 Hello everybody, welcome to boost your employability. Thank you for checking in. I'm really excited about today's session, as I am for all sessions. We're going to be chatting to Ladi a little bit later. I'll do an introduction to Ladi and talk a bit about him and where he's come from, and what we're going to be discussing today on the session. Today's session is going to be about Ladi talking to us about his work selling multiple brands on Amazon's retail platform. We'll also be looking at things like behaviours, knowledges and skills that make you successful and also happy in a role such as the role that Ladi has. And we'll be talking a little bit about how to be an expert communicator and specifically about things like public speaking. So I also want your questions. So that is going to drive much of today's discussion. So please do get those in and I'll just talk a little bit about how you do that now. So if you're tuning in live and you've registered to and watching through the go to webinar app, you can post any questions by clicking on the questions icon on the screen. Do that because that really, really does get the session going and you get more out of that session as well. And we'll try and cover as many of those questions as we can. The session is recorded, but don't worry. Your questions will remain anonymous, but by recording the session it means you can watch it again on demand. And if that's the case, then you will find that on the Marketing Club webpage on CIM webpage. Also on the CIM YouTube channel, and that should be ready in about weeks, in a weeks time from today. If you want to talk about what we're doing and the session that you're in and chat about is on socials and please do. If you do that, please use the hashtag CIM events. Now, as you can see today's session is part of Marketing Club. So Marketing Club, for those of you that haven't checked in to that before, is designed to prepare people in a career and life in marketing. And you could be a student, you could be a career changer, or you could just be curious about marketing. And that's great. You know, we welcome anybody into these sessions. If you want to hear a little bit more about what we do, you can actually register to Marketing Club. And that means that you will get future updates on anything that might be of interest to you. And that includes the session today. So if you've enjoyed today's session, we can give you more information about relevant webinars like this. You'll also be kept up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in marketing, and particularly across the marketing industry. And you can sign up to Marketing Club free of charge and we work on budget. And you do that by using the QR code, which you will see on the right hand bottom side of the screen. Now, if you don't manage to grab that now, don't worry about it. We'll pop that up again towards the end of this session. So about today's guest. So Ladi, he's taken an unconventional route, I would say, into professional marketing. And that's really interesting. And we can touch on a little bit of that as we get chatting to him. He studied aeronautical engineering initially. And then he moved into doing a business administration and management masters in 2015. And then in 2020, he received a PhD in marketing and consumer culture. So you can see that he's kind of transitioned into marketing gradually. And I find that fascinating. And at CIM, we're seeing more and more people moving from different subject areas or different career areas and seeing marketing as being a real attractive career option for them. He also had a day job. So what pays the bills, which is basically his digital advertising manager role at Minster FB. Now, that role is really fascinating. So he's basically leading, he's creating and he's implementing advertising strategies for the Amazon retail platform. And he does that across a global space. So he works with brands and organisations in the UK, in Europe, US, Australia and Singapore. So far and wide, he uses a hands-on approach to Amazon advertising. So using things like sponsored ads. So that's pay-per-click and demand side platforms that display side of things. And he's responsible for selling over 45 brands for his customers. Brands that include people like Weetabix. Yorkshire Tea, Baileyson Harding and Teacup. All very different brands with very different ideas. And it'd be interesting to tease out what that entails and the skills and the capabilities that are required to do that successfully. Ladi's also a CIM associate. So he's a friend of ours. He studied with CIM. And you can check out a little bit more about what Ladi's done and some of his achievements because he's got lots of them on LinkedIn. And I'm sure Ladi won't mind you stalking him on LinkedIn and checking out what he's been up to. So let's get started. Let's get into today's session and let's invite Ladi to join. Hi, Ladi. How are you doing? Hi, Jenny. Hi, everyone. Good to be here. Excellent. Excellent. Ladi, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really excited to get into chatting with you. Before we invite attendees to share some of those questions or dip into some of those questions that are coming through, I've got a few questions that I'll get things kicked off with because I'm really interested in what you do. It sounds really exciting and I'm sure that several of our viewers are curious about that as well and what your role entails. So can we talk a little bit about Minster FB, who they are, what they do and some of the brands that you advertise and how that works? Hi. Minster FB is an agency out in South Wales, so Nottingham Shared. It's about 20-30 minutes from Nottingham Center. We are an Amazon agency, so