A series of posts interviewing successful marketing professionals, which we hope you’ll enjoy if you’re thinking about a career in marketing, looking for the next step – or you’re just curious about what other marketers get up to.

Jake Johnson

Name: Jake Johnson

Job Title: Marketing Executive

Company: Gradwell – internet telephony and services for small business

Quick description of your role: General doer of all things marketing for the leading supplier of internet-based telephone services to small companies in the UK. My time seems to be dominated mostly by brand management, content creation, social media, copywriting, customer comms, internal comms, web content management and managing our PR agency.

1. How would you define ‘marketing’ in one sentence?

When I first started in my job, my idea of marketing was just about trying to get as many people to call the sales team as possible. However, as I’ve progressed I know that it is more about meeting customer needs, so I’d say that marketing is:

Positioning a business to provide a market with the service, information and communication required to fulfil their needs and wants.

2. Potted history – how did you get to where you are now?

I started in the Yellow Pages call centre! Although I wasn’t thinking about a marketing career but focusing on meeting my targets, I found that the way in which questions were phrased really influenced the way people reacted. Choose the right words, match the result to their needs and both parties will be happy. Say it wrong and, even if it is exactly what they need, you can chase them off. I then moved into doing Google Adwords for my current employer. This allowed me to play around with words again, but in a textual way. As the company grew, there was a need for more marketing activity asides from Adwords, and I naturally got involved, so I became a Marketing Assistant to our MD.

3. How did you secure your current position?

During a rebranding process (delivered by Bryony’s company Clear Thought Consulting), with several big projects going on at once, I demonstrated my ability to juggle them all and still deliver on time, while handling several suppliers at once. I knuckled down when things went wrong and timings were tight. Rather than wait for responsibility to be given, I took the initiative, presented new ideas and nurtured them. Then at my next review I pointed all of this out to my manager. They agreed and I was promoted to the Marketing Executive role.

4. What’s the favourite part of your role?

I seem to enjoy the communications elements, such as copy, social media and customer relationships. I really like creating relevant blogs, developing customers newsletters/announcements and engaging with our audience across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and our GetSatisfaction feedback forum.

5. What’s the least favourite part of your role?

Where my favourite part allows me to be creative, it is not surprising to find that my least favourite are things such as reporting and calculating ROI. While I understand these play a vital part in the marketing process, I find I just get my head down and bang out the results – but without too much of a smile.

6. Is marketing more left-brained (logical) or right-brained (emotional)?

Both, but at different times. When planning and strategising, the logical brain has to be engaged, to ensure the decisions made are for the right reasons and for the good of the company. When that moves on to implementation the right-brain comes into play as more creative aspects are needed to communicate the correct messages.

7. What’s more important, experience or qualifications?

I am nearing the end of my CIM Professional Certificate course, but while that has taught me a lot about the theory and how to approach marketing, it is with the real hands-on experience you get the actual ins and outs of the job. That is what I feel enhances my marketing skills more.

8. What one essential skill should all marketers have?

A comprehensive attention to detail. The best marketing campaigns in the world can be let down by little things that just needed a few minutes before being sent out to the big wide world. Scrutinise your copy. Test the calls to action. Ensure that all your efforts are not wasted.

9. What’s been your biggest professional learning experience and why?

Briefing. Before learning about correct briefing procedures I was happy outlining what we wanted to do in a quick email or phone call. This meant that projects were not as organised as they could be, took longer than required and weren’t always exactly what we needed. After learning about the briefing process, things became so much smoother – for us and suppliers – as well being done on time and to our exact specifications.

10. What advice would you give someone starting a career in marketing?

Act like a sponge! There is a lot to learn and lots of people to learn from. I have gained most of my day-to-day skills from working alongside people and soaking up their experience.

Gradwell is an internet services company, providing internet telephony, hosting, broadband and email services to UK small / micro businesses. www.gradwell.com

Find Jake on Twitter and LinkedIn.

If you’d like to appear in this series, please do get in touch