Rebecca Hanna Felicia Kuschel
Valparaiso, IN
219-476-3704
Rebecca Hanna and Felicia Kuschel are both account directors for Group7even, a marketing and advertising agency started by Hanna's sister in 2009. Hanna studied English Education at Huntington University and Kuschel studied business with an emphasis in marketing at Purdue North Central.
Q: So you studied English education, is this field something that you were always interested in or how did it come about that you started working here?
RH: She [her sister] had worked in really large agencies in Chicago and New York and Detroit and that kind of thing, so they moved back here which is where we were originally from to raise family and that sort of thing. So they started Group7even, she and her husband. And they were just doing it the two of them and then it started to grow and they needed somebody at the time to do like writing and proofreading and that sort of thing, and it just fit with what I had for a skill set. And they needed someone who would want to start out part-time and that just fit with what I was doing at the time. I had just moved back here and so it just grew from there. I just learned literally everything on the job. But there’s huge bleed over between marketing and tons of other content areas so it’s actually really applicable across the board. It [English education] actually is a pretty good educational background for it as well. You can learn all the marketing stuff on the job. Not that it’s not good to have the degree because it is.
FK: It’s more like real world I feel like. At least my textbooks I don’t feel like taught me anything, but it’s true.
Q: And how did you come to start working here? What is some of your background?
FK: So in school worked as a wedding planner and then while I was in school...I did some marketing [for the wedding planning], I did social media and things like that to kind of get started. And then I moved over to being a studio manager for photography and video, and I did the sales side of things for that. And then from there I worked at...a marketing agency here in town and then left there for a couple reasons. But then I found Group7even.
RH: And she’s never leaving.
FK: No I’m not! (both laugh)
There are six people on the team at Group7even, along with freelancers to help with photography and videography when needed. They will also work with media buyers when necessary. Hanna's sister Michelle owns Group7even while her husband Grant owns Cardinal Point Technologies which focuses on high level programming and web development. The sister companies often work hand-in-hand on various projects.
Q: What are some of your everyday duties?
FK: So typically, for example, being account directors we each have our own specific clients that we manage. So that entails everything from emails back and forth for communication, to putting things into the production schedule for the designers to create, proofing, getting feedback on those things, working with Michelle who is kind of the lead on strategy, and just making sure all the creative and the content is on par with whatever goals we’ve set for them as a client.
RH: We’re basically part of the strategy team under Michelle heading our accounts. We help collectively develop a strategy for a client that will further their marketing and business goals, and then we figure out what actual tactics will help. If they’re here and the goal is to get them there, the strategy is for how to move them. We’ve got this created as the end goal and now how do we get them there? So we create tactics and a plan for all of that. And then we work kind of like a liaison hand-in-hand with the creative team to develop out pieces, and then we work literally all day hand-in-hand with clients, all day communication, meetings. And then we do social media, we write a lot, we do a lot of web updates, writing websites, press releases, newsletters, gosh we do so much stuff it’s actually unbelievable.
FK: Media planning, I know she already said we use media buyers sometimes but we do a lot of planning internally as well and kind of coming up with media plans for all of our clients.
RH: And then we execute those internally. So where we get into analytics type of stuff for us would be online media and running digital ads and that sort of thing.
FK: Which we do for a lot of our clients. A lot of Google, Facebook, things like that.
RH: And we track all their progress and then we optimize based on the analytics we look at and that sort of thing. So it’s a lot, lot of different stuff.
FK: Especially, you know, clients have different programs or offers or whatever it is that, whether they’re a product based business or a service, they constantly have different campaigns that we’re running which then means the creative changes which then means...
RH: Well you have to, because we have multiple clients each. It wouldn’t be too bad if we just had one and you’re just working on the one, but you’re doing it for multiple. And so like Felicia is saying, you have to think so far in advance of like, "okay, if we’re planning on doing this in September, we need to have started back in May and back everything out." So it’s a lot of planning and working schedules and trying to figure out. They pay for certain amounts of hours, we’re on a retainer situation for most of our clients, we do projects as well that are one-offs, but then there’s the management of their time and how to best utilize it to achieve their goals. Because the client’s, they understand the value we bring so they’ll take as much as we’ll give, who could blame them I would too, so you have to manage all of that to make sure that we stay within the allotted amount of time and ebbs and flows because if something big is happening you have to go ahead and front load and that sort of thing. But we’re responsible for maintaining profitability on our clients, which then bleeds over into making sure that when you hand it off to someone else to work on, whether it's media buyers, creative or web developers or whatever, you have to make sure that they’re within budget and maintain profitability and that sort of thing.
