My journey as a digital marketer

I never planned to be a marketer.

I don’t know if that is a good thing or bad.

All I knew was I loved reading and writing and I was damn creative. 

My parents never forced me into any one career direction and encouraged me to find my own path. After completing my college education, I started looking for opportunities in 2005. I joined in a content role in my first job - and came to two quick realisations - I needed to be in an outgoing front ending role (yep, that's me) and I need to get a degree to do this.

So after working for nearly 3 years, I enrolled in a full time MBA course from 2008 to 2010 . I chose marketing and finance as my specialisations. I interned the first summer at GSK Consumer Healthcare (an FMCG company) where I learnt firsthand that marketing was actually a science and not just some academic mumbo jumbo. I ended up learning a lot about marketing research in that single stint - and that actually helped me, not just academically but even later in my career. 

I worked in various roles in marketing since  - content & communications, digital / social, PR, events and now in a more commercial role [check out my LinkedIn profile here, but my anchor has always been marketing]. It is what has kept me going, professionally and personally - these past many years.

When I started, digital had not yet exploded. Print marketing was still considered important. Social media was just about to take off. I experimented with some lead generation through social media in early 2010 - it seemed to work. It wasn’t this crazy thing that it has become now.

Over the years, I learnt new skills - and realised this was the only way to survive and move ahead in marketing [basically, everywhere]. So whether it was SEO, SEM or social media marketing, I kept on learning through whatever I medium I could - webinars, videos, books, events. Learn, unlearn, repeat.

I decided to give structured learning in digital a try - so I enrolled in a course in digital marketing, delivered by a university in Europe. I realised that despite a hefty course fee, no course could teach me digital. I was mildly crestfallen - but I decided a quick recovery was the best option.

I did what I could best do at that moment - start learning by myself. I had been writing blogs since 2007 - but in 2014, I launched this very blog, Digital Marketing Conclave. I started small and kept implementing everything I learnt using the blog as a platform. Whatever new I learnt elsewhere, I used the blog as a springboard. And so it has been for many many years now. So in a way, I used the theory I learnt from the course and vetted it out in the real world using the blog.

I loved my transition into marketer and realised this is what I always wanted to do. I would have languished in any other role. I am most happy speaking to customers, understanding their problems, doing some market research. I love marketing and I think it is a huge bonus for me that my passion & my work are at the intersection of my skills.

What has your journey been in marketing? Did you always want to be a marketer? Are you happy being one? Let me know in the comments section below.