Welcome to episode 60 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we discuss career management from a marketing perspective .
Original Recording Date: 10-23-2019
Topics – Amy Hervey Interview
04:17 – Background on Amy

* Amy is a Marketing Manager for an HR Outsourcing company and has been in the field for over 20 years. Her background is journalism and marketing.
* The role of a Marketing Manager varies a lot based on the size of the company, industry, and what is being marketed.

* In Amy’s case, this includes everything from social media platform management, website management, press releases, e-mail campaigns, promotional print items, online learning platforms, Sales support, etc. She is a one person Marketing department and loves her job immensely.

5:30 – Marketing, Influence, and Staying on Brand

* What is the difference between product marketing and influence marketing?

* Product marketing is promoting a product or service by increasing brand awareness.
* There is a strong trend in the industry to lean on "influencers" to promote a product. This can be paid or unpaid. An example would be someone wearing a popular clothing line and giving feedback on positive and negative attributes to others.

* People would rather hear about a product or service from someone they can relate to than to hear from a company talk about its own products and services. The influence gained from this can often penetrate new markets the company could not on its own.
* This made John think of social media influencers. We’ve talked about peer to peer influencing (i.e. users of a business product), but there is also the mass retail influencer.
* Many people are waiting to get the proper amount of information before making a decision. They want it from someone with which they can identify.
* Word of mouth is not new, but that’s what social media influence is. It is one step away from customer testimonials but not looked at in the same light.

* Go back and listen to Episode 36 on customer advocacy programs as a compliment to this episode.

* Employee advocacy programs and user advocacy programs

* Employee advocacy programs empower employees to share messages that the employees choose. It is a nice way to provide guardrails for content and branding.
* Employee advocacy programs really do make a difference in getting the message of the company out to others but with a personal spin.
* A curated message is one thing, but it is important to cultivate a socially active workforce to activate this kind of effort.

12:14 – What is a Marketing Culture?

* Check out an article Amy wrote on this topic.
* We are all Marketers. It is only a matter of what we are marketing.
* Onboarding a new hire is a chance to give new employees the tools to succeed and is an opportunity for the employer to make the employee feel welcome. Providing information about the company voice (fonts, voicemails, e-mail signatures, design guidelines, etc.) is important to keep the brand strong and consistent.