FK: Or setting up ad budgets or spending the time depending on…our clients are in a lot of different industries, so then you take whatever your ads are doing like on Google Ads and saying, "okay what does that look like in that specific industry? And how are they doing overall but then how are they doing in their industry as well?" So there’s a lot of things to think about at all times when it comes to performance and click through rates and impressions and what does it all mean for them specifically.
RH: There’s lots of balls in the air.
Clients are divided among the account directors based on the number of retainer hours those clients pay for and what will add up to a 40 hour work week. Kuschel has around 14 clients while Hanna has around five, since Hanna's clients have larger weekly retainers.
Q: You had mentioned campaigns earlier…do you tend to look at analytics campaign-to-campaign or weekly or does it just depend?
FK: Well it depends, as well as far as are we running general ads for them monthly? Where they're just continuously running or is it more of are we doing a specific campaign where there’s a specific budget like $100 or something? You know with something like that we would tend to look at that maybe every couple of days and just see, given as it has such a short span, are there things that we can revise on the campaign so that next week you can have even better results? We still do the same thing with general ads that are just continuously running, but when you don’t have quite as long of a period to really analyze everything and see what’s really working, typically like with general ads we would do an A to B comparison, every time we create a new ad set we’ll create two different versions of it and then kind of test those against each other...just to see what’s performing better, whether it’s the size of the ad, or the colors, or the copy, the image or whatever the case is. So it depends, but I would say weekly is what we usually track.
RH: I think weekly for most of them. And we do, for one in particular, we have campaigns running in different market areas. So it’s interesting to see what resonates in one market may not resonate very well in another one, or it’s doing fine but not near as much and so you have to compare and contrast that. The other thing is if we’re looking at web performance, we might look at seasonality, so it might be year over year. So the smaller campaigns we’re running we’re pretty much on top of those all the time. Web analytics, we’re kind of looking at what happens based on what’s going on with our individual campaigns, so we’re not checking that quite as much because we know if they clicked through they went to wherever we sent them so we know that occurred... Especially with transportation, seasonality matters quite a bit. Same thing when we are working with dealerships. There’s a season of car buying and not and that sort of thing, so you have to look at that too. Just because people click doesn’t mean it results in sales, so you have to think about that stuff too and what the best investment is for the client to get conversion at the end of the day.
Q: Speaking of conversion, what insights are you finding most valuable for your clients? What are you looking at the most?
RH: Well a lot of times we’re looking at I think click through rate for us. It’s our job to drive people to the client if we’re talking B2B. So we drive them to the client, it’s the client’s responsibility to convert them once they arrive. So we do really well on our end. We have found I think across the board is that we have really wonderful clients that are really wonderful people who often struggle on knowing how to convert when people come through the door. So we found that we end up getting, in addition to the marketing and analytics, that we are then actually helping them develop out strategies for internal company process for “okay, all these people are coming, what do I do with that?" Customer service, getting a hire level of customer service, incentivizing employees, so incentive program development internally to incentivize the employees to really want to convert and that sort of thing. So its not something we originally thought we would be doing but we’ve learned that a lot of people don’t know how to do it and we are able to help them in that area and devise a plan, the whole thing, and work with the internal teams to implement it. Because it doesn’t matter if we do our job in an outstanding fashion, and I would say we do, that when people come, if they’re not able to convert them, then it’s still not worth the money for them. And we’re really wanting them to have a, not just a return on investment, like the ROI is really good on the stuff we do, we need to help them have an actual hard ROI and conversion even though it's not technically our marketing responsibility to be a good partner to our clients. It's our job to be able to help them convert it into an actual financial gain. So we find a lot of them, not all of them, we have one in particular…that’s like fantastic at conversion. We’re driving them, they’re converting them, it's like a well-oiled, beautiful thing.
FK: I think the mistake though that people think with the digital age is, I think people are under the impression that [digital] just replaces all other means of customer service. They’re like, “we’re not getting anybody” and it’s like, “well what’s your on-boarding process? If you are taking patients in what does that look like? What’s the phone conversation?"
