 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinar, Five Actions to Stay Ahead in Digital Marketing. Before we get started I'd like to go over a few points so you know how to participate in today's event. Throughout the presentation there are a number of polls included to enable us to find out more about you. You also have the opportunity to submit text questions to today's presenter by typing your questions into the question pane of the control panel. You may also send your questions at any time during the presentation. We will collect these and address as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. Today's presenter is Imran Farouk, Digital Marketer and CEO of MMC Learning. Imran is a digital entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in educating thousands of marketers across the world. He is a specialist in digital marketing automation for small businesses and spends time with subject experts to develop learning content that can generate revenue online. His purpose is to help marketers and educators succeed so they don't get left behind, avoid frustrations involved with technology implementation and help create a pathway to earn more for a better future lifestyle. Without further ado I'd like to now introduce you to Imran. Okay good thank you. Let's get going. I'm excited to be presenting today on a topic that I am very passionate about and which is close to my heart. So thank you guys for taking the time to listen to me and my aim is to share as much insights and information I can with you. The focus of this session is really on personal development so a slightly different spin to some of the webinars you may have come across previously because my focus is on you as an individual rather than what's taking place in the market. I'd also like to thank the Charter Insure Marketing for putting this together so some of the superstars like Megan and Sophie and Sarah behind these webinars initiatives which is a good thing. It's good to connect and share insights using the technology especially since the weather is completely crazy in the UK at the moment so it's snowing up and down the country so this is a perfect way to connect with you guys. Throughout the presentation there's a couple of actions I'm going to give you to do as the title says so if you've got a pen and a piece of paper handy you know grab a pen and an A4 piece of paper that would be good and also there's going to be a lot in this presentation so what I want you to do is look for the one thing or one or two thing in this presentation that you think will make a difference so try and take away any light bulb moments that you can make take and implement. Obviously with this technology we have a challenge you've probably got emails coming in text messages and so on if you can for the next 30 to 40 minutes put them aside so you can really capture some of the things that I'm going to be sharing with you today. So where are you right now where do you want to be in the future so there's many of you who are at the start of your journey so you're starting off some of you it may be a long agenda you might be the only marketer in your business some of you are finding it you know all this digital stuff is too overwhelming some of you may have been working in marketing for a long time and you still feel as though you're getting left behind so you may be at different stages of your learning different stages of your career and you know where do you want to be in the future I'm sure all of us want to be in a position where we are masters in digital marketing you know you've got the freedom to choose whatever job you want to go into in the future you may want some certainty in this crazy world of digital some of you may be out to build connections new connections build new relationships some of you might want to be at the top of your game in the future so it's quite key that you achieve positions of influence and some of you who are probably further in your career you may want to be you may be looking at you may want to grow internally as an individual or you may be looking at making a contribution back to a charity or society or you may want to become an educator in this field so what I want to talk about today is potentially to get you from where you are now to where you could be in the future is to focus on these personal development actions I'm also going to touch on elements of the brand new qualification with the end digital diploma in professional marketing throughout where I think it's relevant I'm not going to go into depth on the on this qualification in terms of the details of it but I will be touching on specific elements of it and I think there was a webinar that Michael did previously which was more into depth on the qualifications I'd recommend possibly listen to that so why do we want to focus on these actions so there's a lot there's a lot happening in in the marketplace right now if you look on Google Trends and type in digital marketing this curve is only going one way and you guys already know that when you look at statistics like ad spend and budget spend quite a large percentage is going into digital right now so I don't need to educate you on the trends and a fascinating exercise I've been doing for a good number of years is looking at different job titles on LinkedIn I'm sorry I'm a bit geeky with this stuff and going back the good five six years those three thousand people on LinkedIn with digital and digital marketing in a job title if you were to do a search now there's all the you know it's almost reaching seven million people on LinkedIn I've got the word digital marketing and a job title and even the word digital and job title that's you know gonna pull over 11.7 million the subject area of digital marketing itself again highly fragmented highly complex as a subject area you know these elements are going so in-depth when you become channel specific if you look at it from an employer perspective so the bad needs for employers and companies at the moment is digital marketing is becoming too complex for them to figure out how to internally the need the resources so this is good news for you guys Mark just you know