Marketing Happy Hour - BONUS! Q+A: Getting Your MBA + Content Strategy Tips

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, Harshada, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing so well. Well, before we get started, I have an important question for you that we ask all of our guests here at Marketing Happy Hour, and that is what is in your glass today? It is Marketing Happy Hour after all. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So it's noon here in Seattle, and I am drinking my fall favorite, which is pumpkin spice latte. And it is like perfect for this chilly, rainy Seattle weather.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Absolutely. Cassie, what do you have? Yes. So it is, it is hitting about three o'clock here over in Florida. So we're a little bit farther along in the day as you are. But I have a lunar craft hard seltzer. It's the Korean plum flavor. I'm about to crack it open here soon because we're starting to creep over into the happy hour realm of the day. But my husband and I have been enjoying those. They sent those over to us and

Starting point is 00:00:56 they've been absolutely fantastic. So can't wait for this one. What about you, Erica? Oh my gosh. Yes. I am dying to try those lunar hard seltzers when they emailed us. I was like so excited. So hopefully you're enjoying that. But I over here have an Ami Ami. It's a white blend wine that's actually in a box. And it's from France. It's like a more upscale boxed wine. It's actually very delicious. So the team over at AmiAmi sent that to us as well. So we're so grateful for that. This is so fun to like try all these new goodies. Yeah, both of them sound pretty awesome though. I definitely need to try it. Yeah. I know. I know. We've been loving it so far, but I've also been loving the seasonal beverages

Starting point is 00:01:40 specifically over at Starbucks. So I'm right along with you, Harshada, just enjoying the pumpkin, the peppermint, everything to the seasons. It's so fantastic. But we are very excited to dive into your experience. You have an MBA, which I know specifically we want to touch on and just hear about your journey receiving that and going through that process. But could you share a little bit with us about your background and how you got to where you are today? Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. So my journey into marketing is a bit quite unconventional. So I started my career as an engineer. And I worked for a few years, but I wasn't quite enjoying the engineering field. So I started exploring other options. And in 2016,

Starting point is 00:02:28 I pivoted to marketing and began working as a consultant with various small businesses, helping them with their social media strategy. I built my portfolio in marketing for the next five years through these consulting projects. And in 2021, I took on the role of the senior social media manager at a company called RevenueWealth, while concurrently pursuing an MBA in marketing at the University of Washington. So I just actually graduated June of this year. So yeah, that's my quick background of how I got into marketing. And absolutely. So my advice for like anyone who marketing professional going into and getting an MBA is to kind of like focus on both analytical as well as creative skills, right? Like currently the ability to analyze data

Starting point is 00:03:26 is increasingly crucial. So I looked for courses in my MBA second year that emphasized more on like data analytics, market research and market strategy. And MBA program is like a unique opportunity to work on real life projects and case studies. And that allowed me to kind of apply my creative thinking to solving marketing challenges. So it was like a perfect intersection of analytics and creativity, which I think was super crucial. Another thing that I did was I also got involved in like extracurricular

Starting point is 00:04:08 activities. Like a lot of MBA programs have these clubs. So I joined in a marketing club where they bring, bring in different professionals who are working in the industries to share about the emerging trends, social media, marketing, technology, and all that fun stuff. So that's kind of a good way to stay relevant and being updated. So yeah, those would be some of the advices for someone going into an MBA with a marketing background. Awesome. And then what about to, you know, industry pivot? So you mentioned you were in engineering and you kind of pivoted

Starting point is 00:04:45 into the world of marketing, any encouragement for those looking to kind of change paths, essentially, because I know a lot of people struggle with that notion of, should I do it? Is it possible? I I'm just getting started and I'm in my late twenties, for example, you know, things like that, those kinds of roadblocks that people face in their mind. So anything you'd say to that specifically, a word of encouragement or so? Yeah, absolutely. So change is always scary, right? I mean, it was not easy to completely go from engineering to marketing. But what I did is I started by doing some freelancing work. So taking up some projects on the side after my engineering job,

Starting point is 00:05:27 just to kind of like also build my resume and also make sure that this is something that I enjoy and I want to make a transition towards. So I would say starting small, just kind of like figuring out and taking on different projects, making sure that this is what you want to do. That kind of gives you out and taking on different projects, making sure that this is what you want to do.

