Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a fud-free, fluff-free, no-nonsense podcast for marketers looking to work smarter.
I’m your host, Mia Fileman – a marketing strategist with over two decades of experience, and an entrepreneur.
I’m tired of marketers telling you what you want to hear. Instead, I tell you what you need to hear. During the show, I chat with creatives and strategists about all the aspects of marketing, but especially marketing campaigns. Unpacking and dissecting marketing campaigns is what I do for fun.
Got Marketing? is brought to you by Campaign Del Mar – the marketing education platform where marketers and entrepreneurs go to upskill.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Hello everyone! Welcome back to the Got Marketing? Podcast!
How are you feeling? Overwhelmed? Unsure about where you should be focusing your marketing efforts? I absolutely hear you.
Marketers today are being pulled in all different directions. And so, I have pulled together a free webinar on how to prioritise your marketing efforts. I’m going to put it in the show notes so that you can go away and watch this brand-new training that will give you clarity and reduce the overwhelm when it comes to your marketing priorities.
Jumping into the show for today, we have got such a great chat lined up for you. We’re going to discuss a few things in today’s episode, including search engine optimisation or SEO, and blogs, but especially we’re going to talk about marketing education – one of my favourite things!
When I started my career in marketing a very long time ago – 21 years ago – tertiary qualifications were essential. But my degrees – yes, I have two! – did not prepare me at all for working in marketing. To be honest, not a lot has changed since then in that regard.
I speak to recent graduates every day who have finished university with expensive degrees but without hands-on skills for working in marketing, so I really want to discuss this today.
“Is it time that we reimagined marketing education?”
To have this juicy chat out with me, I have invited my friend Marcus onto the show. Now, I want to tell you a fun story about how we met because it’s a good one.
Like many of you, presumably, I meet most of my friends on Instagram these days. It starts with comments on each other’s posts and then it goes to a DM. After we’ve sent about 200 DMs, we then jump on a Zoom call, and we get to know each other face to face. Six months later, we might even catch up in person. That’s exactly how I came to know Marcus. I also engaged him to do the search engine optimisation for Campaign Del Mar.
A little bit about Marcus Dunn. He has a background spanning retail, IT, automotive, and most recently adult education – not that kind of adult education. Education for adults.
Marcus has accumulated a wealth of what he considers “generic experience,” consigning him to what feels like a life spent working in one nondescript office after another. It was only in the past five years where he experienced something of a career epiphany, properly exposed to digital marketing, specifically SEO which resonated with him hard.
Armed with a new set of skills which opened up a whole range of career options, he set off down a new career path, and he hasn’t looked back.
Welcome to the Got Marketing? show, matey!
Marcus Dunn 4:10
Thank you! Thanks for having me!
Mia Fileman 4:12
Absolute pleasure. You and I have such great conversation banter back and forth.
Marcus Dunn 4:20
Absolutely!
Mia Fileman 4:21
Pretty much this podcast is me inviting my clever friends onto the show and just continuing the DM conversation, but we hit record.
Marcus Dunn 4:32
Always a lot to talk about and not enough time.
Mia Fileman 4:34
Exactly.
Well, that is very true because I want to keep this snappy. Let’s dive straight into it.
You have recently wrapped up a role in adult education. I’d love to hear your take on whether you think university degrees are still valuable for people working in marketing.
Marcus Dunn 4:55
Look, I think they are, but – as you said – there’s a lot of problems. You come out of it three years later with a really big debt and not a lot of real-world experience. How many people do you know who are working in careers with degrees that they’ve actually studied in the same area? They don’t. They come out and then they’re looking for a career change. Look at every second contestant on Master Chef.
Mia Fileman 5:20
Good example.
Marcus Dunn 5:21
No one is doing what they actually have studied because I think they are probably burned out during the process.
I think there’s definitely value to them because it teaches you a whole lot of other skills. It teaches you how to focus on something and see something through – although a lot of people drop out along the way as well. But it’s also a case of, when you look at the industry these days, particularly the digital industry, think how things were three years ago. Your curriculum is not changing in real time. Pretty much the curriculum you started with is what you have finished with and it’s probably three years out of date.
