What is Qualified?

After working in pay per click advertising for the last 6 years I have taken it for granted that clients don’t ask for my qualifications. I can only assume that this has been due to their lack of knowledge. The more savvy clients now want to see all your degrees, trophies and medals!

Now I have met a lot of professionals from the industry over the past few years and I would say almost every single person I have come across has a degree.

I don’t.

I have worked with a small set of clients for the last 6 years. I have helped grow their small businesses into a multi million pound national companies spending huge amounts on their pay per click. Until recently joining LinkedIn I had never been asked about my qualifications for what I do?

I began to question if I was missing a huge marketing channel or revenue stream for my clients due to my lack of knowledge or gaps in my knowledge.

In order to ensure that clients can not only rely on my word that I can do the work for them, I have took a vow at the start of August to get all the pieces of paper needed to appease perspective clients.

Since August I have passed the Google AdWords Fundamentals and Advanced Search exams. I have started the Google Advanced Display exam and the Bing certified professional programs and plan to pass these two before the end of September. If I am honest, I started both the training programs for the AdWords exams, got bored and just took the exams, 90% on the first an 84% on the second one.

I should also mention that I start the all new super duper Squared Online course tomorrow!

I am little apprehensive about starting the Squared course, I appear to be 20 years older than most of the other students on the course (and some tutors) and no doubt they all have degrees!

I already made a massive mistake by answering questions before watching the video, not a great start

I will be posting regularly about my time becoming a Square and hopefully put an old geezer’s perspective on a new learning qualification.

My Education and experience so far!

I have to be honest now, I have no fancy degree, I left school as fast as I could before taking my exams. I was set to take 9 ‘O’ levels and a CSE in Social Science, I just couldn’t wait to get out there, get a job and earn some money.

My working life has seen me doing all kinds of work. I did steelwork fabrication & erection for a few years working for my uncle. I then worked as a telephone engineer for a year and then ended up working for a national retailer, Magnet & Southerns (Magnet now). After a few years of working my way up the management ladder I was head hunted out by Howdens Joinery to help them start their new business. I helped grow the business before leaving to pursue my realised passion.

I had always excelled with computers, at school writing a burglar alarm program on the schools BBC computer, the sensors for the alarm being my technology project. Fixing, learning, anything to do with computers I have been told I have a natural talent when it comes to IT.

I started work at CAPITA and less than a year later started working as an IT contractor for a London Borough. I began work there full time as assistant IT manager, again after a year I made it to IT manager. Responsible for teh support and delivery of IT to 2,500 students and staff across several sites.

I learn anything IT related very quickly and seem to have a second sense when it comes to problem solving. My expertise and insight into emerging technologies helped to create a state of the art learning environment with provision for interactive whiteboards before they were readily accepted as a teaching aid.

We also changed the face of the learning environment with a revolutionary interactive desktop design, this helped to bring schools and students closer to a Virtual Learning Environment when there were none available on the market.

I finally left after 9 years when PFI contracts came as part of the BSF (Building Schools for the Future) program.

Digital Marketing

Since leaving local government I have worked on pay per click advertising. My IT skills are also called upon when trying to find technological solutions to the clients everyday problems. As the clients companies have grown I have worked in a much wider capacity. Some of the roles I carry out for them include:

• Brochure design working with developers, pagination, layout, reporting
• Paper advertising design, pagination, layout, reporting
• Email marketing design working with developers, pagination, layout, reporting
• eBay, store design working with developers, business strategy and continued growth
• Social network presence and marketing
• Brand awareness
• CRM system design and implementation
• Analytics and strategy
• IT strategy
• Project management
• eCommerce design and implementation working with developers

The above list is far from exhaustive, for every campaign we send I spend hours looking at internal and external data from Google analytics, client phone system call logs, client CRM system reports and any other source of information relevant to the product, market and client to help the next campaign even better. My work with clients is commission based so my pay reflects their earnings and company growth.

I am passionate about tech, emerging tech and anything electricity flows through. Sad as I am I get a kick out of getting more sales for less money, higher click throughs, more likes, retweets, I love proving that we can and must improve our marketing to keep ahead of the competition.

I am hoping to learn a lot and hopefully reinforce all I have taught myself the past 6 years on the Squared Online course.