Modernizing Your Marketing and Staying Ahead

Change is a natural part of our careers, especially in the interactive marketing industry. The media and marketing landscape shifts dramatically year after year, new technology tools emerge every day, and us marketers need to be able to keep up. But what do you need to stay ahead of the curve? How do you manage your career to manage this ever changing landscape? And what should organizations do to meet these new demands?

Our March monthly event featuring Optum’s Tami Reller will help us modernize our marketing and navigate all this change. In the meantime, let’s look at the 5 ways organizations and individuals can embrace modern day marketing and continually adapt to meet future needs.

1. Stay curious. Traditional means of education are taking a beating with the advancement of online learning solutions like Lynda and Online Marketing Institute. It’s never been easier to learn new skills. Companies need to embrace the changing learning landscape by encouraging employees to seek out opportunities to grow, and allocating resources to make that happen. Employees need to make time to challenge themselves with new ideas and learning opportunities. The learning doesn’t stop when you graduate from school. Find the time to work on yourself and it will pay dividends for your employer and your career.
2. Own your failures. If you’re constantly winning, you’re not pushing hard enough. Organizations that embrace failure are organizations that are innovating. They realize that a focused approach to new corporate innovation will lead to both opportunities and failures. Encourage and embrace failures, learn from them and get better. As a professional, seek out organizations that are willing to try new things with an understanding that not everything is going to be a huge success. After all, we learn more from our failures than we do our successes.
3. Find the smart people. You’ve heard it a million times – surrounding yourself with smart people will challenge you to get better and provide opportunities for growth. Smart people are everywhere. Look for ways to network up and network down. Find the smart people. Our connected world makes it easier to share work and reach out to others. If you see a cool project or read about some great work, don’t be afraid to reach out and connect with those responsible.  Make time to meet new people, listen to them and build lasting relationships. Relationships might be the only true currency we have.
4. Unlock your intrapreneuer. If you missed the February MIMA event, spend the time watching the full recording. Nancy Lyons hit the nail on the head with her message. Gone are the days of the legacy workplace where the focus is on directed output and production from the top down. Inspiration can come from all levels and organizations need to embrace this concept if they want to unlock and retain talent. That’s why intrapreneurship is so important. It allows a person or group of people inside an organization to take and solve real problems that grow a business. If you are running an organization, find your intrapreneurs and give them an environment to shine.
5. Collect experiences, not paychecks. At the end of the day, we all work to make money. But remember that over time money will come and go, and with those changes comes new pressures and obligations. Unique experiences are something you hold on to forever. Find interesting work that you are passionate about and the money will follow.

Careers last a long time and it’s likely that what you’re doing this very moment will be vastly different 10 years from now. By collecting experiences, staying curious, and embracing your fears and failures you can continually adapt to the changing business landscape.

Organizations around the world are struggling as much as individuals to adapt to these changes. By creating transparent, open and innovative environments they too can ride the change. If you’re curious to see how one of the country’s largest B2B organizations is embracing change, join us for our Modern Marketing event as Tami Reller, CMO at Optum tackles moving an organization from a traditional approach to a modern marketing machine.