I think there’s a lot of value there, but I also wonder if you’re also sabotaging yourself to a degree for missing out on that real-world experience.
Mia Fileman 6:05
Totally. You’ve made some really, really good points.
I think my degrees were valuable because – like you said – they taught me how to research and they taught me how to analyse. They did provide me with some really great foundational strategic knowledge, but the main benefit of my degree was that it got me the right jobs.
Marcus Dunn 6:25
Yes, that’s the thing. It looks good on a bit of paper.
Mia Fileman 6:28
That’s exactly right. It sounds ridiculous.
Marcus Dunn 6:30
It’s an expensive sentence on a bit of paper.
Mia Fileman 6:32
Yes! I was very fortunate that, when I graduated, I got a job with Vegemite.
Marcus Dunn 6:39
There you go.
Mia Fileman 6:40
The only way that I got that job was because I was an absolute marketing nerd and graduated with distinctions from my commerce degree at a well-known Melbourne university. That’s all they took. Those were the only graduates that they took.
But things are very different now. I’m an employer and I could care less. If you have demonstrated that you know how to think like a marketer, of course, I’m going to give you a job! I’ve got a really good example.
There was this candidate. She had not studied marketing, but she was very passionate about a particular cause. The cause was domestic violence. She created this Facebook group with 5,000 members in it. She pulled together a rally. She pulled together a website. I was like, “Sweetheart, you have built a campaign!”
Marcus Dunn 7:31
That’s a pretty good resume.
Mia Fileman 7:32
It’s a very good resume! It didn’t cost her $40,000 to go and do that. It was something that she was passionate about. She showed me that she knew how to create an integrated marketing campaign. I’m like, “Well, you’re hired.”
Marcus Dunn 7:46
That’s exactly right. It’s real-world experience.
I think we’re living in a world now where you can actually demonstrate those kinds of things a lot easier than you could five or ten years ago because you can actually just go out and start creating something and prove that you can do it and that’s your resume.
Mia Fileman 8:03
Absolutely.
You and I agree on the premise that humans learn by doing. What does this look like? What do we mean by this?
Marcus Dunn 8:13
Look, this is a thing. I know people who get into this education cycle where they learn something, learn something else, learn something else. You’re never actually finishing what you’re starting. If you’re finishing, you’re then going on to someone else. Permanent kind of students.
I think that’s some of the reasons why they change a lot of the funding in education – why you can’t get government funding if you’ve got a higher qualification – to keep these people from continuing to learn.
But I know from my experience with doing online courses and things like that because you can basically learn anything online for very cheap these days, but the difference is whether you’re actually putting it into practice or not – that reinforcement learning.
Before I started down the digital marketing path, I was really close to wanting to write a novel. I have always wanted to. It’s still in the backburner. That’s a bit of a dream.
I was just obsessed with writing education, listening to everything – podcasts, YouTube videos, articles, books, the works. I was learning, learning, learning. Then, I started writing because the hardest bit about writing is actually writing – actually sitting down and putting pen to paper is the hardest thing.
Then, I got into a different cycle. I got into an editing cycle. I wrote a couple of short stories. I must have edited about 50 times. I edited the voice out of it. I edited the passion out of it – the words. But I learnt so much from actually doing that.
It was the same thing when I started down the digital marketing path. I basically learnt the fundamentals and it just clicked. It absolutely clicked. I went through the whole range of fundamental topics – everything from content marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising, SEO, email marketing, the works.
What that helped me do was identify the ideas that actually resonated with me then I could change my course to focus on those. But to actually learn them, I got to a point where I had to actually do something about it. I was just not remembering it. I had to start a website. I had to actually start optimising it and going down that track.
I think the same is true with anything. It’s comfortable learning things. It’s very comforting that you’ve always got something extra to follow, but you’ve got to get to a point where you’ve actually got to start doing it and putting it in practice as well.
Mia Fileman 10:37
Absolutely! The whole premise of theory is that it is theoretical.