thank you for joining this call the good news is that you probably got jobs for the next 10 to 20 years you know these days you know people have open arms for a for a marketer with digital skills so there's a lot of challenges from a from an employer perspective the flip side of that is you know there are people talking about the future of the marketer you know the robots are coming in fact the reality is the robots already here you know my kids can walk up walk over to the Amazon Alexa and place an order for products and delivered to the house the next day so there's not there's no marketer or salesperson involved in that equation there's you know you can buy automated advertising you can you know some of these chat areas that you're speaking to you're not even speaking to a human being well across the board if you look at any job with this tech and the change in digital you know all jobs from taxi drivers to sale the marketing people are being affected with this way of the technology but what I want to emphasize is there is an abundance of possibilities and opportunities to have a think about if I was to go back 10 years ago and have a look at how much it would cost to start a tech business you're looking at the in the region of quarter a million to half a million pounds to set up a tech business if we look at that today it cost you a few thousand pound up and running with the servers and the processing power and the tools for you to get up and get started straight away if you look at many other things like the e-commerce industry which has got billions of pounds worth of transactions and you know we're you know that only represents a small percentage of all transactions right now so across the years to come there are you know this market is going it's billions and it's amazing to see that there are you know handful of companies in the world that have generated a billion dollar turnover in the space of two years now what I'm not saying is you know everyone out there can go and do that or what I'm saying here is a possibility these things are becoming possible and you know there's another billion people that aren't even on the internet right now that will be joining the internet so it's quite fascinating to understand the global abundance of opportunities are out there so a question for you is you know where is your thinking in this mix of activity and you've heard this quote over and over again you know if you keep thinking the way you're thinking you'll get to keep getting the results that you're getting and if I was to go back I'm going to use this as an example if I was to go back to the times when television was invented and you had radio advertisers who then transfer themselves to presenting on TV so when the first few programs came out so these radio presenters sat on TV and looked down on the script and read the script out and they didn't take advantage of the fact that they're on camera and didn't take advantage of the medium so that's carrying through the same type of thinking if I was to give you an exercise on the screen here you've got six basketball players three of them are wearing blue shirts three of them are in black shirts if your job across two minutes was to count the number of times the basketball is being passed around between the blue players your job is to count the number across two minutes if halfway through a man with a suit and a monkey mask came right in front of you and pointed at you or did why be why be wanted and then disappeared would you not a thing but this is a real exercise I was done an experiment I think the real experiment was with a man in a gorilla suit and nobody noticed anything so the point here that I'm making is your eyes and ears can only see and hear what your brain is telling it sometimes you're missing the obvious opportunities around us also what is it you probably spent some time thinking about where your brain is occupied so a lot of people have percentages on on here wrong whatever applies to you but the some people you know spending too much time thinking about things are never going to happen those people thinking about things in the past that can't be changed thinking about worries and so on and then the real legitimate worries you know there's only a small cent of your brain has been occupied thinking about them things in terms of my journey I've been doing what I've been doing for 20 years my passion and purpose is to educate marketers and help marketers succeed I've been doing since 96 also spent a lot of time my background in e-learning as well so spent a lot of time helping subject matter experts build some cell content online and over the last five six years after educating so many mocked as I've got a lot of business the thing to me help them do this in real life so I've been involved in creating sales and marketing automation for those for small businesses so the business one of the houses I'm a credit we run the credit to study center called MMC learning part of the Manchester Metropolitan University so I know that is running the MSE and digital marketing at the university and we'll have a passion to and a target to educate 20 by 25 is to educate 10,000 marketers and I think the opportunity for marketers is a very unique so for me across the last 20 years you know I've been through times where you know markers were being made redundant you know we went through some tough times going back 15 years ago and we've battled through it and like I mentioned earlier the timing is now different for marketers you know marketers are being welcomed with open arms and businesses so we have a focus to help marketers the reason I've put these five actions together is quite complicated in the world out there in many ways so this is what we want to avoid happening to you so which is why I've created these five actions so if you have got a pen and a piece of paper spread this out right down five P's going down one side of the page so you can capture some of the actions I'm going to go through in this presentation so the first point I want to make is pathway and to know the direction and the destination that you're going in without this you if you don't have this you're