We will continue to have the University vs. real-world experience debate in this industry until the end of time, however, I feel this comes from those who sailed through Uni, didn’t take the information on board and showed up to every Wednesday morning lecture in the same clothes they wore out on Tuesday night. There is no substitute for education, whether that comes from practically undertaking tasks or learning theories and case studies in the classroom. In this competitive industry, you are required to wear many hats and need to be an ace of all trades to set yourself apart from other candidates. Here are the 3 best tips for young marketers breaking into the industry.

The question is often asked of our people at Marketing Eye : "What do you do that other marketing firms don't?". And the answer is quite simple.

While other's are now using the term "outsourced marketing department", few have actually defined it quite like we have at Marketing Eye. After 24 years in the industry, I have learned a lot from both succeeding and failing. From these learnings, I have developed a series of systems, processes and ways in which to improve our capability of delivering world-leading marketing strategies to businesses seeking a high growth return.

The difference is from start to finish

Marketing practices within the workplace must continually evolve and this evolution must occur through legitimate avenues to education because an education without substance is no education at all.

So when you look at subscribing to education programs, ensure that they are legitimate and conducted by experienced industry professionals.

I remember our meeting fondly. He walked up to me, introduced himself, and said, "what do you do?"

I replied, "marketing."

"No, seriously, what do you do?" he said with a smirk. "Nobody really does marketing, they do sales or something else." 

It wasn't necessarily what he thought, just what he said. He wanted to provoke a reaction and he sure got one! Within minutes we were firm friends, and he was officially one of my first friends I had met since I had moved to Sydney, the big smoke. We both kind of got each other coming from small rural towns in Australia.

The lines blurred sometime in the last 10 years, but I don't know exactly when it happened.

Having started my first business at 25 years of age, specializing in technology marketing, I thought I had it all. A marketer who understood technology marketing and who could talk the talk which at that time seemed to be, the height of the dot com boom, the most lucrative marketing position one could hold.

Then of course, someone came along and started talking about company culture, and marketers took a turn to start embellishing the on-boarding process of new recruits, with a mixture of "people marketing" with "technology marketing" - and for a time, that was all the rage. It seemed to be the only thing people were talking about and marketers started to play a role in human resources, giving recruiters and in-house HR managers the tools to "sell their brands" like they were a front line sales executive needing to close the deal in order to reach their quotas.