A Day in the life of a Digital Marketing BDM

So you want to be a Business Development Manager? Congratulations. Welcome to a world of schmoozing, cocktails on the golf course, infinite riches and eternal popularity.

Well not quite. But I have had a couple of people ask me recently what I actually do on a normal day so I thought I'd outline. Hope you enjoy.

8am. Head into town (Newcastle City Centre) ready for another day of digital marketing. I get public transport in as parking in the city is a nightmare and expensive. It also takes about twice as long to drive because the roads are jammed and would also mean I can't have any impromptu drinks after work. I'm not much of a planner socially, so lots of meet ups happen on the fly on the day itself, so good not to be tied down.

Breakfast consists of a Greggs bacon and sausage sandwich with a coffee. This give me a great kick start on my target of processed carbohydrates and fatty meats. Joking aside, this does gives me chance to review my LinkedIn activity from the day before. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and don't always get chance to connect and interact with those who commented from yesterday's post, assuming there was one (there usually is). Sitting in the coffee shop watching the world go by is typically where I get the inspiration for today's LinkedIn words of wisdom / nonsense.

8.45am. Once I land in the office, the first thing I do before anything else is get today's LinkedIn thoughts up on a post. Having played around with different types of content and times of the day, it seems 9am is the absolute sweet spot for maximum engagement. A bit like the news, have you ever wondered how breakfast news seems to have a whole new array of news stories, that weren't there on the night time news? If they used up all of their content at the late bulletin, they'd have 3 hours of dead donkey stories in the morning. If you have something interesting to share, I'd recommend not posting straight away and setting yourself a reminder for 9am, to post then.

LinkedIn done, it's time to check the calendar. Nothing too chaotic, I have an 11am morning call with a company whose online presence in no way reflects the success they have had financially. They are definately missing a big trick to hook in an audience they are missing online and make them even more successful. At 2pm I have a visit to a current digital marketing client who requires some web development work.

Once that's done, it's off to my e-mails. Being a sales based role, I'm typically pretty sharp on e-mails and rarely have anything more than half a dozen or so unread. Unlike most in the office who seem to enjoy having their unread outnumber their read. I think they just like bold text.

Some good news! Someone I spoke with before Christmas wants to have a more in depth chat about pricing and working relationships so I fire over a calendar invite for the following week to have a coffee.

9.30am. Today is 'marketing meeting' day where all members of the digital marketing team get together and talk through every client on our books. Each member of the team is responsible for different elements of the strategy so typically we talk about progress against the KPI's agreed with the client. All campaigns are ticking over nicely with one exception, who is slightly behind. We decide for that week to overservice at no extra cost in order to give it the bump to get it back on track and I let the client know the work being done that week and our reasons for doing so.

10am. Prep time! My 11am call has been friendly and relaxed in previous e-mail communications and seems open to new ideas. Prep for a new potential typically involves a scan of their companies online activity, specifically using online tools to check ranking capabilities against competitors. As expected, they come out very poorly against their competitors so I prep my questions to try and establish why. Is it lack of knowledge? Overstretched marketing team? No budget? MD doesn't believe in digital? Who knows, but some decent probing questions should help. I also pick up on some other oddities in their profile to ask them about. There should be plenty to chat about.

Once my questions are prepped, it's time to put together some screenshots to show them. Digital in 2018 is super complicated, and trying to address all of their issues all at once is almost always overkill. I learned this the hard way after months of presenting reams of information to potentials only for them to become disengaged or disheartened with the scope of work involved. So I stick with the 2 or 3 more interesting and relevant pieces of info to show them. At this stage I'm never trying to close a sale, only to show them the possibilities that exist with a digital strategy in place.

11am. It's call time! 10 minutes prior to the call, I send a link so he can access my screen. Once they're connected, I get a notification on my screen and I throw on my headset and get dialling. No matter how many times I do this, I always feel slightly nervous about those initial couple of minutes of the call as it typically dictates how the rest of the conversation will flow. Sometimes they're chatty and friendly, sometimes cautious, even suspicious. Either way, the only way to break down barriers and establish some trust is by asking enough relevant probing questions to gain useful information, but not ask so many that they become bored or feel intruded. It's a very fine line that is different for each person.

