Lessons Learned – Simren Deogun

Say Please and Thank You

May 1, 2011 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

If you need some advice today. Some little nugget to get you through the next week. Remember the above. Remember to not only say please but to also say thank you.

Did he just hold that door open for you? Did she just make you a copy of that report? Did you just ask for another rush project?

Marketing is a demanding industry. Everything is urgent. And nothing is ever early.

‘Please and Thank You’ are part of my daily mantra. I never forget them, their omission is never an oversight and, conversely, their inclusion is always deliberate.

These simple words mean courtesy and respect. They demonstrate that you’re thoughtful and aware. Also, these make you a great marketer because they translate into being both detail-oriented and big-picture-inclined.

Everyone deserves to be asked politely and appreciated accordingly.

This includes you, your coworkers, your employees, your partners and your customers.

Filed Under: Business, Lessons Learned Tagged With: Please, Thank You

Your Blog Needs Help

March 29, 2011 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

So does mine. I think all of ours do.

Why? Because in this digital world, if you’re not current, you’re nothing.

These are harsh words. But I’m going for high impact on this one.

We can talk blog strategy and planning and execution, but ultimately what pumps blood into the veins of your blog is you.

I’ve designed and am still coding yet another version of this very blog. I hope to launch it soon. But a one-woman army, I cannot always be.

Same goes for all bloggers. Doing it on your own, though valiant and admirable, is not smart marketing.

I started this blog at the height of the recession (as my readers may know), when I lost my job to a tough economy and then faced even tougher competition in the job market. As an organic progression, I began to be intrigued by the world of digital marketing.

What I’ve learned though, that I truly wish to share, is the importance of connectivity. Please don’t take that as a buzzword. It isn’t.

I’ve decided that grasping at the straws which are essentially the people (or marketing heads) I think I should know or be connected with is often not worth the time. I’ve begun instead fostering a smaller, highly connected community that surrounds me.

In work. In play. In friendship. Everywhere I am, they are. And, as such, we share common interests and goals that can be leveraged and actualized.

Sounds cheesy? Sort of the point. Being completely willing to surrender yourself to the written word is a beautiful thing and that’s part of what I’m achieving here. I distill my learnings for YOU, and me!

Tell me about your blog. What do you write about? What have you learned?

Filed Under: Lessons Learned Tagged With: Blogging, digital marketing, learning

Five Lessons For All Marketers

January 30, 2011 By Simren Deogun 1 Comment

1. Listen — Online or offline. Books, blogs, newspapers, magazines. Tweets, posts, statuses, locations. Your eyes and ears should always be open. I believe the best marketers in the world never stop “marketing” — that is, they never stop looking, absorbing and analyzing. Always learning, because marketing is not something that can simply be learnt in a finite period of time. No, it and you evolve together into something more complex and beautiful everyday.

2. Ask — Why? Or How? Or any question under the sun that enters your mind. I always have a lot of questions to ask, and I love asking them. They don’t just have to be the intellectually-challenging, mind-bending kind of questions, they can be the simple ones too. Like, How is that going to affect our client’s bottom line? vs. How do we get our audience to care and become advocates?

3. Understand your Audience — Don’t just know them: who they are and where they live and what they buy. If you can understand them, know what truly motivates them, then you can begin to think like them. All the data in the world can tell you every measurable and quantifiable fact about your audience, but it cannot calculate the intangible properties that ultimately make them who they are. That is something that cannot be bought. But it is something you can learn and listen for.

4. Experiment — Never stop trying new things. Your audience isn’t going to stop, so why should you?

5. Be Fearful and Fearless — From your strategy to your writing to your design to your execution. Always be simultaneously afraid and not afraid at all. Fear of failure, of sub-par results, of below-average performance drives us to be better and to motivate others to do the same. I am always afraid, but I’m also just fearless enough to not let that fear stop me.

Being a marketer is tough stuff. It’s also underrated and often where the money gets cut first. If you’re a marketer, you will most likely have to live your career constantly proving you and your team are the heart of the organization. That’s part of the challenge of marketing. But if you’re not, then think about who has a pulse on your organization, internal and external, and ask yourself if you’re allowing them to beat as mightily and ferociously as they can.

Filed Under: Business, Lessons Learned, Thoughts Tagged With: Audience, Lessons, Listen

The Truth About Frustrated Marketers

September 9, 2010 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

Sometimes, I’m a frustrated marketer. Sometimes, the whole ‘seeing the forest for the tress’ just isn’t a good enough analogy to get me through the day. Sometimes, I just want to scream at the top of my lungs. I can blame it on the environment or the people or myself, but I know I shouldn’t be blaming anyone or anything at all. So, what IS the truth about the ‘frustrated marketer’?

The truth is: we always want more than we have right now. We always want it to be more exciting, more challenging, more engaging, more connected. There is no conceivable limit to great ideas, to great talent, to brainstorming, to making mistakes, to growing, to getting better. There is never enough! And that leaves us frustrated.

Godin said a couple days ago, “If you want to learn to do marketing…then do marketing.”

Brogan said a few days ago, “The best compliment I ever receive about my blog is that my posts are short, simple, and actionable.”

And Mitch Joel told us that, “I preferred to be on death’s door of desperation than take a job that I knew I was going to hate….”

What do they all have in common? Besides being written by international marketing geniuses, they exemplify the vastness and prismatic quality of marketing. That it’s probably true no two marketers are the same, much like our own fingerprints or DNA. And I think because of that we always want more … actually, we probably need it more than anything.

