Every year, the Girl Scouts bless us with their cookies: Thin Mints and Tagalongs and Do-si-dos, oh my!
And this year, I had the opportunity to give back to our local Girl Scout Troop by helping them envision what a career in marketing could look like.
I sat down with the middle schoolers and led a discussion on what marketing is and which skills to cultivate to best prepare for an occupation in this field.
“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life” - right?
I think a lot of people assume that those working in marketing are inherently creative, artsy, outgoing people - but that’s not me. I’m introverted, and I enjoy research, writing, spelling, grammar, etc.
What I’ve found to be true is that the field of Communications is so vast that there’s a valuable place for all different personalities and skill sets. So don’t let yourself be pigeon-holed.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Well, shoot, sophomore year was when I had to answer that question for real. I was leaning toward Journalism but had no idea what I was going to do with that degree.
I set the stage for the Girl Scouts: In the year 2007, Instagram didn’t exist. Twitter was only a year old. Heck, 2007 was the year the first iPhone came out.
Although technology and social media were relatively new concepts at the time, we all knew that there was opportunity there. We knew print journalism would likely be replaced. It just wasn’t well defined at the time.
So, no, I didn’t want to write for a newspaper because I wasn’t sure how much longer print newspapers would exist.
At the same time, a degree in “digital journalism” or “social media influencing” didn’t exist either! The Marketing, Advertising, and Journalism degrees at the time couldn’t have foreseen exactly where technology and social media would take them, but I chose Journalism because I figured it offered a wide enough range of opportunities - research & writing for newspapers and magazines (in whatever form), publication layout & infographic design, basic website design, etc.
Especially because the 2010s have seen so much rapid growth with technology and social media, all marketing and journalism professionals have had to adapt quickly to the trends and practices of the time.
Over the years, we’ve become more reliant on mobile devices, thus sparking the concept of mobile-responsive design and app development. We live our lives on social media and are heavily influenced by the ads and sponsored posts there, so marketing professionals have had to learn how to use all of those tools and tailor messages accordingly.
The most important lesson that I wanted to impart on the Girl Scouts was the fact that software programs now track many of our activities online without us knowing.
I referenced phone recording and live chat software as well as user searches logged by Google and Bing pay-per-click advertising.
It’s important to note that this information helps inform the content and tone of what you see online and isn’t meant to be used with ill intent. For example, if a person visits a company website, they likely have a question about the product or service, and they’re looking for the website content to answer that question. They may call the company so they can just ask the question to a real person and quickly get an answer. A marketing professional could go back to that phone recording, recognize that the website content does not answer that question, and go publish a blog post about that question. Therefore, going forward, anyone else with that question can simply find their answer online. Now the website is more helpful, the customer service or sales support phones team is more productive, and the user can more efficiently find the product or service they desire.
For the last decade, search engine optimization (SEO) has been king of the search engine results. Marketing professionals use special skills and strategies to make sure that their content offers the best match (and most helpful content) to a user’s search query.
But it seems like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has started to take over. With this strategy, companies pay to be shown at the very top of the search engine results. In some ways, this listing of ads could be viewed as manipulative, deceitful, tricky, and generally not the best match for a user’s query. That’s certainly not always the case, but I could see why someone might think that. Google and Bing do have processes in place to ensure that the top ads are worthy of being shown there.
I just wanted to highlight to the girls that the results on the search engine page have a lot of strategy on the backend - whether generated through SEO or PPC tactics.
Although the prime motivation behind this session was to help the girls earn their Cadette Marketing badge, I also wanted to pass on the importance of being open to lifelong learning, being flexible about change, and ultimately being safe with their online behaviors.
I’ve been told that nearly every girl’s parent reported back to the troop leader that the marketing session came up in conversation and that the girls learned more than they’d anticipated. So I’m happy that the session had an impact and that it was thought-provoking for them.