not going to get anywhere and if you don't know where you're going to you'll never reach obviously never reach your destination in this presentation I've got lots of mind maps in this presentation and because of time I'm only covering certain elements of these mind maps so you at the end you'll see my LinkedIn details you can connect with me and I'll share these mind maps so you can look at look at them in more detail but the first for the sake of this presentation I'm only going through certain elements of these mind maps so the things I want to choose off this mind map is is that is the element around success if if your ambition is to become a chief marketing officer and there are other chief marketing officers in the market who have achieved that position and success so there is somebody out there who's achieved whatever you're aiming for so it's important to connect with them individuals study the tactics figure out how they got there and so on it's important to define the end result so I've trained a lot of marketers so over the 20 years we've trained a thousand marketers and I get a lot of people coming to you and saying the goal is to earn more money and bigger salary and so if I turn around and said to you okay here's 10 pound per month more on top of what you're earning right now it's probably not what you're thinking of but in fact vaguely you've hit that goal but that's there's an importance to actually defining the goal and speaking about goals you may have come across to be had which sounds some big hairy or dexter's goal and so this is something created by an author called Jim Collins who has done research on the habits of successful visionary companies and a B-hag is a sense a goal which is so big that it scares you a little bit and I certainly said B-hags for myself and for the business I run and what I found is in creating these B-hags you change as an individual you may not hit the goal but you change as an individual and you reaching much further which is pushing you to form at a higher pace and there are other terms for this so Google have something called moonshots so you know Google's moonshot is to categorize every single piece of information in the world and that is in moonshot goal and there's there's many different ways of looking at this if I was to look at the standard marketing trail ladder going back a number of years so that this was typically the way you would work up in a marketing role so that's changed considerably so it's changed three different levels so at the top level seen in management and director level there's lots of brand new job titles and in fact this diagram here is limited because I'm coming across other job titles like chief digital officer and all kinds of weird and wonderful titles which never existed a year ago so this is changing quite rapidly and also at the entry level there's so many different types of entry level positions coming up in the marketplace so the biggest changes to taking place right here in the middle where you're heading towards management level and there's so many specialist marketing stock digital positions which is just expanding a substantial pace for those of you are working your way up from who have some entrepreneurial blood inside you and you want to break out your marketing role and become a freelancer and a consultant and so on there's a big big market and I recently saw a study which is saying you know marketing is becoming one of the top 10 career lifestyle choices so if you're somebody who wants the freedom of not working for a boss working for yourself freedom from time you know not having a man to find job and so on so there's big opportunities for freelancers which I'll touch on later in my presentation and so so I'm coming up to a poll here so I've got a question I'm keen before before I recommend what actions you should take for this fair section I'm keen to know a bit more about you guys here on this webinar so where you are on this equation of planning your future we'll give you about 20 seconds to support in this poll okay good we've got a few thoughts coming in okay thank you I know some of this might even be person to you but thank you for sharing your results so quite even split across there so so quite evenly split I'm glad a few of you so about 10% of you that I said not exactly where you're going so congratulations for planning to that level quite a few of you at the start of your journey and direction which is good I'm going to recommend an action for you for you guys and so we've got a rough idea so great and so let's go on to the next slide so this is the action but I want you to have a think about so I want you to think about mapping your pathway and defining the destination that you going on so this is the action for those of you who mark that you haven't got clear in the nicest sense that you you're still trying to figure this out there's quite a lot of actions that you can do to try and figure out a bit more and this is one I like doing I'm going to take it from Jeff Bezos so I'm not I'm not some of you probably think Amazon is evil and they're out to destroy the world and destroy retailers and so on but we'll and Jeff Bezos is like a bond villain but we'll take the best of him for now and recommend an exercise that he did and he's planning his own development so he did an exercise where he imagine he is 85 years old or he'll imagine himself 10 years in the future and how he'll put himself in that position and visually imagine him actually being there so you want to visually put yourself there and then wake up from that state and then write down all the regrets that you wish you had done across 10 years so quite a powerful exercise and it will bring a bring out a lot of information that will help you decide on the direction in fact he did this exercise before set up Amazon and obviously set up Amazon which works extremely well okay good so I'm going to move on to the next action so the next action is about positioning I'll just give you some time to absorb this next mind map I've got here so the key point I want to make about positioning yourself as a marketer is if there are opportunities out there and the