I'm trying to make the switch from selling online advertising at a company to a more marketing manager type position and I'm wondering if anyone here could share some tips on how to go about this. I recently left a company after selling display advertising (banners, text links) for two years. I did everything from the prospecting, closing, strategize/negotiate with media planners, take tags, oversee ad trafficking, and optimizing campaigns. I also have two years of experience building blogs, optimizing them, and monetizing them with adsense along with other ad networks and affiliate partners. I think I'd be a real asset to a company that is looking to drive traffic to their site or create a better presence online through SEO and social networking, but I don't seem to be making any progress with the resumes and cover letters I'm sending out. I'm hoping an objective point of view might put me on the right track.
If you are looking for an IN-HOUSE position, I encourage you to learn more about marketing. You have experience in sales...which is one aspect of marketing. You also have experience in advertising...which is another aspect of marketing. Marketing however is a lot more than advertising and sales. But how much do you know about taking geographic, demographic and psychographic data and using that to created a targetd marketing plan? Do you know how to create an identity for a business and then position the brand in the marketplace? Outside of things like PRweb and article writing, what do you know about publicity and public relations? What about layout, design and copywriting -- 3 different elements that work together yet are specialties. Do you know how to manage a team of all the people working in all the areas related to "marketing" in the business? while you may have been proficient in display ads, do you know the difference between active marketing and passive marketing? And the differences in how you approach them? All I am saying is there is a HUGE difference between online ad sales and online marketing...because in order to be effective in "online" marketing, you have to be effective in marketing in general. You might be better off just selling your services as a 3rd party and sticking to the stuff you already know and have experience in, like banners and text links.
Thanks for the reply BusinessCoach. Well the main reason I'm looking to make the career change is because I wasn't enjoying working in ad sales, and I felt that knowing myself, I would be of a lot more value being on the planning and strategy side of online media. I'm also still young-ish in my early 30's and I feel there's still time to get on path I will be happy with in the future. From my ad sales experience, I do know a lot about targeting based on demographic and psychographic data, and a lot of my job was approaching direct advertisers and agencies and telling them how I could target their audience across a large network. I also have a lot of experience designing sites, writing articles/copy and working with PR agencies through an article-based site that I created on my own. I also have experience working with active and passive marketing campaigns. In my experience it was mostly big name companies that wanted to plaster their name everywhere for branding while others wanted a cpc or cpa plan. I think I have a lot of transferable skills, and as I said, I'd like to do whatever it takes to get me going on the right path. I'm even thinking of taking a javascript course so I can improve my SEO skills. Thanks again for the reply!
Well I'm looking for a company that would like to market their own website/product online rather than an ad agency looking to plan a campaign for one of their clients.. that said I'm contacting a lot of recruiters.