Networking Blog

"Marketing is networking. promoting who you are, what makes you special, and what you believe in"

In a nutshell, networking basically means developing connections with people in your industry. It is a crucial component of marketing. Your career will benefit greatly from the contacts you make through this process.

I gained a lot of knowledge about networking and marketing from our professor Adam Drutz 's Marketing Seminar series. Throughout this series, we were joined by a number of seasoned marketers who shared insightful stories from their professional journeys.

Since I had no prior marketing experience, I truly believed that this class was exactly what I needed to move forward in marketing while navigating the unknowns. In particular, after listening to all of their tales, I found a recurring theme: when they made the decision to enter the field of marketing, they were not fully prepared. Each of them had some reservations about starting their own business or pursuing a marketing career. a marketing firm, as an illustration.

Regarding the overall quality of our class, our professor Adam never shied away from going above and beyond, despite the occasional technical issues we faced.

Not to mention that for each lecture, we had the opportunity to complete one case study based on questions that had been carefully selected by our professor and that related to the particular guest speaker.

These are some of the speakers who really inspired me :

1. Jeremy Shell (Managing Partner, FuelGrowth)

There are several things I learned from Mr. Jeremy. I learned more about fuel growth and how it markets it through his website dabbed Why Fuel Growth. Fuel growth is a full-service digital marketing partner for brands and agencies. It is also a world-class content producer, and it boasts seasoned professionals who value customer satisfaction. He talked about how he started as a film producer, how he is in marketing now, the whole story behind it, and how to shift careers; he had to get help from Mr. Adams and another friend. From this, I learned that you could be anything you want to be with the right skills and organization.

2. Darren Contardo (CPG Executive, Strategic Advisor)

Darren Contardo mentioned that we should reverse engineer the 4Ps of marketing which is Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement. He elaborated that you can rip apart number one and figure out how to beat them at their own game. He gave some perceptive advice while going through an e-commerce site, and looking for negative reviews on a product such as 2 or 3 stars. He invoked our curiosity when he said that you should ask yourself what the consumer really gets from the product. I learned that sometimes I have to give a little to get a little. I can make my product stand out for example by improving upon existing concepts e.g., by following what Tesla did with their electric cars, their concept was not new, but it was vastly improved upon. I will try to create an experience for my market base outside of discounting products. For example, I can make my consumers feel special by making them part of a community. I now know not to over-engineer my product.

3. Megan Vander Bars (Specialist in communication, Media PR)

Miss Megan v.bars talked about the power of influencer marketing in hospitality she talked about social media management and how important social media is when it is related to hospitality according to the facts that she given us 52% travellers decide to visit a specific place after seeing its image or the video from the friends family or peers on social media and over half of them vacation post photo on social media which they are on. Nowadays huge brands like Marriott are moving Their font size on social media like talk as they can show to more people and it looks more realistic but as always Instagram is number 1 platform for the influencer marketing. She also told us about that the 89% of US vacationer’s cheque social media during their most recent holidays Andover half of them.On influencer marketing she said she saw a real progress and influences can be everything From one off As we can get amazing photos quick content and it is a turn around times and the plus point of the influence marketing is it has a more AI capabilities.

My networking story

It is impossible to overstate how crucial networking is to maintaining a career in strategic marketing.

• I began my networking process by adding my professors as connections on LinkedIn. Later, I developed a connection with some of my speakers.
• By joining groups that were relevant to me, such as marketing interns, I was able to grow my network of contacts. Getting involved in groups is a great way to meet the right kind of people. Furthermore, my network was greatly expanded while I was a sales associate at Zara.
• I spent the majority of my networking time on LinkedIn. It is an excellent platform for connecting with people who share your interests. I found the app to be helpful in my search for a job as well. The connections I'd made there led me to numerous job opportunities.

These are some of the best practices in networking that I picked up along the way :

Listen : Building trust is essential to starting a long-lasting relationship. When you show someone that you care by truly listening to them, they can relax and start to trust you. The connections you make in this way are more likely to be beneficial to you over time. Make sure the other person is the primary subject of your conversations rather than yourself.

Stay in touch : In order to network, you must first make contact with someone. Maintaining contact with them would be the following, more involved step. A regular conversation partner is much more likely to be able to assist you than a one-time contact.

Help others : Volunteering to assist others is critical in networking. Before you ask for someone else's hand, extend your own. This demonstrates that you value them and are not dismissing them as mere "business cards." This, once again, contributes to the development of trust.

Follow through on promises : Always keep your promises, no matter how insignificant they may appear. For example, if you promised to send the link to an online campaign to someone you met at an event, make sure you follow through on your promise. Your contacts must have confidence in you. This increases the chances of them referring you to one of their contacts.