RH: "We’re suddenly getting 40 phone calls a week and we used to get two, or we’re only getting three new patients." It’s like, “well that sounds like there’s a process breakdown. What’s the process?" You know, it actually opens up a whole lot of questions on what’s going on. Obviously we make sure we’re getting a target, like a good solid lead for them that’s appropriate, and then it’s usually an internal process that we can help establish.
FK: And I think too it doesn’t help that, for an average person, if Target were to send you a coupon or something you’d be like, "oh I’ll go to Target and I’ll use it." But when it’s a specific industry that has a specific service or product, you can’t just rely on the digital aspect of things. There has to be the customer service side to actually get someone to convert. And so I think we always have to kind of go through reminding clients that this is like a two-fold [process], it’s the digital and then your part of things.
RH: Oh the other things I was going to say…qualified lead was the word I was looking for. Because metrics are all good, analytics are all good, but you if you were dishonest could fake them. You have to target appropriately, because you could drive a whole bunch of people to a whole bunch of places that wouldn’t qualify for whatever it is. Like if you had a bank and you put out something for an auto loan but you know at the end of the day most people aren’t going to qualify because you have to have a 780 credit score. But we’re saying “hey we’ll work with you, we’ll drive you there,” of course everyone looking for a car clicks, they’re calling, they’re coming in, [but] they’re all getting rejected. That’s not very ethical. So we could do that and then say, “well we had a 14 percent click through rate, it‘s unheard of in the industry, what are you guys doing wrong, you’re pathetic.” But in actuality we didn’t do our jobs because we didn’t actually get qualified leads. So now we drill that down into appropriate household income, the right type of job and that sort of thing that someone might have that would have the kind of credit score we’re looking for. And now all of a sudden the engagement is way down because the ad is appropriate and it’s a normal click through rate or it still does really well. It’s over industry standard but you don’t have 14,000 leads you have 45, but 30 of them ended up converting. That’s hugely successful and ethical. So I think that’s one of the main things I think about with analytics too is they can be easily abused to tell a client anything. Because you could spin data any way you want to, especially when you’re in marketing and you know how.
FK: Oh for sure. There’s a lot of creative things you can come up with.
RH: Yeah, I think trust between you and your partner client is huge because you have to know they are doing things in your best interest otherwise someone could totally just feed you a whole bunch of garbage.
FK: Right. Especially someone who doesn’t particularly understand how to best use the tools or things like that. If it doesn’t mean anything to them, they’ll sell it to you because it's what people need to hear. And part of that too comes in most of the time for our clients who are retainer. At the beginning we’ll do kind of a strategy and marketing plan and part of that usually is "okay who's your target, whose your customer, what are the demographics," things like that. So that way when we do have to implement it, like digital campaigns, we know exactly who we’re targeting.
Q: Do you feel like you have to temper expectations sometimes? Do you feel like with some of these campaigns the client is expecting more?
RH: We try to educate them along the way. So like if we’re going to invest their marketing dollars for them, we want to set the appropriate expectations. We’re all about the 'under promise over deliver'...if you don’t tell them what to think they’ll think something on their own, and so if they don’t know, they’re just going to guess at something based on whatever life experience they have and that’s going to be the expectation level. So we try to set that along the way and then when we show them metrics and we review things, we let them know, “hey typically in the industry it’s this. You’ll see that you’re doing double what it is. You’re organization is small so that might not mean 7,000 people, that might mean 20 for you but that’s huge for you too.” So we’ll work with them to understand what it is, because you can razzle dazzle with numbers and you could just tell somebody “you doubled industry standard, that’s awesome, let's move on,” but we definitely try to temper expectations with what’s real. And then like you said before, help them then know what to do with the new people or traffic, whatever the case might be, that they’re getting. What should we do with it now? So yeah, it's definitely something people don’t understand, and they don’t have to because they have us, but we certainly educate them along the way otherwise they wouldn’t know why we were spending it, what we’re looking at, what we’re doing, and so we always try to make sure they understand the value of what they’re investing in Group7even and the value of what we’re investing their marketing dollars into various media tools we’re using.
