Question and Answer with Rustin Nethercott

Q: Describe your career journey, how did you earn your current title? Please include any required education, certifications, skills, or personal qualities you believe helped you achieve your current role. How did you decide this industry is where you would like to work?

A: I actually studied psychology back in school, only took one or two marketing classes, but I found myself pretty early on working for the [University of Vermont] Business school doing graphic design and helping them with marketing communications to start getting involved in the business world. I grew up in very rural Vermont, so business was a very foreign concept, so I had to learn on my feet. After graduating from UVM, I ended up packing all my dress clothes into a backpack and hitchhiking all the way to Boston with no job lined up or anything.

I made a list of every company I wanted to do marketing work for and pretty much went door-to-door talking to everyone I could until I luckily found a job and didn’t have to admit defeat

I ended up working at Constant Contact, an email marketing service provider, in a content marketing role creating collateral. It was work very much focused on helping people market their small businesses, not as much product-focused as general marketing. 

I loved the creation aspect, but I wanted to be a little closer to driving revenue, so I found a job at a start-up called Appcues in a Growth Marketing Manager role, which was more about owning the customer acquisition side of marketing, driving leads to sales and converting leads, which was less brand-marketing and more sales-marketing. I was hire number 28 and by the time I left, there were about 80 people employed.

After that, I spent some time consulting thanks to an amazing opportunity with this senior marketer whom I really respect. I worked under his wing for a year, learning as much as I could about marketing consulting. He then ended up introducing me to the company I am now at, GRIT. GRIT is an amazing company that designs, builds, and sells the GRIT Freedom Chair, an all-terrain manual wheelchair built out of mountain bike parts.

Once I got in touch with this group, a super small team of wonderful people, I absolutely loved it. I started as a consultant there and shifted to working full-time after a couple of months. Now, I’ve been there a year and run their marketing program, just trying to grow the company as much as possible. 

I was always fascinated with what we care about as people, what makes us feel connected, and what provides meaning to us. Marketing gave me a chance to work in the business world but still not abandon the ideals of connection and being person-centric. I think really good marketing should feel really good to the person consuming it as well. It should make them feel more understood, which is what I was always fascinated with in the study of psychology, what makes people feel recognized and less existentially isolated. My goal is to do that with marketing as much as possible.

Q: How does your role interact with others? (co-workers, customers/patients/clients, other companies/organizations, and the community?)

A: We’re a very small team with about 6-8 people so we all work very closely together. Right now, we are trying to create a bit more organizational structure as we continue to grow, to avoid the “too many cooks in the kitchen” dilemma. We are all trying to solve problems and we want everyone contributing who we think could help solve that problem. Every day is in a state of collaborative flux; we can get together and have a super casual conversation in which we’re trying to solve something. Often, the issue at hand isn’t in one person’s domain but because they may have valuable and relevant experience and perspective, they always get looped into the conversation.

We’ve done a bit of co-marketing and partnerships. We’re in an interesting industry where there are not that many people doing what we do in the way that we do it. We sell directly to the consumer which is very different from the way most of the industry operates with distributors. So, because the other businesses’ models haven’t developed the brand in the way we have focused on, there is not as much overlap in terms of the market as you’d think. We do work a lot with partnerships, for example, we have a contract with the VA (Veterans Administration), we work with state and national parks to help get chairs there, and other programs as well.

Q: What do you like best about your current role?

A: I just love problem-solving. I love being able to solve problems in a lot of different areas. For me, because I am a team of one (aside from managing a few freelancers), it’s mostly just me in it trying to solve marketing problems. It means that every day, I’m going to be solving a hundred different problems in a hundred different areas. The parts of my brain I get to use are very different depending on what problem I’m solving. I do a lot of operational and analytical thinking going through data and going through our building systems, but then I get to take a break from that and write copy for a few hours or do some graphic design, or talk to customers, or brainstorm with team members. It’s an awesome way I can utilize all these different parts of myself that I really like without one becoming stale or one that I have to base my entire identity around.

Q: What kind of challenges do you come up against in your current role?

A: You’ve got to be pretty scrappy when you’re a small company. I have been at big companies with big budgets, but where we are here, we’ve got to make the most of what we have. That means in terms of how much we spend, our bandwidth, hours in the day, etc. I also think that the challenges are more fun because we are selling a very different product in a very different way than most people.

My background is in software, and it’s great that I’ve gotten that experience, but I pretty much had to throw out that whole playbook as soon as I got here. There’s not a lot of equivalencies in terms of our work that’s being done especially in Boston, which is so SaaS and B2B focused. We can see what other people are doing and I can talk to some of my connections to get suggestions, but I am in a unique position that I’m kind of here alone. I have to make things up as I go along, we’ve got to move quick, we’ve got to break a lot of things, and we’ve got to try a lot of things that just don’t work. I think when you give yourself the freedom to make those mistakes, and when you base success around learning rather than set metric success every single time, it opens the door to so much more information. I’d rather launch a campaign that didn’t necessarily hit it out of the park but learn so much and apply it later to 10 different campaigns rather than winning and not knowing why. So, it’s never going to be easy and you’re rarely going to have a layup of a day where you drive so much revenue without trying, but it’s always going to be a day full of problems that I enjoy solving.