question is are you the person that people think of when there's an opportunity and if the answer to that is no you've got quite a lot of work to do to really work towards grabbing opportunities so there's a couple of things that you could take away from here they involve in positioning yourself you'll bring tin profile your online presence being involved in education. Networking is important so if you're a CIM member I would certainly recommend that you look at attending events and building a building a network in terms of looking at the CIM digital qualification the challenge in the marketplace right now is there's a lot of people delivering qualifications right now there's a lot of digital marketing providers so it's quite confusing which training provides to go with so I wanted to reiterate some of the benefits going down to see angry I mean a lot of people out there offering what they're doing right now I don't think they'll be around in a couple of years time so CIM has been around for over a hundred years so if you're going to spend time studying it's important that you get a qualification which is worth it's going to be worth something worth something in a couple of years time. Also there's a big community of professionals again if I did a search on LinkedIn there's over 200,000 people connected to the chart and you see a marketing and all the qualifications are built with the employer in mind so so when you do a CIM qualification you've got some certainty that there's a confidence for employers recruiting. So this is my next action which is to write down what your purpose is and how are you positioning yourself. So for this action I'll probably recommend that you're going to have a look at the TED video that Simon Sinek has done about identifying your why and he's wrote a great book on identifying your why you do what you do. If you look at some of the greatest leaders in the world like Steve Jobs, even people like Nelson Mandela and so on when they communicate and they always communicate with their why not the how and the what. Okay good so the next third area of action we're looking at is proficiency and to come into mastery so there is an overload of information in the marketplace. Information can be you know it's entertaining, some of it's useful, some of it's useless. Certainly there's a lot of entertainment out there so although I've got Netflix accounts you can spend a huge amount of the number of hours just binge watching through series so there's a real overload of information. The key point I want to make here is that the knowledge you gain is an asset and you will get return a financial return so I want you to think about changing your relationship and knowledge but when I'm out there telling people, advising people to different courses and qualifications it's not a cost to you it's an investment that you're going to get returning. At some point in the future you will get a great promotion based on the qualifications and knowledge you've gained and so on. To give you a direct example and this is obvious for freelancers and consultants. In my days I've done a lot of Google AdWords consultancy and I've probably done a thousand and a thousand times work for consultants around Google AdWords. I spent money on doing courses on Google AdWords and that has a direct impact on the return so it's important to understand this relationship and knowledge. If you look at this model there's a 25 digital marketing skills that you should really benchmark yourself against which cover these different areas from plan, reach, act and convert and then gauge. So when you look at each of these skills let's take an example in reach so when you're looking at search marketing so you want to be asking yourself do you know the best practices and the levers to gain the results and you can also ask the question where is your business. So this next slide talks about a T-shaped digital marketing. This is a term that's been coined for a couple of years but I'll still like the term and there's three areas to this equation and I like the work that both wraps down on this. So there's a base knowledge, marketing foundation and channel expertise. There's a couple of slides here that look at a teacher and marketer. On the background to this there is some core disciplines that you need. There's a wide, it's called a T because there's a wide range of things that you should know as a marketer or a digital marketer and then the T bit of it, the long bit of it, there should be some deep disciplines on what you should be learning and depending on your role, your marketing role, in fact this T-shaped doesn't look like a T, it looks like an M but it's important to create your own version of it depending on what role you're doing marketing. So this is an example of a digital marketing strategist. This is an example of a content person. This is an example of a PM and comms person and so on. So we've got another poll that's coming up here. So I'm keen to know a little bit about you guys. We'll launch this poll and give you another 30 seconds or so to answer this. Okay, good. Some votes are coming in. So we've got at least one person that's come in as a digital marketing expert, which a few more. That's great. So I'll give you some advice separately towards the end of this webinar. So the couple of your specialists, so the challenge for you guys is to look at this T-shape. Most of you have got some knowledge on trying to build it up and some of you are getting left behind. So I've got a couple of bits of actions and advice for you guys later in this presentation. But thank you for taking part in that poll. So there's a good mix of people. So action number three is to analyze your own digital marketing skills and identify the gaps inside your digital marketing skills. So take my slide deck later and have a look at different areas. One thing I highly recommend is find your natural strengths because digital marketing is so fragmented. There are things that you are naturally good at. So my advice would be really to zone in on where you're naturally good at and try to make them as your T-shape. I'm actually excited about the structure of the new CI and Digital