Experience & Networking- A Marketeer's Success Mantra

When I started off my career years ago, I spoke to a mentor of mine on how should one go ahead in marketing. Is there any certification I can do, is there some small course to build on my MBA. The response was something I wasnt expecting. He told me- If you were in IT, Tech etc certifications and all matter, but when you want to make your career in Marketing what matters more is Experience & Networking. Courses & certifications are there but nothing works better than networking

Years later I dont disagree one bit. Marketing is indeed all about the 2 points he had mentioned.

Experience of trying out different mediums, experience of taking risks, experience of successes and failures and experience of being able to say what you did and what you achieved. As you go up the career ladder, the more you are able to talk and share about, the better would be the scenario for you. A lot of companies dont have the kind of risk appetite and they are fairly closed to experimentation but whats important is for you to be open to the ideas yourself. If you are open about it, you can convince anyone onto it. Not very new experimentation is risky. 

As far as networking is concerned, its about going out of your comfort zone, calling on like minded people, feeling free to reach out and share opinion. Its as simple as picking up the phone and dropping by to meet the marketing manager of another company. How does it help? Nothing better than reaching out to your consumer in collaboration with another brand. The impression it creates in a consumers mind is awesome. Thats where people talk about partnerships and alliances. You can do cross marketing, you can have barter partnerships/initiatives where you not only gain new customers, but it costs you barely anything. Budgets are always limited after all. And this works, I tell this after loads of such partnerships and alliances which has worked wonders for both brands

On a personal front you may gain friends, you may get someone to bounce your ideas off, you may win over mentors, you may mentor someone yourself and the same goes on. Thats where so many networking groups have come up where you can meet like minded people, thats where something like Linkedin thrives so much

I don't say Networking & Experience are the only 2 things if you want to succeed in Marketing but these are 2 which you cannot ignore. So if you wanna be a successful Marketeer, drop your inhibitions, let down your guard and go all out to try, to fail, to succeed, to win. Go all out to meet people, talk to people, make friends, discuss ideas, give your opinions

Would love to know your views and opinions on the same, feel free to post your thoughts below. After all as I said, Marketing is all about sharing opinion and networking ;)