MARKETING JOURNAL.
Teaching Digital Marketing for BCIT
Learnings from teaching university level marketing
It’s been over 10 years since I closed the chapter on my undergrad marketing studies at the University of Denver. Whether it was serendipity or plain luck, shortly after graduating I landed an internship in Lake Tahoe working for a company that was noticing a new sector emerging in marketing: Search engine optimization and social media management to help businesses get more website traffic. This brave little company was on the crest of a wave of modern marketing and I was lucky enough to learn how to paddle in with them.
I still felt like a student.
Several awesome companies and roles later, I found myself standing in front of my own university-level class, as the teacher.
Earlier this year, BCIT and the team behind its satellite campus, the “Whistler Learning Centre” recruited me to curate a mixture of traditional marketing theory and current digital marketing techniques. Honoured and intimidated all at once, I poured over the construction of my dream curriculum for digital marketing. Our class was chock-full of lively discussion, brain-stretching questions and what my colleague often describes as “growth opportunities”.
A couple of big hairy questions came up as recurring themes during the course that I think every marketer should hold a mirror up to and look at regularly.
Am I applying too much of my own bias to my business’s marketing?
Probably. Create marketing personas at the start of your journey to understanding your customer. As your marketing matures into digital channels offer up the segmentation to machine learning in areas like Facebook/Instagram ads or Search and Display.
More reading: Avoiding Psychological Bias in Decision Making
Am I still reading about what’s current?
I’ll admit it. I was hitting delete and snooze repeatedly on my go-to marketing news outlets until recently. When I used to work on a larger marketing team I used to spend the first 15 minutes of my mornings reading about current trends to see what we could take advantage of in our marketing. Prepping for this course has reminded me, there’s still plenty more to learn about our field.
What am I measuring?
It’s really easy to get lost in the weeds of vanity metrics like “Clicks”, “Shares” and “Followers”. Just because our profession has merged with the web doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to solve for profit with every marketing campaign. Figure out your KPIs and get cozy with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Guide for Beginners
Want to join me for an upcoming course? Drop me a note, let’s chat!
Three Of My Favourite Remote Working Rituals
Habits and time management strategies for balancing marketing clients and cycling through South East Asia.
We just wrapped up our final leg of South East Asia by bike in Krabi, Thailand. We've cycled over 1,500km, through 17 provinces, and three countries. We've recharged in three major metropolitan cities, visited dozens of temples, two spiritual caves, one UNESCO World Heritage Site and experienced numerous strange and severe sunburns. To say the least, we've done a lot in six weeks. But amongst the chaos of culture shock and wanderlust I also kept up a small roster of clients.
I'll skip the sugar coating. It wasn't easy balancing remote work with travel but it is possible. Here are a few of my most successful working habits that kept life in balance on the road:
A rare luxury - working outside at the Bamboo Cottages in Vietnam.
1. Sprints and Blocks
We created a cycling schedule that worked back from some key work days. First, I am lucky to have a team that dedicated one day per week to being online and having meetings (Thursday). This was a great time to work collaboratively with the entire team, a super valuable day for remote workers. Second, I needed a day to put my head down and get the work done prior to the Thursday meeting. My partner and I would then take these two blocks of weekly work and build a cycling schedule around them.
Much easier to enjoy these quiet moments amongst the trees when work is taken care of for the day.
On those dedicated days or afternoons (depending on our schedule) I stayed inside, drank water and worked on recovering from the ride while getting everything crossed off my to-do list. The rest of the week I keep an eye on conversations and new work being developed by allowing notifications from Slack to ping through on my phone. However, barring banter and short conversations I reserved all billable hours for my designated work time. It sounds rigid, but it was important for me to draw a line between work and play in order to deliver my best. Answering a tricky question while sweaty and hungry isn't a great plan!
Work when you can. This was on a hot and sweaty train ride between the Cambodian border and Bangkok, Thailand.
2. Rise and Ride
We adjusted our sleeping habits so we could ride in the cooler hours of the day. It may sound drastic but some days the temps reached 40 degrees with humidity hovering at 70%. We found a really quiet and lovely rhythm starting our days at sunrise and ending them not long after sunset. This also meant that we could do the bulk of our riding early in the day and check emails or tackle projects in the oasis of A/C in our next hotel room of the journey in the afternoon.
3. Recovery and Wifi
If projects piled up beyond my weekly allocated time blocks, for example when we launched the Savage Panda Snowboards brand a week or so back. My partner and I would plan a few extra days away from cycling in a nice city or resort. The panic of looming deadlines and big projects can ruin a ride. So if stress starts building, make a plan to pull over and lighten the load as soon as possible. This meant I had more time to focus on work, easy access to eat well and an opportunity to hit the yoga mat while planning the next move.
Some epic exploration between working and cycling in the temples of Angkor Watt, Cambodia
Have any other tips for working remotely? I'd love to hear them!
Yesterday, shortly after starting my workday, I was informed that my role had been eliminated at Rocky Mountain. While this decision wasn’t entirely surprising given the broader trends in the bike industry over recent years—it’s still tough. I loved working with my team and the wonderful people that worked across the company.