Diploma and Professional Marketing is taking a while to launch this qualification with all the different feedback we've had from industry and different experts. So what we have here is an extremely powerful qualification that will make you increase T-shirt marketing because it's covering key elements of strategy, key elements of the experience and also mastering digital channels. So I think all the products and the qualifications in the marketplace I truly think this is now one of the best in terms of content and knowledge perspective and actually getting you up for the future to have the right knowledge and also to have the knowledge that will benefit employers. So I'll touch on some of these elements again in a further section. So the next point I want to make is around prosperity. And the key point I want to make here is your prosperity equals your employer prosperity. So if your employer is successful and the things that you do, you'll become successful. The reason I say this is I work with a lot of marketers who are working inside the businesses and you as marketers, you know more information, you're 10 steps ahead of your employer. So you know more than your employer and your employee may only still be taking baby steps forward. So ideally what you want to do is hold the employer's hand and help them take the steps one at a time through the journey they're taking. It's important to understand I think as a marketer you have to take responsibility now to own the entire customer journey. You can't own one part of it whether it's you know there's a lot of marketers who are concerned about acquisitions, some are concerned about retention. So the challenge of what's taking place right now in the convergence of different disciplines or sales, marketing, customer service and so on. As a marketer it's now your responsibility to understand and take control of the entire customer journey. Have a look at some of the research on the right hand side of this presentation. So if you haven't looked at this, it's a critical piece of research to understand. So this is Google's key micro moments, a very interesting study done to see what stage potential customers are in. Where am I consulting? I think we need to go back to the basics. I'm coming across so many businesses, whether it's a small business or a large business, the basics are missing. Why are they missing? Because a lot of assumptions are being made, people are saying email is dead, let's leave on to the next channel, people are saying we need to do Snapchat and so on. And the reality is you as a marketer need to decide by connecting with your customers what's dead and what's not. And some of the basics are missing, like creating welcoming or onboarding journeys. If people are ready to buy, help them to buy. If people aren't ready to buy, need to look at longer-term sales funnels. So looking at the CIM qualification, the power of this qualification is it's assessed by work-based assessment. So this allows you to take your knowledge and apply it to your workplace. So if you're doing a digital strategy module, you will be creating a digital strategy on the business you're working for. And you can see some of these elements now in a bit more detail across the three modules. So the fourth action I've got for you is start to identify how you can help achieve prosperity for the business you're working for. If you're a freelancer, I've got another couple of things for you to have a think about here. So some key questions that you want to ask. So if you're a freelancer or a consultant, the challenge for you guys is there's only one of you and you've got to figure out how to duplicate yourself. If there's somebody on this call who are ambitious about going freelance or becoming a consultant, there's three things that I'll get you to have to think about. And there's this thing called the hedgerow concept. It's about the author Jim Collins again. And there's three questions that you need to ask. What are you deeply passionate about? What drives the economic engine? You know, what is what people are asking for out there? And thirdly, what can you be the best in the world at? So it's important to really think through these items. So the final point I want to make on this action area and I strongly believe that this is an important element. It could give you a lot of competitive advantage. And what we're talking about is to become productive and becoming in a full state. And I'm training so many people. So this is, for some people, this is what the day looks like. For some people, every day is like this. Living in a world where it's quite difficult. So I am going to do another poll and a final poll in a second, which is to ask you how you're finding your day to day role, how you find your levels of productivity in the marketing workplace. Because marketing right now can become very crazy. So we'll do another survey. I promise this is the last survey. Okay, good. So we've got a couple of polls coming in. And depending on where you have got some actions on some advice that I'm going to give you on this. Thank you for the feedback. So again, quite evenly spread out for those of you who have achieved a high level of productivity, congratulations. That's great. Some of you have started systems. So that's good to see. And some of you are just at the beginning stages. So you're having moments of productivity and you're struggling to focus. I'm going to give, going to help you with that in this next section of the presentation. Before I go into the into the actions, it's important to get into the flow state or a micro flow state. So you probably all experience some kind of flow state. So the word flow came back in the last, say in the last 100 years. Well, it's commonly not not in the sporting world as athletes use it to when they say they're in the zone. Well, you've got jazz musicians that use it when they're in the pocket. So so you probably have moments of productivity or moments of flow, where you spent an hour doing something and you've got five hours work done. So these are moments of productivity. And these days is extremely difficult. The BBC did a study going back 10 years and then