A Reflection to Digital Media Marketing Seminar Series

Wishbone, jawbone, and backbone.

In the first class, we learned about the three bones of networking. Since then, 12 weeks went by in a flash, covering 11 digital marketing topics, solidifying my belief that I chose the right industry and career path, and it’s a fantastic feeling!

The course Digital Media Marketing Seminars is structured in a way that helps students explore different paths of digital marketing, with experience shared by industry veterans. Each guest speaker has a different career path, and I could relate some of it with my story.

Honestly, at the beginning of the course, I thought it would be a stream of storytelling workshops where some guests would come and share their digital marketing strategies and experiences. However, I didn’t expect how meticulously organized and carefully connected these seminar topics were. For example, our first workshop was on content marketing (presented by ‘Chief Problem Solver’ Cathy McKnight). That was a flying start, and I was super impressed with her presentation and the invaluable career advice she gave us. My key takeaway from that session was the importance of company culture and this line:

“Always consider what you do and what you want to be known for?”

Naturally, I thought the following seminars would explore other key areas of digital marketing - social media, SEO, paid ads, etc. I was a little surprised to see the following three seminar topics were more profound concepts of digital marketing:

• Performance Marketing by Paul Michel
• Marketing Science by Blair Roebuck
• Loyalty Marketing by Lia Grimberg

I was particularly blown away by the presentation from Lia on loyalty marketing. We did explore the concept of loyalty marketing in our database marketing course, but this was on a different level. Lia beautifully explained how all the parts of loyalty marketing, from acquisition to retention, work together in sync, and how marketing science (presented by Blair in the previous seminar) feeds the necessary data to loyalty program strategy. It’s amazing to know that all these are connected to the first seminar on content marketing because none of these will work without proper content.

By this time, I was totally into this course and started to pay more attention to the presentation materials. I highly appreciate the second half of the seminar - group work in the breakout room. I want to thank Wendy for giving us enough time to discuss each topic and develop our ideas and strategies. It was super fun!

Just when we were preparing ourselves to go deeper into digital marketing, Ashley Walsh came with her bombastic influencer marketing presentation. This was particularly interesting because all I knew about influencer marketing was connecting with celebrities and paying them to promote my product/brand. It felt so easy and straightforward. However, after the presentation from Ashley, I was shocked to learn how complex and competitive influencer marketing is. Also, we got to learn about different types of influencers and how to find, connect, and manage influencers using tools like Upfluence and Grin.

It was an eye-opening experience for me, and now I’ve added this to my backup career plan. I’ll learn more about this and run some test campaigns to see the response in the coming days.

Next came Caroline Berryman sharing her experience of marketing in the public sector. I didn’t know digital marketing channels like social media and content would be effective for the public sector, always though the public sector relies on offline marketing only. I was glad to learn that new opportunities are opening up for marketers in the public sector, and people are also responding more to those campaigns.

Jennifer Stoll explained how we could leverage digital marketing strategies to elevate the customer experience. This topic was well-known to us, and we enjoyed learning the actual campaign planning steps to improve customer experience.

Then came Hannah Swinkin. Oh, how can I explain her impact on my future career goals? When I saw that the seminar topic was SEO, I was like...meh! Having worked in this industry for the last six years, I have strong SEO knowledge and how all the parts work. However, it was a bittersweet experience for me to learn about the potential and depth of B2B SEO. All my SEO career was mainly on B2C and a hint of B2B, but the way Hannah explained her day-to-day and how they integrate SEO in B2B marketing… mind-blowing!?

Immediately after the seminar, I connected with her on LinkedIn, and we had a friendly chat. I believe this is the best thing I’ve got from this course, knowing Hannah and how she inspired me to focus on my next career goal…becoming a B2B SEO expert.

On top of this, she thoroughly reviewed my resume, and only after that did I start to get interview calls. I’m so thankful to Wendy for introducing Hannah and having this invaluable connection.

The remaining seminar topics were known territory to me - paid media advertising by Amanda Lee and social media by Mellissa Cicconi and Alyssa BIasucci (both are from Hootsuite). In our last seminar, two of our alumni, Adi Montas and Elle Marie, shared their exciting journey in digital marketing. I’ve connected with Adi and Elle on LinkedIn and kept in touch with them.

Throughout this course, I’ve learned three things that will surely help in my future career journey:

1. Know your worth in the market
2. Know what you can do and want to do, and sell yourself accordingly
3. Be persistent with your networking, make your backbone stronger

This was one of the best courses in the Digital Media Marketing program at George Brown College, which will have a long-lasting effect on my next chapter. A big salute to our professor Wendy Greenwood for guiding us through the process and for her ongoing support.