Digital Marketing and Me.
Often, I am subject to digital marketing and there is likely to be customer personas that closely resemble many of my traits. There is probably a vast amount of data that various retailers have collected about where I get my information, what I like to buy and how much I am willing to spend.
Digital marketing is an everyday part of modern life for most people. As a design engineer though, it wasn’t something I’d ever considered learning about. So what changed my role within the digital marketing world?…
Why I chose to learn about digital marketing.
Firstly, I’ll explain where the journey began. I’m a design engineer working at a relatively small company. As a retailer we have a few standard magnetic products but most of our business is developing bespoke solutions.
Usually the sales department will get an enquiry from a customer which is developed in a product specification. The design team which includes myself will then work through what we believe the best solution to that specification is.
We had an enquiry come through to us asking if we had a product that was approved to the European lifts standard. This is a standard that had been on our radar for a while but not something we hadn’t ventured into. The reason that the product had never been developed is because the testing and certification costs are fairly significant. Even with a customer enquiry we would still need a little more confidence that there was a good chance that we would make money.
After a discussion about how feasible the project was, the idea came up of doing some digital marketing to gain information from any other potential customers. Udacity’s Digital Marketing Nanodegree seemed to coincide with the timeline for approving the product. So from a business perspective it made sense to invest a little in the course fees instead of gambling a lot on the approval costs.
Normally marketing is dealt with by the sales department and a subcontracted company. In this instance it wasn’t because the pace of the project meant that ideally, it was done by somebody that already knew the product in detail. There are a lot of transferable skills from my job role to marketing. The analytics appealed to the engineer in me and the creativity involved tempted my design side.
To conclude, although not initially on my radar, digital marketing came to me as a need of the company I work for. As a result, I have found the subject engaging and that my skill set meant that I could hit the ground running. I’m sure the skills I acquire over the next couple of months will allow me to move my project forward.