Starting point is 00:05:46 That kind of gives you a confidence as well when you're ready to deep dive into it. So that's how I basically started. I was taking some courses online. I was doing some volunteering for the nonprofits. And that basically gave me confidence to make the transition and also confidence that okay this is something that I really want. I love that and I love hearing your journey of going back to school you know after you've already had a few years in the industry that you were in just to kind of you know have something challenging and have something new and exciting that you want to

Starting point is 00:06:20 learn and I think that's something that we often lose because, you know, we're five, 10 years out of college at this point. And we're like, oh man, you know, I wish I was still learning every day. So I love that you took the initiative to kind of do that and dive into your own journey there. But we know that you're kind of a content strategy expert. So we wanted to talk to you about that for a little bit. Content strategy often involves aligning content with business goals. So how can businesses ensure that their content strategy is not only engaging, but it also contributes to the broader marketing objectives for the brand? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So the first thing I would say is it's crucial to know what your target audience looks like. Like, I mean, it's not just an overview, but actually getting into the nitty gritty details of their preferences, challenges, behaviors, because content needs to speak their language and we need to offer solution to their problems through the content that we are creating also when it comes to like business goal like each piece of content should have a mission like

Starting point is 00:07:31 whether it's boosting brand awareness or if we want to like generate more leads or even as like keeping your existing customers happy it's easier if we have like a content calendar and that can be your strategic roadmap. So every post, video and article should have a purpose that would tie back to your big picture marketing goals. And the last thing I would say is to keep a close eye on the numbers,

Starting point is 00:07:58 like metrics, like engagement rates, conversion numbers and social sales. These are like the North Star. That is the compass. And regularly checking these and seeing how the content is performing is crucial. And it's also important to be flexible and be ready to tweak the strategy accordingly. Because it's an ongoing process. And we need to constantly refine and optimize the content to make sure that it is

Starting point is 00:08:26 resonating with our target audience. And we are just not posting it for the sake of posting. Absolutely. And that's something that we implement for our clients and things like that on the day to day. You know, a lot of clients will say, hey, I just want to throw up a post every single day. And you're sitting there going, well, you know, this posting for the sake of posting might not be the best strategy. We need to kind of map this out and have that content calendar and have those objectives and the points of, you know, relating it to something your audience is often asking you. I mean, that's the way that you're supposed to be speaking on social media and on these content platforms. So I love that you touched on that. Speaking of social media, though, the platforms are constantly evolving. It is a crazy world out there. How do you kind of stay on top of platform updates and test those in order to use them effectively as part of your content strategy? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So social media is like changing every single day and it's like super important to be relevant so that we can connect with the audience. So one thing that I would

Starting point is 00:09:37 recommend is engaging in the industry events. Like I attend a lot of webinars. I'm active on the online forums, because that is where we get the inside information. That is where people tend to share the latest trends, the challenges, and sometimes you can even get some hints about the upcoming changes that are coming up. So for example, on LinkedIn, follow different posts, join different groups. That's one of the best ways to staying updated. The second is the experimentation. And that is the most fun part, right? But it's also important to keep in mind that just because there's an update coming up doesn't

Starting point is 00:10:15 mean that we have to blindly implement it. So before going all in, we test the waters on like a smaller scale. This way, we can see how this changes vibe with our brand and our business and how our audience and our audience before we go in full throttle because not every update is going to be relevant for every business so it's important to test it out create like pilot programs and see how they work for you. And analytics is like the North Star. So when you look at the numbers, they help us decipher what's working, what's not.

Starting point is 00:10:52 It's important to stay adaptable. If something is not working, it's also important to just try a different approach rather than just being stuck on fixing one that's not working. So I would say that just be, you know, out there, like you can be on different like TikTok, there you can find different trends, latest trends, and you can take those inspiration and start with a pilot program and see how it

Starting point is 00:11:18 works for your business and your marketing goals. Awesome. Well, on that too, and speaking of data, you know, with managing paid ads, data is incredibly important there in order to know how to optimize, how to tweak what you're doing on a paid ad sense, whether that's Facebook, Instagram, or even Google or any of those other platforms. And one of the ways to outside of just looking at the data straight up is A-B testing and seeing what type of creative performs or targeting performs best. So can you share some best practices for A-B testing and extracting meaningful insights from those tests in order to pave a path forward? Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. So when it comes to like paid ads, the first