FK: Well and I think the thing that helps too is typically we have a pretty comprehensive media plan, so we’re not putting all of our, or all of their eggs, in one basket. We back that with other things like billboards and print and Comcast, you know, whatever it might be, so that way we can show them we’re in all of these different avenues and these are the results all over the board... Everything’s different, it’s not all applicable across the board, so being able to kind of have a more broad media plan set out I think better sets expectations and also helps them feel like they’re getting more reach. And then in turn keeps the dollars that are allocated to a specific campaign every month, like specifically to a Google ad, it keeps those down when you kind of set out a plan that’s very comprehensive. So they’re not saying, “well that was $900 that you spent on one Google ad and where are my results." So I think the comprehensiveness helps as well.
RH: We do try to teach them about reach and frequency and we have to reach a large crowd, but you can’t just reach way out there because people need to see it with a certain amount of frequency and it's really good that they see them multiple ways and multiple places. So maybe I’ve seen it on a digital ad, I saw it on Facebook, I saw it on a billboard, I heard it on the radio, that kind of thing, then all of a sudden people start thinking, “oh I’ve heard of that somewhere." They don’t even realize they’ve seen it seven times and now it’s starting to resonate. I’d say the one area that clients struggle with as far as like analyzing metrics and stuff is because digital stuff is so cool where we can see exactly what everyone’s doing. They start to say, “well how many of the people that came to our website came because of the radio ad, and how many came because of the billboard? And it's like well, we can’t actually see what they did when they saw the billboard, which they know but they wonder, "man, you can measure this down to the individual person and where they were when they did it, what about this?" So we look at the fact that you can see in web analytics these people came through Facebook, these people came through Instagram, these ones came through random sites out online, so we know those were all digital. There was this group of people who literally typed in your URL and there’s this group of people who Googled you. And we have to assume then, there’s some assumptions with the tools that aren’t direct, aren’t digital, you have to make a few leaps. So we have to assume that if it wasn’t digital but you know the URL that you heard that on the radio or you saw it on a billboard and you either typed in the URL or you Googled the name because you heard it from somewhere. Now they could have had support from seeing it digital too but that’s not what motivated the very last step to actually do something about it. So that’s the area I’d say they need a little extra support in understanding is like, we can tell you the impressions of a billboard and the radio, how many people heard it, how many people saw it, but as far as how many people did something with it, we have to assume the ones that weren’t driven by digital means are from that. Probably not all of them, but we have to assume the majority came from seeing those things. So there’s a few assumptions with the more traditional advertising means that you have to make when measuring success of something.
FK: And you can make the assumption too that if we had like a spike in website visitors or whatever it is and we also had a billboard and a radio commercial running at the same time, there can also be an assumption that people either saw the billboard as well or heard the radio commercial.
RH: And that’s a good point. It can get complicated because when you see a spike, you’re like, “okay two months ago there was a spike on this particular week, what exactly was running at that time?" And one client could have 15 things going at a time that are starting and ending at certain dates…and it’s like okay, the billboard went down. And it's like oh my gosh I can’t believe taking that one set of billboards away suddenly caused a drop. Or we had a radio spot added and started running that day and the next two weeks there was a huge spike. Wow, that made a huge difference in our media mix and we want to continue to run radio with them because we’re seeing if you change on thing at a time you can kind of see what’s causing some fluctuation in behavior.
FK: Or like we said, if it’s seasonal or whoever it is, there’s a lot of factors but there is also some assumption that you’re allowed in analyzing those factors.
RH: Analyze is a great word because it's not like you just pull, it print it and go "here’s you analytics." You have to analyze the data and then give your experience, professional opinion, as to why they are. So there are some assumptions drawn in some of it.
FK: Yeah, I mean because... you know those billboard companies tell you, "oh it gets this many impressions" or whatever it is, so it's like that’s great, but what does it means in terms of how many people actually saw ours? There’s a lot of things to consider.
Q: What type of reporting system do you have for giving that data to the client?
RH: We typically do it in person. We usually meet with our clients not just about reporting on data, we’ll meet with them about all of their projects, how things are going, what’s upcoming why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s just a way for us to have a good touch point with the client in person and because so much work is done via email and its also a good way to let them know "hey this is what your investment into Group7even is doing for your organization." We want to be able to give our client the information they need to justify the expenses their making, that they’re seeing the return on a day-to-day [basis]... They’re just a lot more forthcoming with what they don’t understand when they’re in person... We just want to give them the platform to ask deeper questions and have more understanding. So we typically just do an actually in person meeting. Now once they’re used to it, we might have some that are ongoing all the time [and] they’re well aware of it, they have complete and total understanding and we may just say, “hey analytics are looking great” if it’s not a huge bunch of stuff running at one time. "You’re click through rate on these ads are as follows" and then we’ll follow up usually with “are you getting more calls” or how is that translating inside the business, like “how are you converting.” We’re usually trying to pull data back from them at the same time as we get it, so it's kind of a mutual exchange. And so part of doing it in person is we want to know what happens once we send them that way.
