress of each team member’s work and go through any issues or consider other angles we could pursue. A lot of marketing involves planning campaigns – although we are proactive in responding to changes in our external environment (of which there are many in crypto!) – much time is spent making decisions on how to proceed with short-term and long-term campaigns.
11:30 – 11:45 – We use project management software between the marketing team which helps us to assign tasks, responsibility and keep project progress updated. After a marketing meeting we typically update the task list, including adding/assigning new tasks.
11:45 – 12:15 – Schedule email campaigns for the week – These are created/developed ahead of time and are often scheduled to be sent to databases at optimal times (when customers are more likely to open the email). Often this involves liaising with our graphic design team to create gifs etc.
12:15 – 13:15 – Lunch – We often go out as a team or head into the city centre. It’s important to leave the office and have a full break as it allows you to come back fresh for the afternoon.
13:15 – 14:15 – Research and development – We have numerous new projects in the pipeline at any one time and it’s crucial to allow enough research time. Research involves a lot of Googling – looking at previous campaigns, getting ideas from other companies, considering potential outcomes/scenario planning, getting costs, finding partners/external companies.
14:15 15:00 – Taking calls and catching up with external partners.
15:00 – 15:30 – Updating marketing spend spreadsheet – A part of marketing involves keeping track of spending and establishing success of campaigns by comparing conversion statistics.
15:30 – 16:00 – Social media updating – This includes answering questions on forums such as Reddit and Quora. Having a presence on these helps to build company profile and shows that we are active and responsive, helping to develop business credibility.
16:00 – 16:45 – News update – Every couple of weeks we hold an all staff company meeting where news and new ideas are shared. This helps to bring our team together and gives people the opportunity to contribute their thoughts.
16:45 – 17:00 – Reading industry and marketing news – Catching up on what’s happened during the day ready for tomorrow! Finding new points of interest to explore etc.
Don’t be the ‘colouring-in department’ warns Marketing Society president
At the Marketing Society Conference in London this week, society president Amanda Mackenzie called on the marketing community to behave more ethically and work to improve its standing in business management.
Mackenzie, who is also Aviva’s chief marketing and communications officer, said the marketing industry needed to be bolder to avoid being seen as “the colouring-in department”.
Dos and don’ts for Marketing Graduates
For marketing graduates specifically, the competition can be exceptionally fierce. Due to the popularity of this career choice, marketing graduates certainly need to make sure they perform to the best of their ability in 2013 in order to ensure triumph in the job hunt.
Video CVs: A help or hindrance when applying for marketing jobs?
Today’s CVs are full of hyperlinks to online profiles, blog spots, digital portfolios and company pages. The next development – something UK recruiters are gradually seeing more and more of – is the video CV, or VCV. The marketing, PR and new media sectors are likely to see an influx of the latest VCVs during 2013 and beyond, marketing HR experts predict.