Q: How do you expect your role or industry to change over the next decade? The next few years?

A: In my space of performance marketing and demand/growth, automation is getting so good. All of these tools and ad platforms are being able to run themselves and that’s only going to get better. But I think rather than putting anyone out of work, it’s just shifting the skillsets people need to a slightly higher level. So, rather than knowing how to manually set the right bids on an ad, you have to know the overarching strategy. A little less tactics and a little more strategy is where a lot of people are going to have to direct their careers.

Q: What advice would you give a high school student who is interested in working in your industry?

A: Don’t stress too much about what major to choose – while people do like to still see the credentials (although you are getting that less and less, especially in marketing), any major is about as good as any other, in my experience. I majored in Psychology and it’s never held me back–people don’t really care or ask why I didn’t study marketing, but I would say it is a very hard industry to go into without any experience.

It’s a classic catch 22, you need experience to get experience. To get an entry-level job without ever having an internship in something marketing-related is going to be very difficult. I’d say if someone won’t give you an internship, create one. Create your own blog, create your own website, do your own SEO, design the thing yourself, write the thing yourself, don’t wait for someone’s permission to start doing marketing. You don’t need that. You can create your own stuff, you can grow your own following and social accounts, that’s the amazing thing now that we no longer really need people to hold the doors for us. The barriers can be overcome by yourself.

You don’t necessarily need a college degree to learn, you can always look for ways to improve yourself online because there are so many amazing courses for free. You just have to start. It’s an industry where you should always be looking for ways to improve yourself and you should have fun doing it. I always prioritize improving my skill set and getting better at what I do. You’re going to end up a better marketer that way in the long run. Prioritizing your own learning and growth over salary is what really ends up paying off.

Question and Answer with Stephanie Cwalina

Q: Describe your career journey, how did you earn your current title? Please include any required education, certifications, skills, or personal qualities you believe helped you achieve your current role. How did you decide this industry is where you would like to work?

A: I received my BFA in Graphic Design and Digital Arts. I started going to school for Graphic Design, where I ended up taking some of the Digital Arts courses as electives. I really enjoyed them, which encouraged me to double major. Digital Arts includes courses like 3D animation, 2D animation, and web production whereas Graphic Design is more of a broad discipline where you can do anything from print to web to digital.

After college, I worked as a magazine designer for three years before deciding to go into marketing design, because there were many job opportunities and it was a strong sector to work in. The cool thing about marketing is that almost any company has a marketing department. So you can work in pretty much any industry. So far, I’ve worked in tech, education, and am now in the finance industry. It’s been helpful to have such a broad range of experience and has allowed me to work on a wide range of projects.

Any job requires soft skills, but for designers, being able to collaborate and communicate with a broad range of teams is essential. From the very beginning of a project, it is important to speak with your coworkers or clients to understand what they expect from their creative request. Then when you receive edits or feedback, later on, you will need to be able to work together to get to the root of what they really want out of the project and collaborate for the best outcome.

Being able to accept criticism is also a huge part of being a designer or working in any creative field. There will be times when clients do not like your work, so you have to develop a very thick skin. It’s important to be able to analyze and take something constructive from whatever they say and to use that to create something better or more in line with what they are looking for.

Q: How does your role interact with other others? (co-workers, customers/patients/clients, other companies/organizations, and the community?)

A: There’s often a lot of collaboration within a design department depending on where you work. Design teams push each other to do better work and feed off of each other’s ideas. In marketing, I primarily work with writers and marketing managers, who are basically my clients. Often as a designer, it will improve your work to collaborate with the writer because sometimes their headline might inspire you to design something a certain way or the reverse, you might want them to modify some of their message to better fit your design. So that back and forth with writers is especially important so that you are doing work that complements each other.

Q: What do you like best about your current role

A: It’s a nice and collaborative environment and I have friendly co-workers, which really helps make it fun to go into work every day.

Q: What kind of challenges do you come up against in your current role?

A: I think a big challenge with design is that it’s subjective. There are, of course, general design rules regarding things like readability. However, when designing a project from scratch, there is often no one “right” answer, which can make it easy to second guess yourself.

Q: How do you expect your role or industry to change over the next decade? The next few years?

A: To start, design trends are continuously evolving, and that’s never going to change. It’s impossible to know which aspects of today’s design will look dated in the future and which will stay relevant, but it’s important for designers to pay attention to what is trending to make sure that our work stays fresh.

Additionally, as technology changes, digital design will always be changing along with it. For example, when I first started to learn web design, we were primarily viewing websites on our computers. The designer essentially only had to design one view of the website, and it was a much simpler process. Now we view websites on our computers, phones, tablets, etc., so web design involves designing the same page multiple times for different devices and aspect ratios while making sure that you have a design that is consistent and successful on each device.

There’s no way to know what new technology will be created in the future, but it is certain that as technology evolves, design and the design process will have to evolve with it.

Q: What advice would you give a high school student who is interested in working in your industry?