basically a lot of people find Amazon complicated, difficult to work with, and just generally it's new. It's different from working with other retailers like Tesco or Asda or even Ocado and some of the other online platforms. So they usually need somebody to take them through the process, a little bit of hand-holding, and that's what we do. So, for example, Fritella on the screen there wants to sell Fritella at their suites on Amazon, but how do they get their products on the page? How do they advertise? How do they engage with customers? How do they talk to people on Amazon via Amazon? Because they can do their TV marketing. They have their billboards, they have their radios. They even have social media. They can do all those things by themselves. But Amazon is the new frontier of sales, both online but also just generally, the way Amazon stores and all those new Amazon physical retail outlets function is quite different from the traditional. So that's what we do. But one of the things that keeps us in business, because very soon the client can say, okay, I know how it works and I don't need your services, one of the things that keeps us in business is that Amazon is constantly changing, constantly evolving. So the way Amazon functioned last year is relatively different from the way they functioned in this year and we know for a fact it will be different next year. So we are also constantly upscaling and re-inverted how we engage with Amazon for our clients. So that's one of the things I think the MD says makes us sticky. We try to be sticky with our clients when they're just representing them on Amazon, when trying to get them to be more profitable, more visible and just have a better experience on the platform for our clients. Brilliant. I knew it would be exciting. It sounds complicated and you talked about that constant upskilling need and I suppose keeping abreast of changes that are probably out of your hands and market and industry shifts. So what does somebody need to be good at if they work for Minster and particularly in your role? I know you've got several advertising execs that work with you. So what would they need to be good at? What kind of skills and capabilities would they need? So we can list all the skills but when we're looking at particular candidates, for example we tend to look more for specific attitudes and the two we always focus on is curiosity and analytical mindset. So with curiosity we want somebody, we're looking for somebody, we vibe with people who are constantly asking why because that's the only way to survive on Amazon. You can't just take things as face value. You always need to have that propensity to ask why does this button work this way? Why does this happen that way? What would happen if I do this thing? That constant curiosity, that drive to always know, to always learn and back to the upskilling thing, that is part and parcel of working with Amazon and then the analytical mindset is now more specific to advertising on Amazon because with digital advertising generally it's quite numbers driven. It's lots and lots of numbers, different numbers meaning different things, different associations and you sort of need to be able to bring all those spreadsheets together to sort of pull out the narrative to pull out what is insight. You need to be able to pull out insight from lots of scattered data. Sometimes in different silos you need to be able to be curious enough to find the silos but once you've found them pull out the insight from them. So that analytical mindset is the other sort of attitude we're quite keen on and usually once these two sort of attitudes are in the person we're quite confident in our training so we can upskill you. We can give you all the training and all the skills that you need. I think that's something you can practice. That's something people can over time just keep asking why for any question and over time you just find yourself whenever you encounter a new environment you can easily ask why without feeling awkward or without feeling shy whereas I do appreciate developing an analytical mindset can be a bit more of a challenge but I can expand on that on some of the ideas I have in regards to going down that path. OK, so those analytical skills and that curiosity is that something that you have or you look for in somebody as they're walking through the door or is it something that they can learn whilst they're in the job because a lot of the people that might be tuning in today have not worked in marketing before, they may be students or they may be just curious about marketing. Yes, so we're curiousity that so when they're walking through the door and we don't get that they're curious, we don't get the vibe that OK this is somebody who's naturally curious we then have to then ask the question is this something they can develop and more 9 out of 10 yes you can develop that it's just me asking you do you know why and you go no and then they go ask me why then ask and then over time you just become a habit. Well like I said the analytical mindset is a bit more challenging but what I can say is that the more comfortable you are with numbers whether it's taking online courses or just taking some of the especially for students there might be some statistical classes or whatever they have available to them you know just being able to sit more comfortable with numbers over time that that propensity to make to draw insights can be developed but I do appreciate that takes a little more effort because not everybody feels comfortable when they say spreadsheet filled with different numbers on there but again with practice the more you can be able to look at those numbers and go this is what's happening over time