Thankfully the call goes well. Their knowledge level was moderate and the angles I chose to show him seemed to strike a chord. He mentioned feeling under pressure to manage all the marketing, offline and online, so naturally there will be holes in the campaigns. I send across the slides I ran through and agreed to follow up in a week's time once he had chance to digest and how to approach the next steps.

11.30am. Once I've picked up e-mails from the last hour or so, it's onto my trusty CRM to log the call I just had and see what 'tasks' I have for today. In my job I speak to a LOT of people. Trying to remember each conversation off the bat is just impossible so I track all communication using this. This includes emails, calls, coffee's, even pints and a rough overview of what was discussed. I can't tell you the amount of times a tiny titbit of information from 12 months ago was used to reignite an old conversation. I do remember them all once the grey matter juices are flowing, but it's nice to have a prompt to get the cogs whirring. The majority of old prospects have some sort of reminder in my CRM, even for months down the line, even if it's just to say hi or send over some hopefully useful observations about digital marketing news from their industry.

I'll typically have around 10 tasks to complete in my CRM each day. Today's tasks include sending an update of rankings against competitors to an old prospect, send some industry news to another, and chase up an outstanding proposal that is due a decision this week.

12pm. The most important hour of the day. LUNCH. Unfortunately at Flow, we have a bad reputation for being gluttons, so any new food fad, delivery service or food challenge is seized upon. Thankfully, today is not one of those days, and I settle for a reuben sandwich. Rock n Roll. I typically always get out of the office at lunchtime and nearly always take the full hour. Burnout is real, so it's nice to see the outside world for a little bit before tackling the afternoon.

1pm. Once back in the office, it's time to grab Dan and brief him on the meeting we have this afternoon. As usual, he is still polishing off his lunchtime Zapatista so I punish him by stealing some. The company we are going to see is already working with us on a digital marketing project that is going well. They have become dissatisfied with their existing developers and want us to pick up some ongoing projects. Dan provides me with some questions we need to ask in the meeting to establish how easy or otherwise the work will be in order for us to provide an accurate quote. At 1.30pm we hit the road and head out to our client.

2pm. Our afternoon meeting goes well and the project looks likely to be slightly more complex than initially anticipated. Rather unexpectedly, the conversation moves towards looking to integrate some form of SEO assistance as part of the development project. Therefore a project that was looking to only involve 2 or 3 members of our team will now be closer 4 or 5. Next step, book some time when everyone is free to process and review the revised brief to be sent across. Easier said than done!

4pm. After arriving back at the office, all of the notes from the meeting are transferred into my CRM, and I check my calendar for the next decent chunk of open space in mine, and everyone else's calendar. Friday afternoon looks nice and free so I block out 1pm til 2pm to get the team together.

A reminder pops up in my calendar that I have a proposal to complete for another meeting from the previous week. This is by far my least favourite part of the job but a necessary evil for securing work I suppose.

5.30pm. A good hour of writing gets the proposal close to a finished product. I don't know if it's my personality type (ooo look something shiny), but proposals usually have to be written in chunks of 3 or 4 rather than locking myself in a room for 4 hours and doing it all in one go. Either way, they get written and proof read by our team before sleeping on it overnight. A tip I learned from networking is that if you have finished a proposal and is not time critical, let it rest overnight just in case you think of something you want to add. If you still feel the same in the morning, then hit send.

And that's it for today! Best of all, as with all interesting jobs, tomorrow will look nothing like today, just the way I like it. Tonight is tenpin bowling league night so a nice chance for a pint and get the competitive juices flowing before starting the whole show carries on again tomorrow.

For anyone who loves the thrill of a complex sell, and values the nurturing of slow burn relationships, this is the perfect job for you. Even the greatest digital minds in the business can only process so much information, so there is always room for creative thinkers to connect new pieces of technology and theories to problems that exist online.

I hope you enjoyed, and I'd of course love to hear your feedback. Ta!