Marcus Dunn 10:43
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 10:45
We need to put it into practice for it to be practical.
I want to illustrate this using an example. You can go and learn all the Siri of creating and automating an email sequence.
You’re like, “Yes, I understand how it needs to work in theory. Your website needs to talk to your CRM which then needs to talk to your email service provider. Got it. Awesome.” Now, go and do it because there are so many nuances – depending on the particular platform that you’re using – which website to which CRM to which email service provider. That’s just a whole other thing that you actually need to go and figure out for your tech stack.
Someone telling you, “This is how it works – these three systems need to talk together” is only giving you 50 percent of the value. The other 50 percent is actually you going and making sure that that configuration works for you. It’s really important that we learn by doing.
Marcus Dunn 11:45
It’s hard, too.
Mia Fileman 11:45
Yes, so hard.
Marcus Dunn 11:46
It’s not until you get started that you start getting the interface of four or five communication software together that is like, “Where the hell does that code go? How is that formatting that way? No one is actually opening it.”
You have got to actually look at the stats and assess things based on actually doing. You just can’t do that from a lesson. You can look at someone’s example, but until you’ve actually done it, it’s a very different story.
Mia Fileman 12:09
Totally.
The one caveat to all of that – going back to my university degrees – was that my degree taught me strategic foundations and I’m really grateful for that because I can then apply those strategic foundations to almost anything.
Even though I’m not a social media marketer – there are social media managers and social media gurus – I actually do pretty well on my own social media even though I have a love-hate relationship with it. That’s because I approach my social media like I approach every marketing channel which is from strategic first principles rather than tactics. It works quite well.
Marcus Dunn 12:48
Yes, this is another part of it.
You’ve also got to pick your battles, too. When you’re looking at social media marketing, it’s a whole different ballgame itself. You could spend all of your time doing that, or you could learn enough to know what you need.
I know you’re a big advocate for knowing what you’re doing, but to a point where you’re not actually doing it. How many people do you know that are trying to actually keep on top of their socials and they’re hating it because they don’t have the time?
Mia Fileman 13:16
That’s exactly right. So true.
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One of my issues with marketing education today is that there are some essential skills for working in marketing – nonnegotiable. You need to know these things. Otherwise, you are hamstrung from the get-go. But graduates from universities – or even tapes – don’t have these skills.
I want to talk about what these skills are so that marketers turning in can go, “Yes, I’ve got all of those!” or “Oh, I better go and figure that out.”
I have my list of essential marketing skills, but I’d really love to hear yours.
Marcus Dunn 14:36
I think the biggest things you need for these kinds of skills is you need to have an understanding of the fundamentals. This is what you can learn at university. You can also learn it in a course.
If you don’t have an understanding of the “why” of everything you’re doing, every little tactic or trick or what-not is not going to really make sense. You’ve got strategies that cover entire aspects of marketing, then you’ve got individual tactics to realise them.
But if you don’t actually understand why you’re doing those things at the basic level, if you don’t understand things like customer personalities and basic selling principles and all the reasons why you’re marketing, you’re not going to have an understanding of it.
I think the problem with this day and age is it’s not so much a problem, but you’ve got access to everything. Everything has its own individual piece of software.
Imagine how graphic designers must feel in an industry flooded with Canva templates. Everyone’s configuring templates, but do you know the design principles behind that template? Why are you choosing that font and that font? Why are you laying things out that way? Why are you using those colours? You don’t understand the principles in the background. Just because an app can actually do it for you, it’s not hitting the spot. You know what I mean? I think that’s the problem.
There’s a whole range of skills you need. I think it’s probably more about being resourceful and taking the opportunity to understand those underlying things, but I think it’s a very different world these days, and a lot of things are automated, and not necessarily in a good way.
Mia Fileman 16:12
I completely agree with you. That’s why I have a program called Marketing Foundations – to teach people the fundamentals. I should get you to write the ad captions for it because what you said was so perfect.
Marcus Dunn 16:22
I’ll use AO.
Mia Fileman 16:23
Please don’t.
