My Exposure to Digital Marketing
Navigating beyond the understanding that Digital Marketing is more than just page likes, comments and ‘boosting’.
This time around last year, I found myself wanting to venture and upscale in the avenues of digital marketing — or now commonly related to as ‘marketing in the digital arena’.
While it can be a classy title to hold, the real reason why I was interested in it was because I felt a magnetic effect towards it. I saw it as an evolving industry and a growing set of tools. Even though the Marketing fundamentals remain as strong foundations; throughout the years, the funnel has emerged and most importantly have the channels and tools used.
First intro to Digital Marketing in a professional level
I was studying Journalism at the Sri Lanka College of Journalism, I loved to write, speak and interestingly had loved content, mediums, channels, perspectives and storytelling as a whole. Following my time at College, my particular interest towards Brand Journalism grew with time.
I was introduced to Digital Marketing and the power it withholds 4 years back by Fazlan Marikkar. As president of the Media Forum at school, I had the honour of handling its website, social media channels and media as a whole since I was in Grade 11. But my first exposure towards a professional sense was when I worked at an INGO at their communications and marketing department.
Working in PR and Comms
I was then working at Amana Bank and I had the opportunity of working across most of the marketing functions across the department. We were a small team and the exposure has been immense. I learnt a lot from them all. While I was the PR and Comms guy, my work wasn’t just framed to that specific role. My involvement in the scopes arouse a distinctive interest towards Marketing and Communications in a whole new level.
After my tenure at the Bank, I joined a boutique PR consultancy as I wanted to develop my skills and expertise in terms of PR. I learnt storytelling, media relations, investor relations, employee relations, influencer relations, content creation and programming, public perception analysis, media analysis, crisis communications, event management and reputation management in traditional means.
But in the evolving digital world, would that be enough?
The need to explore and learn
Compared to the past, the customer/user now has the ability to share their experience and opinion to the whole world with just a few clicks. Unlike having a streamlined and controlled medium/channel, the channels have become open to anyone to share anything. It has certainly opened doors to many possibilities, and relatively to many challenges as well. Digital transformation is no longer a prestige pack – its the survival toolkit!
I’ve always known that digital marketing is more than just having updated social media pages, a website, doing a bit of ‘boosting’ and shooting out emails and SMSs. But the real urge to actually explore the prospects came by with time. I started to follow several YouTubers and read blogs. But I wanted to upskill myself and learn from the professionals of the industry and that was when I started to explore course providers, institutes and lecturers. 3 months in, I made my first call to APIDM and a day later I was going through the prospectus. It literally had everything I wanted to learn then. But as I was travelling to Colombo nearly every day. It didn’t seem feasible.
The Decision
A few months in, I made the decision to somehow take the course and I applied for it on the 31st of March (It was the last day). And now 8 months later, it has been the amongst the best decisions I’ve made this year.
Take-away
I was told by seniors and alumni that the sessions are very practical and here I was wondering how practical can they make it, ensuring that they can keep the sessions engaging and effective. Now, maybe I too can vouch for that.
I’ve been able to upscale myself in terms of the Digital Landscape, Strategy and Planning, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Campaign Tracking, Analytics and Intelligence and a whole lot more!
While the avenues are expanding, I have been able to support clients with digital strategy, content strategy, storytelling, SEO, content production, reputation management, market research, perception analysis, crisis communication – in other words Digital PR
All the sessions delivered by the lecturers were insightful, updated, engaging and interesting. The expertise and experience add so much more value to the course as they share real life incidents, experiences and even solutions for the same. The lecturers were always open to questions and support. The special dedicated Q&A sessions, LMS recordings and supportive learning material have been good.
Thank You
Today (20th of November) marks the last day of sessions and while we are yet to have our final tests in the weeks to come. I feel like leaving this note here as gratitude to the panel of amazing lecturers and resource personnel.
Thank you Amitha Amarasinghe, Infas Iqbal, Chamara Peiris, Udara Dharmasena, Gayathri Senevirathne, Suranga Priyashantha, Minoli Almeida and Emma Debeljak.
Thank you for giving me new perspectives!
Thank you for inspiring!
Thank you for helping me upscale my knowledge!
Would like to also thank Abiy and Shareena for their support during the course.
Thank you!
Looking forward to #LearnAndGrow