you can develop that as well but yeah it's both of them I think are learnable you know there's nothing that can be learned but obviously different people have natural propensities understood OK so it's about continuing to learn and professional development and being flexible as well yeah OK great you are a self-professed good public speaker it's kind of plastered all over your LinkedIn profile and why not you know we will guilty of saying what we're good at that's what LinkedIn sport what is it that is important about public speaking for you I think first of all I was a lecturer I've done it full time and I did it part time for the last two years so you can be a lecturer with help well you can be but to be a good lecturer you need to be good at public speaking so that was sort of the beginning of that journey but in my current job public speaking is even more important because like I said Amazon is a new platform so there's a lot of information available a lot of it quite big, a lot of it hard to interpret so you need to be able to communicate that clearly and succinctly to the client so you know we're walking on behalf of this client and you know Amazon is producing thousands of touch points this had a number of clients looking at your products this had a number of clients buying this had a number of clients returning you know how can we bring all of that together so you have that analytical mindset so pull out the insight but can you communicate it to the client because often times than not our job means is to interpret Amazon for our clients because it's not straightforward it's not designed to be straightforward so if you can draw out all the insight but then you cannot effectively communicate that to the client that feedback loop is then broken so we need to be able to communicate as clearly as we can and also so that we can also work better with the clients other external factors out at Amazon so we can explain for example on Amazon you're actually getting very strong repeat customers that's something you're seeing elsewhere and if it isn't then together we can collaboratively understand why Amazon is unique and how we can leverage that whether it's just leveraging that on Amazon or how they can leverage that outside Amazon so that's something else we try to emphasise well collaborative but on and off so if you cannot effectively communicate what's happening on the platform to the clients then they might as well go elsewhere Fair enough and that storytelling and communication is really prevalent at the moment I know that we're investing a lot in making sure that people have got the right tools to do that storytelling piece it stands you out from the competition right? Absolutely, yeah so public speaking is not something that everybody enjoys doing and I certainly don't always enjoy doing it we were talking offline before and if you don't do it for a while it's something that kind of slips away particularly for me anyway and it did cause a level of anxiety for me at certain points have you always been good at it? Was it something that was a bit of a fear for you at any stage? It's always a fear I was trying to read before this webinar I was nervous, I was anxious that for me anyway it never goes away but I think this is where the resilience comes in and it's both public speaking and everything else we do at Minster in the sense that it never walks out to the first time you just have to keep going back on and on and on it just isn't always natural even for example I'm claiming to be good at public speaking but when we have a new client I'm a bit apprehensive would it like me, would it understand what I'm trying to say would it feel comfortable asking me questions or would it be difficult it's always that fear that anxiety is always there underneath the surface but in terms of actually developing a way more comfortable public speaking unfortunately practice is the only thing that has worked maybe there might be an opportunity for hypnotism but generally you just have to keep practising one of the advice I can give is, I won't say it's controversial but it's a bit out there you can have a practised this is who I am I feel you have so if you're in an interview setting and the person just gives you that horrible open question tell me about yourself where do you even start if you rehearsed a version of that I would recommend a long version and a short version you have a short version you can say in 30 seconds an innovative page basically for yourself this is who I am this is why I'm interesting and this is why I can bring to the company or whatever a rehearsed version that you can maybe tweak it's consistent in different settings you feel more comfortable speaking especially if you're open with something you've practised multiple times and then if they go oh actually that's interesting tell me more you then switch to the longer version so if you've spoken for 2-3 minutes on something you're absolutely sure about you've practised it you've probably got some feedback the rest of the conversation will be a lot smoother so I think that's the main thing that I would recommend have that this is who I am spell long version short version and after that you should be way more comfortable and sometimes the person you're speaking to is just as anxious as well so have that back of your mind we're all anxious we're just winging it the best guidance I was given was by someone close to me actually not in a professional setting and they said that everybody wants you to succeed if you could just remember that actually you're the expert in the room and there's a reason why you stood up there and use that as a platform to deliver what you want to deliver and take confidence from that easier