The following is an opinion piece written by our online marketing executive Andrew, who completed a part-time online marketing course in Dublin before starting as an intern with RingJohn earlier this year. He has since secured a full-time placement with us. We felt that his fresh insight into how online marketing is taught would be very useful to those providing training in this area (count us in there). We believe in training and more importantly, learning – especially in an ever-changing industry like ours. Please read on with an open mind, and let’s see what we can do to improve things.SEO
Okay, your boss has sent you on a “2-Day Intensive” course in the hope that on your return you will be the secret weapon – able to increase online conversions by, what can only be described as an astronomical percentile and leap tall buildings in a single bound. You find yourself sitting in a class room (or that one meeting room where the air-con never works), surrounded by your industry peers, everyone eager to become experts in the area of online marketing. I have been there, believe me, I understand. I would like to tell you about my experience of online marketing training, and indeed – how I found out that putting theory into practice doesn’t always work.
A little insight into my story first. Picture it – it was December 2010 and I was in a job that had no relevance to marketing, offline or online. Bills needed to be paid and it was an easy option for a while, but I just hit a point one day where I needed to get my marketing career back on track. I had had enough and since finishing my studies with the Marketing Institute of Ireland I was determined to get back into my field of interest. So I decided to sign up for the first available online marketing course that I could find (that was within my budget). As anyone would, I researched all the various online marketing courses on offer before making a choice. I looked at lots of different factors before choosing one – price, availability, accreditations offered etc. I quickly realised that there are a lot of (what I could only describe as) half-baked courses out there trying to be something that they are not. Can there really be so many schools offering “expert” qualifications in online marketing out there? It felt like many of these so-called academic bodies were just trying to cash in on what was quickly becoming a “must have” qualification on the already bloated CV. However, among the established and well reviewed courses that I looked at, I did find one that fit just right. It covered all the key areas of online marketing that interested me – except one, but I’ll come back to that later.
Soon enough, March 2011 rolled around and I was on my way to my first lecture, happy to be getting on with my career and looking forward to a time when I might be able to work in an area that genuinely interested me. I thought to myself, “I understand how advertising works, the psychology, the target audience, all that jazz. I am pretty tech savvy, I own an iPad for Goodness sake. I have a pretty good idea about how the internet works – this is going to be a walk in the park…right?” Wrong.
I quickly realised that what I thought I knew about how business works online didn’t mean anything. That’s right, diddily squat. Sweet FA. I had just entered the ever-changing world of online business and felt like a green newcomer instead of the learned professional I thought I was. It was a lot to take in at first, I was thrown by the many abbreviations used in this industry and it took me some time to get to grips with what it all meant. Finding out about how Google works (in as much as any of us can) and their complex algorithms was a real eye-opener for me. I imagined how confusing all this stuff must appear to the average small business out there, and how problematic (not to mention difficult and expensive) it could be to rank well in organic search. But I didn’t want to lose focus. I wanted to learn about this stuff. More importantly, I needed to learn about this stuff if I wanted to succeed.
Right from the beginning of the course, the class was told that to really gain an understanding of online marketing we would need to do a lot of additional reading and research outside of course hours. This was frustrating. I though to myself, “What? When? What am I paying these guys for then exactly?” Like everyone else on the course, I was already putting in a full working day and going to class in the evenings. Now I was expected to find time and resources for additional research and reading. I suppose I could have gone through the next 6 months without sleep, but I managed as best as I could.
We began with the theory behind implementing a digital strategy – so far so good. From there we ventured into online content production and distribution channels. All this theory was starting to make sense. Armed with my new found knowledge I was ready to take social media head on. So it’s not just Facebook and YouTube then? I should’ve known. Case study by case study, we dissected successful and not-so-successful social media campaigns. We looked at page-after-page of screen shots (I was doing what I could to fill in the blanks – who, what, where, when and why). Before I even had time to learn the definition “Social Media is…” we had finished, and it was on to the next module.
Next was pay-per-click advertising (or PPC to us professionals!). I was looking forward to this one. We concentrated a lot on Google Adwords. I could see the appeal. So easy to setup and use, so easy to lose money and spend too much. The immediacy of Google Adwords allows you to see relatively quickly if you have made a complete hash of your campaign or if in fact, it it likely to be a success. But again, I was bombarded by case studies and screenshots. All this theory was great but what was I supposed to do with it? We continued through this module, spending time evaluating ad copy and being walked through the basics of Google Analytics. Now I knew this was an intensive course, however I was afraid to take a breath in case I missed anything.
So after a brief encounter with web technologies and design, trying to understand prototyping and wire frames, it was off to SEO-land (that’s search engine optimisation to you and I. Or search engine optimization as the Americans call it). SEO was one area that I knew the least about starting out. I heard the word “crawlers” and trust me, Google bots were not the first thing that sprung to mind! We were introduced to this module with, yes you guessed it, more screenshots and case studies. I am sure you are seeing a pattern emerging, as indeed myself and my class were. Don’t get me wrong, I understand this method of communicating information is necessary. How else is the theory passed on? We looked at “Title Tags”, Meta Descriptions”, “H1’s”, along with site content, structure and layouts. We gorged ourselves on all the theory, laid out in front of us like a Christmas dinner. When we were finished, we were stuffed but surely we knew everything there was to know about SEO. Not so Joe!
All good things come to an end, as did the course after six months of hard graft. In the meantime, jammy fruit that I am, I had managed to land an internship. There I stood, with all this knowledge of online marketing, and so eager to divulge it all. Little did I know that all my theory based knowledge was pretty much useless without the opportunity to put it into practice. As soon as my internship began, I realised how many holes I had in my training. I hadn’t been taught about how to deal with multiple PPC accounts or how to design/develop ideas for custom pages for Facebook.
Don’t even get me started with the real-life difficulties of link-building. Links, links, links – they are the key to ranking well in organic search. My colleague described to me how links for a site are a bit like X Factor. Links are like votes for the sites in question. The more links (the more votes), the better. You really need to spend a lot of time and effort to get a website those quality votes (ask Louis Walsh). I was told on the course, “get another website to link to yours, Google loves that”. Too simplistic by half. And what I wasn’t told about was all the backroom grafting that was involved in achieving those links. Be creative, negotiate with site owners and hustle when you need to. I didn’t see that on the course prospectus! I finished my course with what I now know to be a false sense of security. Did I know everything worth knowing about online marketing? Not a chance!
As promised earlier, although the course covered all key areas there was one exception that I felt was really lacking – the practical module.
From my own experience I can tell you this – do as many 2 day intensive courses (or even 6 month intensive courses) as you like, but at the end of the day if you lack the opportunity or the ability to get some get hands on experience then this new found knowledge is likely to be a big waste of time and money. Since beginning my internship I’ve come to this conclusion – I knew how to do it, I just didn’t have the “know-how” to complete it. That’s what the professionals are for!
I am still learning every day, in fact some days I think I know even less than I thought I did. But then I have great days, when I learn something amazing and new, and I think about how glad I am that I made that step towards the career I have always wanted. I urge anyone looking to improve their lot with further education to absolutely go for it – just make sure you do lots of research, find the right course and ask as many questions as you can!
http://www.ringjohn.com/blog/online-marketing-training-insight-from-an-insider/?utm_source=Nov%2BNewsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Article%2B1&utm_source=Circulator&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Online%20Marketing%20Training:%20Insight%20from%20an%20Insider