they looked at attention spans. And on average, you know, people's attention spans were about 20 minutes. And the world we live in today, people attention spans are about nine seconds. So that presents a big, big challenge. So, you know, some of you have indicated in the poll, we're struggling with this on this thing that you need to have a look at, I'm going to go through something in a second, which goes through how you map out different horizons of focus. There are lots of exercises that you can do. There's a big thing in the workplace about mindfulness and the power of now. So you've got so much information in your head. You know, there's not many, many people now living in the present. So if you're into meditation or if you need to meditation, there are apps on the iPhone that you can download. And there's one called Headspace, which is quite cool app that you can download. And kind of think about, I mean, some of the markets I speak to, I'm just spending every single day just going in and out of meetings and not getting anything done. So there's a real challenge on the state. I've dropped another element in case you're wondering what it is on this slide, which is to do with kind of a bit of a health angle, not that I teach health. But I'm saying there's a big challenge, especially amongst techy digital marketers who are spending a lot of time on the laptop and a lot of time indoors. So there, I mean, there is an important to get out and look at the sky and get some fresh air. It's important to really look at the food you're drinking, sleep time. So this is an area of study, which is going more and more in depth about the importance of going to sleep at night and getting a deep sleep. I mean, all of these things affect productivity. Right now, as individuals, we all live in a box. We jump, get into a box and go to work. We jump in a box to work and so on. So we're just living in this strange world at the moment where we're kind of wrapped up in things and life is just passing by really fast. So focus stands for follow one course until success. So it's important to focus on the one thing that's going to make you successful. So the final action number five that I've got here for you is to map out big horizons of focus, which I'm going to show you on the next slide. So there's an author called David Allen who has come up with this concept of creating this big horizon of focus and he used the analogy of an airplane flying at different levels. So he's got a 50,000 foot level down to the runway level. You can use this analogy or you can use six different levels You know, so the top level is looking at your career, your life purpose, you know, what do you want from life? The next level you're looking at a kind of a three to five year plan, which professional direction do you end up in? What are the skills that you need to be aiming for? The next level down to the eight thousand foot level is looking at the next 12 to 18 months. Then you've got areas of responsibility and focus. Then you've got the ten thousand foot level. It's a project that you're working on from the marketing projects that you're working on, the databases, which could be the campaigns. And then you've got a runway level, which is the desk data, the emails that you're answering, the calls that you're making and so on. So it's important to map out, map this out for what you're doing. So you can use this in your business or business level. You can use this for an individual. You can even use it at home with your family. So for example, if you know, if your job's changed and you're going to move to a different country, you're going to come home around the dinner table and have a very different conversation around the dinner table. So it's going to be a kind of a 40,000 level conversation that you're having. You can use this model in meetings. So you probably had lots of meetings where you've got some people in the room, they're talking about the vision and the mission and they're up there and you've got some people in the room talking about the runway level on what needs to be done. So this is good just to kind of map on. And at a personal level, I'm educating a lot of marketers who have just been focused on the runway level and the projects that they're working on. And then the work, you know, all of a sudden two years later, you kind of wake up and say, actually, you know, this is not where I want to be. You know, I was aiming to become this a senior marketer in this kind of position in this kind of role. In fact, I'm just going off in a different tangent. So this alignment is important for you to really use and think about. So this kind of concludes the last section. I've got a couple of more slides that I'm going to run through just to just summarize. And if you've got any questions about this moment in time, so now the time to start thinking about your questions and putting them in into the box, into the presenter chat, in your chat area that you've gone your eye on side, which I'll see you later on. So just to wrap up, an interesting question, how good does your marketing have to be? So this is another thing I've been looking at over the last couple of years. So the expectation for you as a marketer has now changed. So your marketing has to be beyond good. There's now an expectation for you to be much better than the standards that were there a couple of years back. And I like this quote from Jebe, which is, make your marketing so useful, people would pay for it. So just reflect on this for a moment. Are you creating pieces of marketing that are highly valuable to your target audience? I would love to talk to more about marketing. So as marketers, you've become even more powerful individuals. So there's about 5000 pieces of software out there, which are automating sales and marketing. So it's important to really understand this mix. There is some coverage on this content in one of the end modules as well. Just for fun, I decided to write down all the apps I'm using. It's not fully complete yet. So me as an individual, I thought I'll do my own more tech version. So this is what I look like in all the different pieces of software that I'm using. And