My life through 20 years of marketing madness!

I never in my teens, imagined a professional life in marketing, let’s face it, like most teens I didn’t really understand what the hell corporate marketing was! Today, most will see marketing as online advertising and maybe websites and yet there’s so much more to marketing.

However, when I still think about the objective of marketing, I still really summarise it as:

Getting the right information, to the right people, in the right mindset at the right time.

It always sounds so simple when you put it like that, but that simple goal can be hard to achieve as you add in elements such as data, deadlines, technology, and budgets!

I’ve spent the last 20+ years of my career honing my marketing skills in the technology and professional services space with the objective or getting the right information, to the right people in the right mindset at the right time. But, believe me it's not all plain sailing in today’s digital age. With so many channels, so much content from so many companies, standing out from the crowd, owning your space, and attracting the right clients is hard. As a marketer you create, test, refine and sometimes scrap things altogether! But this is where experience counts.

My marketing career has straddled the most innovative period in marketing history. With the introduction and fast rise into digital technologies. I love this image below, showing the complexity of just digital marketing now – it’s insane!

But the complexity and sometimes the excitement of all of the above is what often leads people off at tangents with their marketing. The feeling that you need to be on the next up and coming social platform, can often make you take your eye of your strategic objectives and just suck time, focus and money from you.

I’ve been incredibly grateful in my career to have worked with forward thinking, strategic, ambitious leaders who believe in a clear business strategy and aligning marketing with that strategy. This has led to me being able to push the boundaries of marketing in professional services. Yes, I work on day to day lead generative tactical campaigns but I've also been able to really bring strategic thinking into marketing, using thought leadership to create long term brand differentiation in a very crowed professional services market. So, marketing strategy is one of my big passions.

I’m also incredibly passionate about brand. Your brand is one of your most important assets and yet still so many firms see brand as their logo, their brand colours, and their website. Whereas, brand is so much more, it’s about your:

• Promise
• Personality
• Look
• Voice
• Service
• Attributes
• Memorability

All of this has led me to where I am today, running my own marketing consultancy, Kardo Marketing, helping professional services companies and companies in the B2B marketing space. I’m now taking all that knowledge and passion to help companies stand out from the crowd, be more strategic and reach their goals by building strong brands, creating differentiation and doing great marketing.

So, here's to my next decade of utilising technology, digital platforms and marketing knowledge to help companies reach their strategic goals.