FK: Which is where that comes in where we typically have to help clients develop their customer service side of things. Because if they’re not tracking how many calls they get and how many of those people they convert, then we don’t if what we’re doing is helping either.
RH: Well for example, we had a financial institution client where their ads were doing amazing, their digital ads. The whole goal was to get people to apply for these certain loans online. I’m telling them, “hey we’re driving tons of traffic, how many loans did you do, I mean this must be a record” and they’re like, "we haven’t gotten any" and it’s like why? And so then it became like a detective mission where…we figured out that their third party online loan application is broken and it was not downloading. And so when you look in it, people are trying and then they fall off. It’s the equivalent of cart abandonment. So we find that this is a real problem and we’re going to stop all ads because it’s a waste. It may make us look good because we’re sending all the people, but that’s not a good investment for them. So we’re going to stop all the ads, you need to deal with your vendor, get this fixed. We know this stuff works, so once it’s fixed we’ll start the ads again and then the numbers will go up from there because now the people can do what they’re actually trying to do. So there’s that sort of thing which it's equally important for us to give them information as it is for us to draw information back from them to make sure it's happening on their end. Otherwise it’s pointless.
Q: What are some of the media tools you use? You mentioned Facebook and Google, is there anything else?
FK: We’ve been introductory with Feathr, which is a retargeting [tool].
RH: So google has a network that if you do Google Ads, the ads are showing up on their network of tons of sites. But other people do the same thing and they have networks and some buy into the Google network, the others are going through other things, and so Feathr is another source where they do that too. But they also do Felicia mentioned retargeting and geofencing, so we’ll do those too. Especially event driven type of things where you can target people that are in a certain radius and then serve them up the ads, so we do that. We’ve got a couple different outlets we do that with. We do radio, we still do a little newspaper where it makes sense, not very much but a little bit. There's billboards, there’s a lot of creative pieces we use that aren’t measurable items but you still have to have that kind of stuff as well. Web, all social media platforms, what else do we do? We do email, like e-blasts we’ll use those too. Commercials...
Q: So it just depends on the client?
RH: Yes and their needs.
FK: Or their industry. But we’re kind of 'see a need, fill a need.'
RH: Yeah, just totally depends on the client. Like billboards for example don’t make sense for a lot people, but for some they do. Same thing with radio. Digital can pretty much help almost anybody, so there’s a lot of that.
FK: Or anything from office creative, pictures that hang in their office. Especially clients that we work on large retainers with, they start to find more and more things where they’re like, "oh hey can you guys do this?" And we’re like, "certainly can, come on over!" So it's fun because it's always something different. We’re not strictly a digital agency where all we do is digital media and run Google ads all day long. So it’s a good mix. And too, it’s important to have both digital and traditional print and things like that which is the one mistake we hope that people don’t assume these days, like I said earlier, that all you need is digital because it's proven and we have the numbers that you definitely need both.
RH: For sure. I like that we’re not just digital because we have these partnerships with our clients, and because we understand their goals and their needs and all of that stuff we’re able to kind of translate the data for them and how it works for them...it’s like being able to show them how to use [it] and it's like this is really good, how can we get it from them coming here to them being an ongoing customer or whatever. That part’s really nice to be able to help with because we have the long term relationships.
FK: I think it produces more value too when we’re not only doing the creative but also the media, because you could go with an outside vendor…to run some digital ads. But when it's not coincided with whatever campaign, you know, when you’re having to hand them the image you want to use for an ad or for the copy and then they have to create it for you, when there’s not that congruency I feel like you could potentially have a lot of wasted spend.
RH: The brand experience has to be really cohesive. And it has to equal the experience people have in person, otherwise they don’t feel like you’re trusted.
FK: So I feel like it’s more fun for us because it’s so comprehensive that we just get to look at everything at once. It’s not like, ”oh that’s not our part” or “we have to wait to get that back from so and so.”
