How being a Brand Manager made me a better Digital Marketing Manager.
Recently I became a Digital Marketing Strategist with the company I'm working for after working a couple years in Brand Management. While this is not my first encounter with digital marketing and social media management, my experience as a brand manager has certainly shifted my approach to digital marketing. How?
Here's what I learned from being a brand manager that helped me to be a better digital marketing strategist.
more Understanding of the client
What better way to understand what the client wants than to be the client for a while. It was one of the reasons I wanted brand management experience.
Honestly, brand management was different from what I initially anticipated. I expected the creative aspect. Having worked some years in client services with an ad agency, the brand building and promotional aspect was familiar to me. I can probably execute promotions in my sleep from conception, to briefing, to directing artwork, to print and execution, etc.
What I did not expect, but later learned to enjoy, were the other aspects of the brand that helped to focus and direct my promotional approach. The more analytical side: the sales, logistics, pricing, projecting etc. As tedious as these aspects of the brand could be at times (omg, so. many. spreadsheets!) when compared to the more "glamourous" creative side, I learned a lot from this side of the business and it changed my perspective as a marketer for life.
Having to regularly monitor and report on these aspects of the business, learning to really understand the movement of stock and the supply chain, learning more from the commercial and sales team, these became more important to guiding my promotional strategy.
For example, if you do not have a pulse of your supply chain, you could easily find yourself as a brand manager putting energy and resources into a campaign for a product that you may not have sufficient stock for. Why run a campaign to sell something at a reduced price when there will not be enough stock to meet the increased demands you are hoping to generate? On the other hand, if you are overstocked in a particular item, perhaps that is where you might want to offer your special, to stimulate movement of that item in trade.
It is important to pay attention to all the information before you and use it to guide your marketing strategy.
I think understanding these aspects of the business contribute to the creation of stronger content plans which are grounded in strategy.
More strategic
If you have only worked on the creative side, as a digital marketer it is easy to become allured to what is popular or flashy at the time. You may find yourself proposing plans with the following formula: These are the latest trends, here is how your brand can use them.
Instead, you should reverse the process and be asking:
What are your brand's objectives? Ok, here is what digital marketing can do to help you achieve that.
Digital marketing should not be operating in isolation from the brand's overall marketing plan. It may seem so simple and so obvious, but far too often they are treated separately. How many times have you seen someone present the latest features or trends in digital marketing without truly taking into consideration what the brand really needs? Does it fit in with their overall strategy or their budget? Is it appropriate for their product category?
I have been guilty of it myself in the past. In a genuine effort to help brand managers understand what is available to them, I try to break down the platforms and all their various features and the latest trends. Then the flood of information quickly becomes overwhelming for some brand managers.
Being a brand manager showed me that I could still come up with creative solutions, but that I could take a more focused approach to determine the best solution for the brand and sometimes the trendiest content isn't necessarily the right fit for a brand.
Speak their language. By framing the digital marketing strategy within the context of the brand's overall objectives and how it will help the brand manager achieve those objectives, they are also more likely to retain and positively respond to your proposal.
Measuring what matters
In my early years of digital marketing, it was easy to fall into the trap of focusing on and reporting vanity metrics. Brand management reinforced what I knew to be true:
"Likes don't determine your worth." -Sean McCabe
Where is your brand in the marketing funnel? What is the objective of the digital campaign? If it is to raise awareness, then perhaps yes, "reach" and "likes" could be a good indication of how many people have seen your message.
Even if less seasoned brand managers request these metrics, the brand's objectives for the campaign should be discussed beforehand so you can develop content accordingly and put things in place to measure performance.
What are the objectives for your brand? What are the brand's short-term goals? What are the brand's long-term goals? Do you need to raise awareness of particular items? Are you trying to build brand loyalty? Are you trying to convert your competitor's customers? Are you doing a giveaway? Will it be in-store and you need to let people know about it or will there be online entries?
Each of these will require different approaches and different goals which will, in turn, determine how you measure the success of your campaign. Sometimes they may be related to "likes" but sometimes you are going to need to guide the brand managers to consider so much more.
Understanding competitors
As a brand manager, I was encouraged to be out on trade regularly. At least once a month we should find ourselves in stores across the trade. Especially for retail, it is one of the best ways to observe what your competitors are doing at the point of sale: price specials, point of purchase advertising, promotions, banded offers, cross-merchandising, sampling, etc.
For retail, it is also an opportunity to observe consumers' baskets and behaviour at the point of purchase. Observing trade with someone with a trained eye is an experience I could not have picked up from a textbook alone.
While working in advertising and social media management, I did observe trade differently but once again I was mostly focusing on the creative aspect. Being a brand manager taught me to observe beyond the signage and packaging and to zoom in on details such as the importance of space, how that could relate to market share, how a misplaced item in another brand's space could indicate a switch in the consumer's decision, and so much more.
Anyone in brand management will tell you, these observational skills become both a blessing and a curse. An intended swift run to the grocery quickly turns into a trade visit if you are not careful.
Why is observing trade important? In the age of information, as a digital marketer, you may believe you are getting all you need to know about your competitors by observing their presence online.
You competitor's online presence will only present half the story.
Understanding what is also taking place on the ground and observing your competitors and consumers at the point of purchase may provide invaluable insight into your category's strengths and weaknesses.
Conclusion
Does this mean I have learned all I need to know from brand management? No, definitely not. I feel like there is still so much more I can learn from brand management and perhaps someday I will go back to brand management and learn even more.
For now, I am using what I have learned to provide my brand manager peers with more quality digital strategy. I have a unique understanding of what they are facing and this allows me to provide them with more insight as to how digital marketing can help them navigate some of those challenges. Until I get back into brand management, I am using this opportunity to bridge the gap.
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