I accidentally hit the wrong button on my mine right software and it looked like this. Which I thought, okay, that's interesting because it's like I've got a team of people working for me. So it's really important to understand going forward as a marketer, the power you've got in your hands with these strong pieces of software and technology. So when I started off, I threw a bit of a roller coaster ride in terms of looking at the opportunities for a marketer and also the challenges of the marketing role in the next 10 years. It doesn't matter what's taking place around you, there is one constant in this equation. That constant is you. What are you doing to develop yourself as an individual? If you as an individual, you're not learning, you're not educating yourself, and you ultimately are going to become static. And that's going to present quite a challenge for you. I've got a little reminder here of the photo of Picasso there. So I'm just going to share a story with you. So Picasso, the famous painter, was out on the street painting and a woman approached Picasso and asked Picasso to draw a sketch over. And it took Picasso 30 seconds to draw this sketch of this woman and he handed it back to her. And the woman turned around and said, well Picasso said to her, this sketch is going to be worth a lot of money in the future. And the woman turned around and said, you know, it's only taking me 30 seconds to sketch this. And his response was, it's taken me 30 years to produce this 30 seconds. So it's important to understand that. For those of you who did indicate that you just want to start the journey and you're struggling on focus and so on. And again, I'm educating a lot of marketers who are learning PPC for the first time, learning SEO for the first time. Just remember that it looks quite daunting to start off with, but you have to start the journey. And you have to discipline yourself to do bits every day. And there will be, across a period of time, there'll be a moment in the future where you will become masters in these digital channels. So it's the discipline and the focus of continuous learning, which is important. And a lot of you who are more experienced, you probably experience these days where your career may have gone static for a number of years and you've got stuck in a certain position that's been difficult to get out. You don't want to become one of these people 20 years down the line where you have to have regrets. You hear a point in time when marketers are in high demand and you're in a very unique time right now. So it's important to take advantage of it. I mean, in my 20 years, I've had some big falls and you've just got to learn to get back up. And for some people, what bought me was a trampoline. So there was a bit of a roller coaster ride ahead in the next 10 to 20 years for marketers. We just learned to bounce back up. For those of you who are interested in studying this new digital diploma question, what can I talk about throughout the presentation? You can contact, there's some details here that you can contact. There's lots of study centres out there, depending on what your need is as an individual. You know, there's online centres, there's space centres throughout the world. So find the right study mode for you. One of the hats I wear is I represent Central MNT Learning, which is part of the Manchester Metropolitan University. Since I'm presenting and you guys have been patient listening to me for the last 50 to 50 minutes, I am giving you an offer. This is from this study centre, MNT Learning. So if you are interested in online learning, if you're interested in doing the diploma or any other CM qualifications, MNT have kindly offered to pay for your membership. If you decide to study with MNT Learning, which is one of the centres in the mix of centres, and that's where the next start dates are coming up in March and April. So that brings us to the end of the presentation. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm keen to know what you picked up from this presentation, what are some of the actions that you're going to take. I'm happy to share these mindmaps. I'm always producing lots of these mindmaps, so I'm happy to share that with you. Any of you that want personal advice, bring me a LinkedIn CV connection. I'm happy to give you advice. I'm happy to take, you know, my passion is to help you guys succeed. That's what I do, and that's my purpose. So I'm happy, even if you're not going to go on to any other qualifications, I'm happy to take my time out and have a look at your CV and advise you in different career directions. So feel free to connect to me. So I think we've got a tiny bit of time for questions. I don't know if any questions have come in. Thank you, Imran. So yes, we're now going to begin answering some questions that have been submitted during the presentation. So just as a reminder to the delegates, you can still submit your questions through the question pane in your attendance control panel. So our first question is for you, Imran, somebody that might be quite strong in sort of the theory side of marketing and digital, what digital tools should they learn and understand to be an expert in that area and to be a consultant? Right, okay. So to answer that question, I mean, there are hundreds of tools out there. So if you're already strong on the theoretical side and your aim is to become more practical. So some of the things I would have a look at, so if you're going down a consultancy route and you need to, I would really look at see if you can try and niche yourself to start off with. So to give you an example of that, some of the most successful digital marketing consultants I've seen have decided that they're going to consult for dentists. So they're going to take a tool. So one of the tools I work with is InfusionSoft. And it's a marketing automation platform and they've gone and said, okay, I'm going to help dentists succeed in the marketing. So that's been extremely powerful because you're taking a tool and creating a model that can be replicated and deprecated across a number of dentists. So it's quite a clever way of doing it. In terms of the tools, I would