RH: It’s kind of like we’re the hub...we pretty much serve as the outsourced marketing for most of our clients, so it's pretty cool to have that kind of a dynamic relationship with them.
Q: So far I have only talked to men...and for the most part a lot of the companies I’ve talked to, there aren’t a lot of women working in those agencies. What do you think of that?
RH: That’s fascinating!
FK: We’re predominantly women, we have one male [employee]. That’s interesting, I guess I never thought about it.
RH: It is interesting. I’m starting to think about some other places and I’m like okay, there are quite a few guys.
FK: One thing I will say, I feel like women just have this innate ability with details and just really connecting with stories and ideas and thoughts and campaigns, and even just like the execution of things I feel like we naturally always have the clients best interest in mind. Not saying that males don’t have that to any capacity, I just think we naturally tend to be more caring.
RH: It’s almost like God made us more emotional and nurturing just as human beings, and that actually translates really well for client relationships because I think in a meeting, nothing’s more important than reading the room and picking up social cues…nothing is more important than reading the room for a client. What's resonating, what’s not, who is in a mood, who is listening and shaking their head yes but is confused. And so I feel like it's more natural for a woman because we are more emotional creatures by nature, it's nothing negative against men of course, it's just how we’re made that we pick up on that stuff and are able to say, “okay I need to rephrase this and come at this another way," or I need to pep this room up a little bit and bring some life to the situation... It’s like an art form to know them very well because when you’re in there in a meeting, you’re selling to your client they know that they have a problem. They don’t know how to solve it but they’ve already started coming up with things in their limited knowledge about marketing because that’s not their field...so they’re coming up with ideas because they’re trying to solve their own problem and we’re coming in trying to tell them you don’t need to do that... So we’re selling to them. So you’re like on a stage and you’re crafting your message, you may have come in and you’re going to sell it to the client one way and on your feet you have to just go “I’m reading the room and this isn’t going to work, I'm going to spin it another way and sell it this way." So I think we’re really well suited for that as females and I also think what you said is very accurate, the nurturing nature of the client relationship and really wanting them to do well and succeed and pouring your heart and soul into it.
FK: A personal, vested interest in their success I think is what I’ve naturall seen moreso from working with women because I came from an agency where there was a lot of males as well. And I feel like it tends to be more of a “let's complete our to-do list" and less of like a “oh Mike said they can’t sell one of these machines and and they’re just struggling, what can we do to help them” kind of thing. It's more emotional.
RH: And we know research says that people purchase for emotional reasons and then they back it up with factual things. So the fact that we’re more emotional means when we put our creative hats on and work with the creative team and we’re drawing from what makes an emotional connection, how can we help a potential client or target or whatever make an emotional connection with our brand and then back it up with the facts that are good for them and that they need to hear? I think it's very easy for us to do that in a lot of ways, not that guys can’t do it too because like we said we’ve got a guy on our team that’s fantastic and can do that as well, but I would say he’s not typical for a man to do that so well.
Q: I'm picking up on the fact that you seem more hands-on internally with your clients.
RH: I’d say the drawback of that is the same, because you get so emotionally invested that if one of my clients is not doing well I’m like, "oh my gosh, how can we help them, what can we do" and it's like well maybe they havent’ purchased the time for us to invest into it but I want to do it anyway because I’m so emotionally invested in their success. I’m like how can we make this work? Can we just give them this? And it’s a struggle because you are so emotionally invested and you are so on the team then that it’s not just about checking to-dos off the list. It's personal then.
FK: I do think we are a player in the game because the owner Michelle is quite the shark. She is a genius, she’s not afraid to play with the boys at all.
RH: To me it’s almost hard to remember that there’s the boys club mentality in certain places because when she [Michelle] goes in, she is the boss of the room because that is who she is in a very gracious [way]. I don’t know how she does it...she’s the nicest person alive but she’s also intimidating. I mean she’s my sister for Pete's sake and there’s times where I’m like I’m not saying a word… She’s the boss of the room.
Q: How do you think analytics and data management and a lot of this software could be more efficient in the future?
FK: Well user interface for one!
RH: Yes! Oh my gosh, you’re Google for crying out loud! Do you think you could have structured that a little more intuitively? Maybe get together with Apple and figure out user interface design.
FK: Facebook, super easy. Google, I feel like, "were you okay when you made that? Was there something going on?"