Starting point is 00:12:07 step is to understand your why. Like why are you testing this and what do you expect to happen, right? Whether it's the ad copy, whether it's your graphics, videos, or your call to action, having a solid why basically guides your entire testing strategy it's also important to start small sometimes we are like super excited to test and we want to try like anything and everything but when we are running a b test it's important to start with like changing one variable at a time so if we tweak both the headline and image at the same time, it is tough to pinpoint what made the difference. So slow and steady wins the race when it comes to A-B testing. It is also important to not rush the process. Like algorithms need time to gather meaningful data. So it's important to let the ad

Starting point is 00:12:59 run for a few days so that the algorithm gets time to optimize it and we can see the results and we can make decisions based on it. So it's important not to jump to conclusions too quickly. And look at the performance across the different audience segments or demographics. So what we'll do is this will help us tailor our ads to specific audience preferences, maximizing their impact. So if we see the data along different audience segments, it's easier to create content that would resonate with that segment rather than creating one ad and trying to get in and trying to see that, trying to be like one ad across all the audience, target audience that we have. Absolutely. Yeah. Great advice. And just changing one element too, because I think a lot of times when we see an ad's not performing, we want to change all of the elements or a bunch

Starting point is 00:13:53 of different pieces of that. And to your point, it's really hard to know kind of what exactly made that switch to maybe make it perform better than it was before. So it's always a great reminder, I think, for professionals running ads there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because there are like so many parameters that you could change. And it's kind of like, you're kind of like, you don't know what to do.

Starting point is 00:14:16 It's like, oh, let me try this for a day. Let me change this for a day. But taking it slow and, you know, seeing how they perform, that's going to be better in the long run. Yes, absolutely. Well, I want to kind of switch gears back to career. And we love to always kind of close out conversations with career discussions here. But I want to ask you again, kind of about MBA, because I know there's a lot of times professionals ask themselves, should I get an MBA?

Starting point is 00:14:43 They go through this decision-making process or is it necessary? Is it not? So I'm curious on your front, how has getting your MBA benefited your career and what did that teach you essentially that you're using today in your professional life? Yes, absolutely. So MBA, like before MBA, I was only looking at the marketing side of it, right? But MBA kind of gave me like a zoomed out version of how a business works in general, like how the marketing department also connects with other department and how different factors need to be considered, even when you're making a marketing decision. For example, like in a marketing courses, you think about the pricing, you think about the positioning, you think about what the products that the company needs to come up with. And this is like a collaborative kind of a decision. It doesn't only depend on your marketing team and the four or five individuals that you're working with, but it comes at a strategic and a business level.

Starting point is 00:15:47 So I think that MBA gave me that clarity and how to visualize how marketing fits in with other departments and how we also need to think of all the other perspectives when making marketing decisions. So that is something that I have definitely taken and I'm implementing it in my current job as well. It just gives me a zoomed out version of the business. That is awesome. And it's so important to be a well-rounded career person anyway.

Starting point is 00:16:19 So I love that that kind of brought that out in you. Well, we're approaching the end here and we always like to ask where everybody can find you and follow along with what you're up to now. So tell us how to find you online, how to connect with you and everything. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:16:36 So I would love to connect with our listeners. And I'm mostly active on LinkedIn. So you can definitely find me there, Harshada Deshpande. And feel free to shoot me a message and connect with me. I'm always thrilled to connect with fellow marketing enthusiasts and learn more from them. Thank you so much for joining us.

Starting point is 00:16:53 This has been great. Thank you so much for having me. We are so excited to share that our first ever free marketing happy hour digital resource is now available. Download the dream career game plan today at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. That's marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. This five-step workbook will guide you through defining your goals, building your network, diversifying your skills, influencing where you're at, and investing in your growth. Cassie and I created this resource with marketing careers in mind, but the framework can be applied to any industry.

Starting point is 00:17:36 Our hope is that this workbook will help you truly elevate your career, whether you're in the market for a new position or just looking to make your mark in your current organization. No matter where this resource finds you, we are cheering you on every step of the way. So go check it out at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie to download and make your career dreams come true.

Marketing Happy Hour - BONUS! Q+A: Getting Your MBA + Content Strategy Tips

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