Melanie is a marketing lover who is passionate about transforming technical details into key messages that cause customer consciousness about products, and as a result, their acquisition. In the past, she studied journalism, which has helped her to complement her marketing career, as she continually writes and creates content as part of her job. For the last six years, she has been working for different companies, including Spring Rewards, Rise Interactive, ZS, among others. I invited Melanie to an interview, so I could learn from her experience and answer the doubts I had about the marketing area.
Eliana: Melanie, I am pleased to connect with you and get to know more about this fascinating yet complex area that marketing is. Please tell me more about you, what is the company you are working for?
Melanie: I am glad to meet you, too, and I am happy to help you with this interview. I am currently working for ZS Associates; it is a pharmaceutical consulting firm.
Eliana: Can you give a little more detail on what you do as a marketer and how it helps your company?
Melanie: My title is Senior Solution Marketing Associate. I work with the partners of the firm to develop content, so the company has pharmaceutical thought leadership, including white papers, articles, blog posts, etc. This helps to establish our leaders as experts in the industry, develop credibility, and ultimately assist in selling our products and services. I also help to coordinate our company's event attendance and sponsorship, drive analyst relationships, and coordinate with our public relations team.
Eliana: If you were to break down your day to day, in general, what does that look like?
Melanie: It's typically a mix and depends entirely on what my main projects are at the time. I work a lot of a project management tool, set up timelines, proofread content to ensure it fits into marketing plans and set expectations with others in the marketing team (the editors, designers, digital team) as well as with stakeholders. I move projects forward and hold different groups accountable to ensure projects get completed. If I'm working to coordinate an event, I will be setting up meetings and working with a third-party event coordinator to understand all the assets we need to provide, whether it's digital signage, printouts, a presentation, social media copy, etc.
Eliana: What are the hardest parts of your role?
Melanie: I would say that stakeholder management is one of the most important but also the most challenging aspects of my role. It's essential to establish a working relationship with my stakeholders, so they understand the reason behind my recommendations and trust the recommendations I make. I also coordinate across several teams, so one person might want an article to be completed by a specific date, but our editorial team already has too much on their plate. In these cases, I must work to compromise on timelines.
Eliana: What are the most rewarding parts of your role?
Melanie: It's rewarding to see my ideas go from just a proposal to a full campaign - especially when we see strong results from the campaign.
Eliana: Is there anything cool or exciting about this role that most people don't know?
Melanie: It takes many people from different teams to collaborate and pull together a piece of content or event sponsorship. It's essential to be cooperative and accountable for your own stage of work, otherwise achieving success is extremely difficult.
Eliana: Are there any negative stereotypes or misconceptions people have about this role that you think is untrue?
Melanie: I think many times people misunderstand what marketing is in general. There are so many different roles within marketing that span a range of capabilities that when you say "marketing," it can mean one thing to one person, but a completely different thing to another person.
This interview taught me that marketing work is linked to different areas of business and that collaboration between team members is essential to execute projects successfully. I also learned that it is important to have an interest in developing diverse skills because it helps to think more critically about finding solutions to problems and create effective campaigns.