said than done I realise and it took me a while to get there just to remind you guys you can file any questions you've got for Ladi or for me if you want to learn something about CIM please do that using the question icon on the screen just to question mark it's kind of like an orange in a circle the other thing I wanted to talk about is like turning a we kind of touched on that a little bit there but the weakness aspect when I say weakness I like to say it's an area for development right so turning something that perhaps isn't something you're so strong at or confident at and turning that into a strength if you're do you have something that you're thinking do you know what I'd love to be able to do that a little bit better and if you do what are you going to do about it so some of the feedback I've got is I can be too verbose so I go on and on and on and on especially in Amazon like I said there's lots and lots of information so when I meet the client I say oh look at all this information do you know you can do this you can do that and sometimes the client can feel overwhelmed so that's something I'm currently working on to be more succinct and then the client wants more information and obviously more than obliged to respond but not going there from the get go and trying to explain everything about Amazon in a 15 minutes conversation so one of the things we're trying to do about that within Mainstays have different sessions for clients where we then go you know this is a master class on this very specific topic this niche topic and then we're going to as much detail as possible so it's not just me on that on that master class thing it's the entire business that is currently working on that so one of the ways to get it out of my system is to have a separate section where I can go into as much detail as I can brilliant and that question wasn't for me to reveal any of your weaknesses here it's more just to sort of show that you know we're all human and you know the journey you've taken means that you're constantly evolving as well so hopefully that'll be useful to some of those that are tuning in. I've got a question from somebody that is tuning in actually and they're asking what advice do you give to your customers about false reviews from your customers competitors? False reviews is very very tricky on Amazon and then we even need to understand what we even we need to define false reviews because the way the Amazon platform works you can live a review without even buying something but that review has less weight than somebody who's a verified customer so if a competitor comes and puts a negative review on our product saying this is a horrible product so it's quite challenging but what we can do is we can just flag it if we think if it's not true we can flag it and raise a concern with Amazon and go we don't think this review is truthful do you want to look into it and more often than not if it is if it's not genuine Amazon does take it down but if it's a case where it's a generally disgruntled customer or Amazon doesn't feel that it's a false review what we then focus on is generating positive reviews because that's the usually the solution of that rather than getting on the defence and taking that down we just go let's focus on getting more reviews and the simplest way of getting more reviews on Amazon is getting more sales the more sales you get the more positive reviews you get and that's more or less how it would yield anyway. So is it fair to say then that you're opposed to being knee jerk to something negative? Sorry could you rephrase that? Yeah so is that approach more about your campaign your strategy with that customer to deliver something over a long you know deliver success for them over a medium term duration rather than just dealing with one knee jerk reaction you wouldn't respond quickly like that you would stick to your campaign. Yeah we'll stick to the campaign but like I said the knee jerk would be to report the review to Amazon for investigation so that would be the first reaction and then usually 72 hours they'll get back to us if they will take it down or not and that's usually the solution we're going to leave it on and we're going to take it down there's no in-between and if they don't take it down we'll just continue what we do which is generating sales. Okay thank you so we're getting a few more questions through now which is great thank you keep those coming through what was your light bulb moment that caused you to shift into marketing? That was something I was going to ask you myself actually and are you satisfied with your choice today? Oh yeah very I'll answer the last question first yeah very satisfied Amazon because I have a relatively short attention span I'm the perfect system for that because everything is new everyday so that's great for me but light bulb moment I don't think there was an explicit light bulb moment it was more of a shift so after I finished my engineering degree I didn't enjoy it the last year was the most difficult I was very close to dropping out but for a few for multiple reasons I just persisted so by this time I finished I then decided to be a photographer so that's as far as engineering can go straight into creative and art but once I was a photographer I got into product photography and then I really really enjoyed so I first started with portraits taking pictures of people and that was interesting but actually taking pictures of objects for some reason just appealed to me more but then I realised after I took the picture it was completely out of my control how the picture was used and that's when I said I really needed to market and why are they using my picture at this way rather than that way and I had opinions