hongyahe-blog

[hongyahe-blog]

What I Have Done for Networking

It has been such a rich semester hearing from marketing professionals from all kinds of industries. There was Julie VanderKloet from market research, Kareem Perez from SEO, Cindy Tran from marketing campaign, Brian Walsh from customer experience, and many, many more. It is one thing to learn the knowledge and skills from textbook, but hearing from industry experts totally took the study experience to another level.

The most insightful speech I heard over the semester was from Julie. She works in my dream industry – market research and she is a very good communicator. In her talk she talked about the structure of a research project, which is similar to what I learned from the class. But it was interesting to notice, in real business world, research projects are sometimes like a swirl, where the team has to reiterate the same or similar project to update the findings. This is especially true in the current situation of COVID-19, when policies and attitudes change every day.

Julie’s talk really made me wonder what other things in real market research world are different from what I hear in school, so I started connecting with her on LinkedIn and learned more about the industry since then. For example, I had trouble getting flour for a long time. Then I learned from a report she shared, that flour sales increased over 470% during COVID-19 cause lot more people are baking more often. Everything made more sense after I read that report, and now I think about little things in a bigger picture.

From there I did some more research on the community of market researchers, and found a great one called WIRe (Women in Research). I browsed their website and found there is a great section called Office Hours, where anyone could ask questions and get them answers by mentors. I asked about how to stand out to employers during COVID-19 and got some great ideas about building a portfolio.

WIRe has a LinkedIn page too. I follow them and get great insights and trends about market research industry. They sometimes offer webinars about how to do research in current situation, I find those very helpful.

Joining relevant LinkedIn communities turns out very helpful for job hunting for me. I have joined 4 market research related professional LinkedIn groups. Most of them have many (100,000+) professionals from all over the world. Last week I braved up and introduced myself in two of the groups. I was not expecting to get too many engagements, as I noticed engagement in LinkedIn groups are generally very low.

To my surprise, it brought my more than I could have imagined. In 2 days, my profile views increased over 1000%. More than 40 people sent me connection request. Two people followed me. And many like and comments under my introduction. Mostly surprisingly, one of the new connections wanted to talk about a job opportunity with me! I was very much flattered, however, that professional’s new business is based in India, I could not relocate or work remotely full time for him. It was so nice to see that my effort and courage brought me positive impacts.

Another thing I tried for job search was, just getting into the industry, either by networking or volunteering. I volunteered with LatAm Startups, a non-profit in Toronto helping international companies. It was a great experience and it helped me build my skills for future career in market research. Some of the analysis skills and thinking process were something I would not have learned in class. Through volunteering I also met some brilliant people in the business and got a great reference from my supervisor. Some professionals on the teams had different skillset and experience, for example, Luiza was from digital marketing and she shared the tools like Facebook Ads with the team.

I have also done cold emails and cold messages to professionals in the industry of market research. I started by making a list of companies I want to work with, and researching each on Google and LinkedIn. I sent out hundreds of LinkedIn connection requests, mostly customized, to people. The hardest thing in this was actually not finding them/messaging them, but rather my personal feelings. Before I started, I was dreading it so much, because I was afraid nobody would reply. Then I overcame that by telling myself, it is okay if they do not reply. The point is letting them know my existence and interest. Fortunately, some of professionals replied and kindly offered informational interviews with me. I always researched about them again before our chat and made sure I followed up.

I am in no position to “teach” anyone how I network or anything. But if it helps, I would like to share what worked for me. It sounds obvious, but the most important thing in networking is, simply start it. I found people generous and understanding when approached by others who are eager to learn. It is true not everyone will respond, but all it matters is some of them would do and bring great conversations. Another thing that helped was a tracking file for networking. I started tracking my networking progress, it helped me keep an idea of how I am doing and provide insights for follow-ups.

[hongyahe-blog]

Journey Mapping - Understanding The Customers

It was a great please to hear from Brian Walsh, an expert in Customer Experience, about journey mapping and understanding customers. The process and items included in developing a journey map was especially enjoyable.

What is journey map? It is a visual illustration of customers’ process, needs, and perceptions throughout their interaction and relationship with an organization. It is all the experience, it can be done within the context of all industries like retail and automotive, B2C or B2B context. It includes both of the on-stage experience and back-stage supports.

What is journey mapping like? The first thing is to create a persona. A fictional person for the brand. For example, this person can be called Sophie, she is a student studying postgraduate and she like milk tea. Here is an example of visual persona (Not Sophia).

We could use behaviour line for the journey map. The journey for the customer can be as short as 15 seconds, or as long as 40 years. It is all about how the customer interacts with the brand. The full work process could be documented with sticky notes.

The first thing we look is what they do in each step. For example, if Sophie feels sick, what does she do when she goes to see a doctor? She would probably start with seeing a family doctor, where she might be referred to some specialists. Then she might need to go to some hospital for MRI, where she has to check in, wait in the waiting room, see the MRI machine which she has never seen. She might resist going in the MRI room before she finally does, then after MRI she might see the doctor who looks like the MRI scan, finally she will get prescription and get drugs from the pharmacy.

The second thing we look is the people Sophie interacts during her journey. In above story Sophie will see doctor, her friends who go to places with her, receptionists at the hospital, nurse, imaging technologist, etc.