I call my blog home because it lets me be a marketer my way. And I believe all marketers (or at least the one’s that really, earnestly care) can’t live without the individuality to be their own marketer. They make the conscious choice to differentiate, to take risks, to fail and to achieve.

What can you do to be that marketer?

Care to the point that if you were without it, breathing would become nonessential.
Take chances as though failure is no gigantic consequence, but merely an oft-feared but hardly ever revered occurrence.
Read, listen, or write. Pick the one (or more) that helps you grow and learn.
Humble yourself.
And accept that frustration is a necessary evil that only plagues you because you are one marketer that refuses to stop ___________________. [Fill in the blank with what fits best for you!]

Filed Under: Lessons Learned, Thoughts Tagged With: chris brogan, Frustrated, Frustration, Marketer, Mitch Joel, Seth Godin

Defining Marketing Via Redefinition

August 22, 2010 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

I dug up my old marketing textbook this morning in an effort to reconnect with the theory that first introduced me to the wonderful world I now call home.

Contemporary Marketing by Boone, Kurtz, MacKenzie and Snow, First Canadian Edition. As I started to re-read Chapter 1, memories of both fondness and melancholy came over me. I am ever-so passionate for marketing and its many-faceted intricacies but textbooks have never been my cup of tea. Coming from an English Lit background (as well as Business Management), I couldn’t help but wish that the textbook did a better job of engaging me, perhaps a few lines of Austen would’ve helped!

That aside, the first chapter attempts to achieve a lot in some thirty pages of heavy-handed verbiage. But right there to start it all off is “A Definition of Marketing,” Boone et al. define it as “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives.” [Take breath here!]

The definition at its core is not incorrect. It rather accurately (though it is markedly wordy) encompasses the challenging space of marketing and its prismatic quality. It does pin down what the authors describe as a broad scope of activities often difficult to define. And I couldn’t agree more with the foundation they’ve laid.

Marketing is perhaps best described as a term that is defined out of necessity rather than desire. To define it is to give it shape, but I love to think of marketing as something quite fluid and marked by is constant redefinition.

Admittedly, I sometimes struggle when asked what I do for a living,

“I’m in marketing …” is my usual response.

But, what is marketing? I mean, what do you do?” s/he will inevitably ask, but whatever response I give, whether literal like the one above or a little more loose around the edges, will undoubtedly end in ambiguity.

“Marketing is, I guess, finding out what you want or what you need and making it happen,” I’ll say. “It’s every poster you see, every word you read, every website you visit or software you download or brand you like. It is ubiquitous.”

Not quite as elucidating as I’m sure the questioner would’ve hoped, and yet still right on ball.

Marketing is communication and relationships and analysis and creativity and even so much more. But maybe the real definition of marketing is as unique as each individual that calls him/herself a marketer. Marketing is as marketing does, it achieves definition through action and through those who initiate that action.

How would you define it?

Filed Under: Business, Lessons Learned Tagged With: Contemporary Marketing, Definition, Marketing

Saying Goodbye to The Eye…

December 2, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

If you take a look around, you can see that I’ve made quite a significant change in the identity of my blog. No longer is it ‘The Eye’ but rather ‘Simren Deogun’s Marketing Blog’.

‘The Eye’ was symbolic of many things and on February 11 of this year I wrote the following in my first post:

In one aspect, “the eye” refers to my own, a physical entity able to perceive and appreciate design. From a different perspective, “the eye” also references my passion for marketing and the often sought-after yet difficult to achieve inner eye, as I like to refer to it. To me, the inner eye is not an all-seeing psychic-like ability but instead is the integration of marketing theory with the ability to detect successful campaigns, communication and design, both external and internal.

It was always a bit of an experiment. How would the branding of my blog unfold? What type of identity would I carve for it and what would it carve for itself?

I realized that though the previous title possessed intrinsic value in the metaphoric meaning it inferred, the real brand was me. This blog has always been marketing through my eyes and even though ‘The Eye’ no longer floats in that top-left corner, the perspective and the voice is still mine. I just know now the value of a name.

Filed Under: Lessons Learned Tagged With: Blogging, Brand, The Eye

A Blog Facelift

November 29, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

Finally, after many hours of toiling away, I can unveil this new design – my most rewarding achievement yet. And I sincerely hope it’s to your liking.

I started blogging about marketing in February of this year, and, since then, I’ve definitely evolved in both web design and graphic design. There were always three things about this blog that I wanted to remain true to: that the content, the design and the code be all my own work. And I’m proud to say that every last bit of this site is all me.

This blog has been my playground, my experiment and my own learning experience. As it grows, so do I and I cannot wait to see where it will take me next.

Before (click the image to enlarge):

Filed Under: Lessons Learned Tagged With: Blog Design, Graphic Design, Web Design

Finding the Time

November 25, 2009 By Simren Deogun Leave a Comment

I know one thing with certainty about myself: I need to be challenged. Without challenge, I am unmotivated and sloppy.

I’ve learned that to at least challenge myself (if I cannot be challenged by others) I must find the time. Find the time to explore, try, do, fail and try again.

Constant reinvention. Continuous learning. Ongoing journey.

It shouldn’t stop. Ever. If it does, the ‘challenge’ has become obsolete and so have you. If you’re the same and you need that challenge to sustain the roaring fire beneath you then FIND THE TIME to be your own challenger.

It can be as simple (or difficult!) as one of these! Find the time to try it, finish it, and don’t give up (secret to success, anyone?).

Filed Under: Lessons Learned Tagged With: challenges