I completely agree with you. Let’s get specific. You need to understand the anatomy of a marketing funnel. What is a marketing funnel? This speaks to how customers make decisions. Whether you sell Ugg boots or life insurance, customers follow a similar decision-making process. We need to understand what that looks like. This is one of those fundamental things.
Then, we need to understand basic brand strategy. Who are we targeting? What do we want to be known for? How will we achieve this? These are the fundamental marketing things that we need.
When we get into technical skills, there are some absolutely essential skills that all entrepreneurs and marketers should have in 2022 which is being able to make content on their own website.
Fun story. My incredible web designer (17:20 unclear) just had a baby. She has built the entire Campaign Del Mar website and is now on maternity leave. I don’t want to bring in a new designer who’s going to mess with that. Lo and behold, here I am flexing my graphic design skills and web design skills.
Marcus Dunn 17:36
What could go wrong?
Mia Fileman 17:37
Yes! What could go wrong?
I can’t wait six months until (17:41 unclear) gets back from maternity leave. Why not just get in there and do it myself? My website can’t wait three months for it to be updated. It can’t wait a week for it to be updated.
Being able to make content updates on your website is absolutely essential. We need to take back control of our own business and not be constantly relying on third-party suppliers and staff members to be able to do really simple things.
Marcus Dunn 18:08
I think, as a minimum, you need to be able to update your website.
Mia Fileman 18:11
As a minimum.
When I say content updates, I mean adding videos, adding links, cloning landing pages, updating all the content, and creating a simple web form or opt-in form. Absolutely essential because the next essential skill is that you are able to create and trigger email sequences.
If you don’t know how to create the web form, then you can’t trigger the email sequence because email marketing has delivered the best results for marketers ten years in a row. Whether you are in e-commerce or a service-based business – like Campaign Del Mar – email marketing is your best bet as a small business.
Being able to create and trigger email sequences is essential because this is something that you will do week in, week out, month in, month out. Once you start outsourcing this, you will always be outsourcing it. Being able to have the skills and do it yourself – if you need to – is essential.
I also think it’s really important in 2022 that you are able to make a simple video and edit it using iMovie. Whatever. Who cares? Do it on iMovie. Video marketing is an essential skill. You should also be able to take a decent photo on your smartphone.
I think you get my drift. There are some things that are a one-off that we can outsource – like, our entire brand identity. The logo and the entire branding suite can be outsourced. We can outsource little bitty projects like someone doing hashtag research for my Instagram. But if this is something that you are going to be doing week in, week out, then I think it is an essential skill that you need to curate.
Marcus Dunn 19:53
Yes, video is absolutely an essential. Ignore that at your peril.
Mia Fileman 19:59
Totally, especially now with Instagram and the changes with Reels, it is just next level. One of the things that we’ve done to adapt is we’ve decided to record all of these podcast episodes as videos as well as audio and we’re uploading them to YouTube for that very reason which is that video marketing is the future.
Marcus Dunn 20:20
Yes, definitely.
Mia Fileman 20:23
How can we do better when it comes to marketing education?
Marcus Dunn 20:29
I think it’s a case of you just need to specialise. I think you need to identify what you’re good at and not spread yourself over every single topic. Work out what works for you. Find a couple of skills that synergise with it.
You know the T-shaped marketing concept? Have you heard of that?
Mia Fileman 20:49
No, tell me about it.
Marcus Dunn 20:51
You specialise in a range of skills. It might be email marketing, content marketing, paid ads, SEO, et cetera. Then, you’ve got the specialist skills under it. In SEO, for example, you’ve got technical SEO, content writing, optimising, backlink acquiring, and those kinds of things.
You’ve got a broad overview of everything because you can’t really ignore channels. You cannot spend your time on all of them because you’ll have no time, and you’ll have no sanity. But you can focus on one or two, become a specialist at it, and have a very good understanding of the other ones.
Mia Fileman 21:28
I love that! That’s such a great framework to follow.
Know enough to be dangerous across the marketing landscape, but then choose to double down on niche in a particular area and get known for that. Be like, “That’s Marcus, the SEO guy!”