RH: My personal thought, and I never researched this, this is what I made up...
FK: Oh no.
RH: ...is that they had to have built a platform for this at one point a long time ago, and then as features and stuff developed, instead of scrapping the platform and building one that actually made sense…like it functions well, but one that was intuitive in terms of where things live, how to find what data.
FK: More user friendly.
RH: Yes more user friendly. They should have scrapped that one once all the new features came, and instead they retrofitted it to their platform because it was already robust enough to hold it, technologically speaking.
FK: I’ll support that. I mean you look at it and it doesn’t even look like Google. Nothing about it says Google... I mean like where are my keywords?...
RH: They were here last time, but if you come in this way you have to find them this way. So basically it’s like a house, if you enter on the side door the house looks one way. Now this time I’m coming through the front door and instead of the house looking the same way but from a different angle, it’s a new house in there... So sometimes it's like, all these years later, sometimes I’m still clicking around going “where’s the one screen I love?” and then I’m like maybe if I come in from the top, oh yeah that’s what I did last time.
FK: Or you click on the campaigns and click on overview, it gives you nothing to look at but you always think it’s the campaign view.
RH: Because it says campaign view! So yes, user interface. We have a soap box about that.
FK: ...I think everything else, the reporting is fine where you can see all the click through rates and impressions, things like that are very straight forward, or verified calls or whatever ads you have set up. But yeah, just in general being able to navigate is just not friendly.
RH: But other than that I think everything else digitally, it’s like as new things come they get added [and] you’re able to use them. I think the reporting goes to a scary level, the targeting goes to a scary level, and as a human being I find it off-putting, as a marketer I think it's wonderful.
Q: What would you want to let students know who maybe want to work in this industry? What is something you learned along the way that you think would be important for them to know?
RH: I would say that you’re education is a foundation that helps you know how to learn, how to take ideas in and to learn from them. But it might not be as directly applicable as you think it's going to be, and your day-to-day job, what you do for the rest of your life, you’re actually going to learn on the job. But still take school in, it gives you a really good foundation and it helps you to learn from the ideas, get your feet wet on being able to communicate, being able to disseminate information and give it to others and that sort of thing.
FK: I think if you are a person that likes to just have a to-do list or come in and do the same job every day…it’s not the industry for you. You have to be proactive, especially in digital, things are changing every hour. In order to best serve your clients, you can’t be sedentary and you can’t just wait and be like, “oh we’ll see how this does.” Especially in marketing in general, not just talking ads or analytics or digital, but just marketing in general...you’ve got to be somebody who wants to do good work and you want to push yourself. I feel like most people in this industry, they see themselves as a marketer. Whereas my husband, works at the mill, he sees himself as a millwright but when he comes home he doesn’t think about his job, he doesn’t think about it very much. You have to open up your personal side and it's one of those jobs that...never stops. It's always moving and I think you just have to be one of those people who wants to put in time to do a good job.
RH: I think that there’s a lot of different outlets to use a degree, and so finding your niche that goes with your personality and then kind of trying to plan a career path that goes with that. If you don’t love people then don’t be on the account side or don’t be in an agency. If you don’t love interacting with multiple clients then be in-house marketing somewhere. An agency is probably not right if you don’t thrive under stress and having 80 balls in the air at all times. Don’t do the agency, go in-house marketing. I think marketing has a lot of outlets for anyone, so if you try something and you’re a student and you get in your first job and you’re like "oh my gosh this is going 90 miles an hour and I can’t keep up, I hate it, I have 13 clients and I’m supposed to talk to them all day but I’m also supposed to get all this work done, it's impossible” and it feels impossible but its possible…that’s okay. You don’t need to say I screwed up the last four years of my life getting a marketing degree, you need to say you know what this isn’t for me but I think maybe I should try in-house marketing for a company and I bet that’s a much better fit. It’s a much slower pace, it's one client, it's one product, whatever it is that will be a better fit for me and then try that. Some of it can be trial and error and…luckily marketing has so many avenues that I’d say just stay positive and don’t be discouraged. And sometimes it's kind of overwhelming, but I think in my personal experience it's also very collaborative…which I think is like you don’t have to carry the burden by yourself, which is nice.
FK: Or there’s social media specific agencies too. It's obviously changed a lot and evolved over the last couple years especially, but there’s a lot of options.
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