Social Scientists Make the Best Marketers (well, perhaps...)

I never thought I would find myself immersed in the marketing world, utilizing skills I learned in completely different contexts.

As a Sociology and Psychology student, I have spent four years learning about human minds, relationships, and institutions. I decided to take a digital marketing course with the expectation of discovering a way to implement my interests in a related field. 

I quickly discovered my unique take on the digital marketing landscape: As a digital marketer, I am able to understand the human side of marketing as well as the technicalities of the digital space.

It All Comes Down to People

The most popular articles from the ten I have written to-date focus on A/B Testing, Social Media Marketing, and Email Marketing. I find these topics the most interesting because they are the ways in which marketers narrow in on an interested audience and cater their content for where their leads are—the don't overwhelm new people with intense information, and they don't bore seasoned professionals. Finding ways to appeal to a less-than-interested audience through content marketing and inbound methodologies requires an abundant understanding of the things to which people respond. 

A/B Testing, paired with User Experience, encapsulates the excitement I have for research that I only found in social science fields before DigiMark. In reference to the T-Shaped Marketer, User Experience is the primary area in which I want to become well-versed.

A/B testing with User Experience gives marketers the ability to narrow in cause-effect relationships and implement findings to solve problems. The ways in which information or procedures are presented has an immense effect on people's perceptions. Using psychological reasoning and building variances based on social science findings will give the ability to have valuable experiences in the marketing world. 

It ALSO Comes Down to Data

Each of my articles received a fair amount of traffic and a light sprinkling of engagement. Many of my "outsider" comments and likes came from people connected to Renton School District (thanks Mom).

This summer, I completed the Google Analytics IQ Assessment, the Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification, HubSpot Inbound Marketing Exam, and Google AdWords Fundamentals and Search Advertising certifications. Each of these exams gives me the confidence to use real tools that are used (or resemble) those in the field. The main thing I learned with each of these is how quickly I am able to pick up new skills and feel comfortable performing tasks with which I am unfamiliar.

As before mentioned, I am looking forward to acquiring more skills with User Experience and A/B Testing. However, in reference to the T-Shaped Marketer, I have an understanding of multiple other areas of digital marketing, including:

• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay-Per-Click
• HTML
• Email Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Blockchain
• Social Movement Marketing

I look forward to continuing my education even beyond the university setting. As the people change, so will ways of accessing them.