Marcus Dunn 21:46
But the thing with SEO is it’s a world in itself.
There are specialty areas. There are people who just focus on outreach. All they’re focusing on is acquiring backlinks – whether it’s organically creating content to get them or whether they’re actually emailing people, asking to do a guest post, or they’re actually buying them.
There are people who specialise in nothing but that. There are people who specialise in nothing but technical SEO and making sure people have got fast websites. There are people that do SEO copywriting and that’s all they do, but they’ve got an overview of all of it.
Me with SEO, I like the strategy aspect of it, but I look at it wholistically because you can have a fantastically optimised website but, if it looks like crap, it’s not going to do it. You’re trying to pull traffic into the website, but if it’s not actually converting into customers, it leads itself to conversion rate optimisation.
You’ve got to have an idea of how design and the layout of the website and the colours of the website and the content on the website is all playing into that same area. I don’t look into email marketing. I know how it works and I have a really good understanding of it, but I don’t have the time or the headspace to do it.
It’s the same thing with social media marketing. I use it basically for networking. It just doesn’t interest me. It doesn’t spark any joy creating content on Instagram.
You’ve got to focus.
Mia Fileman 23:16
Focus and also play to your strengths and your skills.
I think that a lot of the reason why small businesses really struggle with their marketing is because they are following advice from people that tell them, “You should do this. You need to do this. You need to be showing your face on Instagram stories. You need to be creating Reels.” That feels very out of alignment with them.
Exactly like you said – if you specialise in a particular area and do that extremely well, you can be extremely successful. Neil Patel became famous because of SEO and blogs. The way that he marketed his business was with these incredible high-value blog posts. Everyone has read a Neil Patel blog post.
He started introducing offers in amongst his blogs and then had this great search engine optimisation. He didn’t need to focus too much on social media and email marketing. His blogs were his marketing engine. We see people that are Instagram coaches. All they do is Instagram. They do it extremely well. They are very successful and it’s all they do.
Now, the difference between Neil Patel and the Instagram coach is at least Neil Patel is building his marketing engine on an owned engine which is brand controlled and no one is going to rip the wool from underneath him.
I do have some issues with Instagram coaches, especially with all the algorithmic wings that we must bend to, but the logic is there. If you choose one thing and be really good at it, then you’re never going to run out of customers. I see that with myself.
I love campaigns. There’s not a lot of people focusing on integrated marketing campaigns. It’s what I’m known for. It’s what I love. I can become that specialist in campaign marketing even though I am a generalist marketer. I know all the things. It’s that I choose to play in this particular area.
Marcus Dunn 25:19
Yes, I guess the problem from your side is, if you’re niching down on campaigns and you spread your wings over fundamentals and email marketing and all of these other things, it’s like you’re relying on people searching for marketing campaigns which – to me – is kind of the deep end of marketing because I think people realise the importance of it when they have already been doing it which is why I suspect a lot of your students are established marketers. But then, you get a name for specialising in that, and then you become the person.
Mia Fileman 25:52
Yes, that’s probably a whole other podcast episode. That has been a real challenge – accepting that I’m a marketer for marketers. I’ve really tried to not accept that because there’s a whole lot of imposter syndrome.
Like, “Who am I to say that I’m better than other marketers that I train them?” which, of course, is nonsense because you’re a marketer and I’ve hired you to do our SEO and I’ve hired (26:16 unclear) who is a marketer to do our web design and my good friend Odette to teach me PR. It is nonsense, but it is so true how our mind plays tricks on us.
Marcus Dunn 26:28
You’ve got to know what you’re talking about though because some people like to enrol in stuff just to prove they know more than the teacher.
Mia Fileman 26:33
Really?
Marcus Dunn 26:35
In the world of short courses, that’s a thing. It’s very common.
Mia Fileman 26:39
Gosh! Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but I will brace myself for that.
Marcus Dunn 26:44
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 26:45
Good news! There’s more to this chat. Play the next episode to hear the rest of the conversation.