The third thing we look is objects Sophie interact with. During her journey she might get in contact with her car which she drives in between places, facial tissues, MRI machines, drugs, etc. to name a few.

Then another important thing we look is how Sophie feels along the journey. For example, when she is seeing the family doctor, she probably thinks its just a bad flu. But when she sees the MRI machine, she would be scared and hesitate as it is her first time. Then when she gets out of the hospital, she might feel a bit relieved but also worried about her health in general. For this step specifically direct quote acquired in interviews/focus groups could be used.

Each part would be put in a row, and each row could have distinctly colored sticky notes for the ease of reading and interpretation. A finished journey map might look like something like this:

Journey map is a great tool for marketers to evaluate and prioritize things that matter to their customers/clients. The more the brand can understand their customers, the more they can build empathy and provide better experience for them.

[hongyahe-blog]

An Intro to the World of Insights

“Insights” this word can be confusing and sometimes too easily taken. Data itself is not insight, and not all insights are good ones. So, what are good insights? Good insights help people understand a problem or see a problem in a new way; good insights uncover a fundamental human truth; they are discoveries about the underlying motivations that drive people’s actions; they also inspire actions.

Insights matter, here is why. Look at Uber, they mined insights using oceans of data from users and provided better usage of cars and services. That is compared to, of course, the almost-dying taxi industry, which was too proud to believe they could be replaced and did not bother to find insights. Another example in case would be Impossible burger, they followed the social trend tightly, and realized veggie-based meat was not meeting people’s need, then they introduced the impossible burger – looks like meat, tastes like meat, but 100% based on plants. It was a huge success.

Insight industry is very broad and still growing. There are some core tasks & responsibilities professionals in this industry have: category performance; foundational research; usage & attitudes; identifying white space; innovation sessions; concept development & testing; product testing; trends; path to purchase; brand equity research; ad development and testing; and customer specific research.

What does it take to cope with these responsibilities then? Well, some qualities include critical thinking; project management; relationship management; storytelling; strategy developing; research design.

Yet insight is not everything, it can only take a brand/product so far. Julie use this example from Country Harvest as an example. Several years ago, Country Harvest did a lot of research on bread for snacking, and developed this great product called Harvest Bakes. But they did not make good sales. What went wrong there? Well, budget was tight, so they did not have enough marketing and merchandising support. When customers reached the shelves in grocery store, they could not recognize the product because they never heard about them on advertisements. Also, the product does not look good on shelves because they are all carelessly stacked on top of each other – not the way insights team suggested.

After sharing about the industry, Julie went on and shared what helped her thrive in market research. The first one is curiosity, asking smart questions like ‘help me understand this problem’ would go a long way. Getting to point is important in business world too, if you can make your point in your email with 50% less words, do not hesitate and do it! People in market research wear lot of hats at the same time, responsibilities outside of job description would fall on people, but that is ok, it is all about learning and project management. Besides, public speaking and building authentic connections are always important.

For Julie, the most interesting part of her job is that she gets to do what she likes and what she is capable of, which in her case is developing strategies with good stories. That spoke to me about my choice of career after graduation from George Brown. I would love to enter this world of insights as well, as I like telling stories and analyzing data, and I believe I can do a good job.

[hongyahe-blog]

Learning Through Career Pivot

As scary as it sounds, career pivot is not impossible. Jordan and Natasha did it, so can I.

Keep that learning going

Jordan started from politics, then he wanted to go into marketing. What he did was continuously learning new skills and trends of the industry. Even today, several years into his professional career in marketing, he is still learning everyday. “I just love working in marketing.”, and he goes all in for everything about it. He is currently pursuing Google Ads certificate.

Natasha had a totally different path. Back to 5 years ago, she would laugh if someone told her would work in marketing one day. Today here she is, a SEO specialist. She was in social work and teaching for a long time, working several part time jobs made her realise what she did not want. Then she found her passion in marketing.

“I don’t regret a bit of my path”, everything in her life, even not related to what she wants now, has helped her find her voice in today’s role.

One thing keeps coming up during the conversation is how they keep learning, keep reading and keep improving themselves.

Building skills and upskilling is one thing everybody has in their control. Luckily, there are a large deal of resources out there, Canadian Marketing Association, for example, is a great source of networking events and industry insights. Other good resources are from people in the industry, it is good to join professional groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, either to build up network or to learn about the career path.

Go above and beyond

Another great story came from Asta. She started from the creative design field. The extraordinary story she has happened fairly recently. She met a lady while traveling to Las Vegas, became good personal friends with her, several months later, the new friend introduced her to her job now.

But the point is not how she got this new job through networking, although it did play an important role. She blew the interviewer away, by creating a whole new mock social media account, just for the very company she was applying for, to demonstrate her vision of how she will work and add value to the company. With that highly creative and personalized portfolio, she got hired for that role as, undoubtedly, the top candidate.

She did not have to go above and beyond, because she had referral already. But Asta did not take that as granted and relaxed, she went a mile further than everyone else, and it worked for her.

Keep soft skills strong

Cliché as it sounds, soft skills matter. Communication and time-management skills, as well as prioritizing, are some skills coming up more than once during this great conversation. Marketers usually have more than one projects going on at the same time, and the three skills mentioned would surely come in handy in such cases.