Why I love marketing

The goal of marketing is simple - tell the right people about your product at the right time, in the right way and make it easy for them to buy it.

The fun is in the details - hunting out your targets, working out when the time is right, testing to see what message clicks for them then smoothing the way.

It's a fantastic mix of science and art. For someone like me with a psychology degree and a love of writing it's a dream job.

There's a pretty strong misconception that marketing is trendy people doing very little other than coming up with punny ad lines, spending a fortune on billboards and the odd TV ad. The reality is that most of the work is analysis, planning, implementing and reporting. Puns are only for the prose...

Lame jokes aside one of the great aspects of the jobs is that you can see it works - find the right audience, optimise messaging, remove blockers and you will see the difference in your bottom line. If you don't your marketing isn't working.

I believe that for every business or charity there are ways to create funnels or journeys that will generate leads and business - or existing ones which can be improved. It's one of the great joys of marketing - you're never done. There's always another campaign to try, a funnel to optimise, a new audience to engage with.

I'm one of the lucky ones, I fell into my career and I love it.

I'd like to preach from a pedestal about how I thoroughly researched every option, took a long hard look in the mirror and made a calculated decision about my skill set. I did none of those things.

I applied for a job answering calls about investments, worked in the business for a while and realised that the people having the most fun and getting the biggest pay cheques were all in marketing so I applied for a job in the marketing team.

As a voice of absolutely no authority I'd advise anyone else to do the same - apply for a job in marketing.

You can find your niche there - there's a role for everyone. There's a role for the analysts who wants to spend all day on excel hunting for patterns in data, there's a space for the creative who is passionate about finding new ways to present ideas, the planner who lives for gantt charts, the writer, the UX specialist, the graphic designer, the video producer, the social media guru, the product expert.

On the off chance that I haven't converted you to spending all your time and energy on marketing talk to me about what you and your business need - if I can help I will.