certainly, I mean, strategy is important. So one of the CIM modules are digital strategies. So if you haven't studied that module, I'd hide. So by the way, something I did mention is when I showed you the modules earlier, you can actually study the modules as standalone. So if you're in this scenario as a digital marketing consultant I'd highly recommend that you just pick these modules off and do them as individual modules. So the tools, sales and marketing automation is growing extremely fast. Social media management tools are growing very fast. So I would choose tools that are big in the industry that have a lot of users. So things like HubSpark and InfusionSoft and so on. I'm seeing a lot of companies who have implemented these tools and it's a bit like a gym membership. They're paying monthly licenses for these tools and they're not doing anything with them. So there's big, big opportunity there for you. But feel free to cut it to me and I'll give you some more advice. Thank you, Iman. So the next question is, what are your thoughts on or do you know anything about linda.com for training purposes? Right. So linda.com has got a huge number of lessons. So I would recommend, I mean, some of the material gets out of date quite quickly because there are videos that have been pre-recorded videos that have been shot. So they're definitely worthwhile. At top level, there's some really good videos. I certainly use linda for my team. So in my team in Manchester, if there's somebody who's learning Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Premiere, especially the techie subjects, the very techie subjects, linda is a brilliant tool to train yourself up or train yourself up in using some of the tech subjects. For subjects in digital marketing, it's a bit more of a challenge because it's subjects on moving more faster. So things like search marketing and Facebook advertising. So there's a limited amount of knowledge and information you can glean from something like linda.com. So ideally you want to learn from practitioners as well. But certainly as a resource, it is a very good powerful learning resource. Thanks, Imran. We've had a question about the qualifications for the digital diploma. From an MMC perspective, how does someone go about starting the qualification? Do you have specific start dates? How long does it take to complete? Right, okay. So at MMC, there's a regular start date. So there's monthly start dates. So it's one of the more popular qualifications. So there's a regular start date. In terms of starting, the first action is you can either ping them and pin or contact James at mnclearning.com. The first thing he'll do is he'll probably ask you for your CV, have a look at the CV and make sure it's the right level and the right qualification for you. So there's the conversation to be had before enrolling to make sure it's right for you. Once, so you can enroll online. You can pay for your CIM. We help you sign up to CIM. So we take some of the paperwork out of it. In terms of the length of the qualification, so there's a lot of flexibility if you're doing it online. You can do it anywhere from three, four months up to 12 months. So it really depends on your work. So let's say if you're working full time, then I'll recommend doing it over a nine to 12-month period and spending a couple hours per week studying. If you've got more time on your hands, you can go down a more intensive route and get access to all the content and study at a faster pace. And the only thing to be mindful of is the three points in the year where you can submit your assessment. So the chart names here are marketing regardless of which student you study at mark your assessment. So the three points in the year where you would do the assessment. So, you know, with James on myself, I can advise you on start dates and timings. And also if you want on the flip side, I get a lot of people coming to me and saying I'd not have a lot of time to do this, but they're not going to need to invest in the knowledge. So you could even do your qualification over a two-year period and take your time, go through one module at a time. So depending on your need, I'd recommend obviously you have holidays and family and work commitments. So the qualifications, I'm quite happy to say, are really flexible and can work around your own schedule. Thanks, Imran. And I guess it's also just good to point out that obviously we have a number of other studies centres across the country that deliver the diploma. So if you wanted to look at what was in your local area, you can go on to the CIM website and to the qualifications page and you can then search by location mode of study. So whether you'd prefer to study face-to-face or online and see what options are available. Another quick question in terms of the qualifications, Imran, is someone that has the CIM professional marketing diploma, how does that work in terms of then going on to doing the digital diploma? Is there any overlap? So one of the modules, Digital Strategy, is a shared module across the diploma and professional marketing. So congratulations if you've already got that diploma. So you've already done the Digital Strategy module. So for you to go on then to do the digital diploma, you need to do another two modules. So you need to be mastering the Digital Channels module and the Driving Digital Experience module. So you've got two outstanding modules to do. So you're exempt basically from one of the modules. Okay. Thanks for that, Imran. We've actually run out of time now. So I'd just like to thank everyone for attending today's webinar. The recording will be available on exchange in a few days' time. So if you wanted to relisten to it, you can do. I'd like to, once you leave today's webinar, you will receive a survey on the presentation. So we would appreciate it if you could complete that survey for us when it comes through and provide your feedback. You will also be sent a link with information where the recording can be found in a couple of days' time. So on behalf of CIM and your presenter, Imran, today, I'd like to thank you for joining us and I hope you have a great rest of the day. Thank you.