A: Don’t be afraid to experiment and start learning. It can be discouraging if your work isn’t groundbreaking right away, but the more you design and play around, the better you’ll get. Some of the best designs I’ve created took a lot of time and analysis before I was able to get them to work. 

I would also suggest looking for design inspiration in different places: read a design magazine or find a brand that you think is effective and look at their website or follow them on Instagram to see the posts they put out. It’s important to know what’s trending and to analyze the work of others to figure out what makes that awesome design work.

Question and Answer with Francesca Quinn

Q: Describe your career journey, how did you earn your current title? Please include any required education, certifications, skills, or personal qualities you believe helped you achieve your current role. How did you decide this industry is where you would like to work?

A: The role I hold didn’t exist 20 years ago or even 15 years ago. I actually have a major in cellular/molecular biology. But after school, decided I wasn’t ready to settle into a laboratory. So, after school, I first worked in a research company managing data for medical research projects. There I discovered a love for data and analytics. However, it took me another 3 years, a cross country trip, working in a few startups and the internet bust of the early 2000s to finally go back to school. 

I earned a certification in client/server programming and began a teaching fellowship in database development. In 2005, I took a business course at a marketing agency building out calling databases and routines for marketing initiatives. I did that for three years for work being executed globally. When our London office grew to a point that they needed someone doing this for them fulltime, I raised my hand and relocated to London. Around this time, my company partnered with an up and coming organization called Eloqua (now owned by Oracle and leader in their industry). This company focused on marketing automation and delivering personalized marketing experience using the digital body language of prospects as they interact with your web and email collateral. My company needed someone to learn this tool and given I was their technology person, I was trained to do so. I then began delivering and executing end to end automated marketing campaigns for a host of clients, while also still building and cleaning databases. 

Eventually, the work grew and I became Head of Technical Services for their EMEA team with 5 people reporting to me. At some point in 2012, after almost 8 years with this company, it was time for me to move on. I accepted the position of Marketing Automation Manager for Arkadin (now Cloud Communications division of NTT) looking after their instance of Eloqua and training and supporting their marketing team on the use of the tool. 

As the industry grew (there are now more than 7000 marketing technologies on the market), so did my role. The rise of the marketing technologist began and I was at the forefront with my company. I now look after the entire marketing technology stack. I review technology for risks and to ensure they meet business needs. I work with IS/IT on integrations so we do not create silos of data. I work with marketing teams to help them source the best technologies to meet their business needs and I own vendor relationships. In addition, I help guide the business of marketing strategy, process building, and resource training to ensure we get the most out of our investment. This role is relatively new to the business but is starting to be seen in many larger organizations. Universities are now offering classes specific to marketing technology and the role it plays in business. At this point, there are still only a few of us and many have similar circuitous pathways in their journeys to here but soon this will be a more common role in all businesses. It is perfect for those who love technology, data, and also the creative side of marketing.

Q: How does your role interact with other others? (co-workers, customers/patients/clients, other companies/organizations, and the community?)

A: I work with people all over the world. My current role allows me to work from home but it can also be an office-based role. I have a team that sits in London that reports to me and we have internal stakeholders based in Atlanta, Chicago, Paris, London, Singapore, Melbourne, and more around the world. I am often on calls with VPs of Marketing and Sales as well as with Sales operations and marketing operations teams and our local and regional marketing teams. I also spend a lot of time working with various IS teams, especially our SalesForce team in providing good customer service to our business end-users.

Q: What do you like best about your current role?

A: It always challenges me. Things are ever-changing in the marketing technology space. New tools come out every year. Other tools consolidate or deprecate. So I have to keep learning in order to make sure I am on top of the industry. I also love that it gives me a chance to work with some many teams globally.

Q: What kind of challenges do you come up against in your current role?

A: A lot of people still don’t understand what marketing technology is for or what my role does. Often people view tech as the way to solve all problems at the push of a button. And tech is often blamed when things don’t work. However, it is really a three-pronged approach of people, process, and technology that allows us to be successful. There first two being the most important. This means onboarding and successful adoption can make or break a new tech. I have had things fail because the processes didn’t exist or the people weren’t ready for a new tool. This can be frustrating and there is a lot of teaching involved. However, it is also what I love. When we make things work and everyone aligns together on a process, it is very rewarding.

Q: How do you expect your role or industry to change over the next decade? The next few years?

A: This industry is only going to grow. Marketing technology will have peaks and troughs but it will also continue its upward trajectory. New challenges like GDPR and other privacy regulations or the rise of Artificial Intelligence will mean the industry needs to reinvent itself again and again. Having someone who understands and can guide a business on the ever-shifting landscape is becoming more necessary, not less.

Q: What advice would you give a high school student who is interested in working in your industry?

A: Don’t just study marketing or technology. Study both. Take classes around data management, analytics, and reporting. Understand why data underpins everything that marketing does now. Understand marketing campaigns and customer journeys and experiences. This role is still so new that you may not find courses strictly on it but learning the two specialisms together will set you up nicely for finding a role post-college. I have often hired people because they understood marketing data and then taught them the technology.