but I couldn't articulate it properly because I didn't have the marketing language I didn't understand marketing full stop so that's when I said I was reading about it and then went on to do the master's degree in business with my dissertation was in marketing so it wasn't a specific moment it was just a slow gradual movement in that direction and just to add to that it's really important that if you are thinking about a career in marketing or another industry try and identify who you are a little bit and understand what might make you happy and the type of environment you might want to work in and do that discovery piece early on because we could all look at somebody that does an amazing TED talk and say I want to be that person but actually if your values don't align to that then you're never going to get there and if you do get there you're probably not going to be happy and successful when you do that so do that discovery bit and check out some of the organisations that you might want to work for and then you can start to have a think about the types of roles that they offer so the one I always use I need to get another one is if you're interested in sustainability then someone like Patagonia the clothing brand are doing some really good stuff so you might want to look at what they're doing for example great, thank you so we've got more questions coming through so did you have to work your way up to where you are now in this role that you have and if so what are the best routes to get into advertising but also to where you are yeah I sort of did so when I joined Minster I was the only advertising executive and then I became the advertising manager so I did work my way up but it's not always like that usually there will be more in most of the agencies there are more steps to get into the advertising manager role so I did start literally as an executive so I lead a team of five executives so I always try to remember what my experience was like when I'm giving instructions so in terms of advice if I'm sounding like a broken clock now but it's that desire to learn so for example although I did the PHD and Master's Degree I also did the same online course I did multiple online courses so I first started with the free stuff so I'm not sure if you've had a future learn I started and stopped multiple on Coursera Udemy but future learn just had the platform and the style of delivery that I liked and that was the one that I first finished so it was a free course I did two free courses on future learn I was like definitely I want to do something in digital marketing and then I went to do the same certification and then I was like okay then I paid for the same certification I was like yes this is why I want then I went to do the degree and then even in my current role I still have to get the Amazon sponsored ad certification that's still a requirement for my role and Amazon makes it fun that the certification lasts only 12 months so every 12 months I need to be re-certified sometimes I don't have to read your old documents I just take the certification and I pass and sometimes I don't pass I was like okay fine I need to go and re-familiarise myself so that's first for knowledge and that has to be in there and that's how you grow in terms of getting your foot through the door especially if you don't have experience and I know for a fact that's a challenge because a lot of employers will be like what's your experience, what's your experience if you can show a first for knowledge and that's with some of the certification and like I'm saying don't start with the paid stuff because it's expensive some are costing thousands of pounds some 70 quid I think my future learn certificate was 70 pounds so you don't even have to start with the free stuff and I know Google and Facebook or Meta and Amazon, three of them have three versions of the certification put down your CV, put down your LinkedIn to show yes I don't have the experience but I'm willing to learn and this is the evidence of that you stack as much of those as you can and then you can get your foot in the door and then when you're in the room when you're in the room you can't stop you just have to keep gaining new skills and learning new things Brilliant, thank you and on that note someone's asking specifically whether you can gain that Amazon affiliate marketing badge if you like that qualification can you do that anywhere they're asking online Google, Amazon sponsored ad certification so it can be quite complex because they have about six certificates there so I'll stick to the one it's called Amazon sponsored as foundations I can't remember where foundations comes first or sponsored as comes first one or the other but just Google Amazon sponsored advertising foundation certificate that's the one I recommend you do first and then there's like beginner intermediate and advanced and of course you can just follow that process and it's all free, you don't have to pay well like I said it lasts only 12 months but you should be able to get something before it expires OK, thank you and someone's asking trade secrets now but hidden in a question they're asking what technical tools and digital marketing tools and strategies you implement on a daily basis that enhances the platform experience Yeah, I think I'll just dodge the question a little bit one of the things I enjoy about LinkedIn is how much people share about what they're doing and half of it is bragging let's be frank, they are bragging about how awesome they are but actually there are two hashtags I follow one called hashtag Amazon ads the other one called hashtag Amazon advertising and there's lots of people just sharing what they're doing and that's really really great it's quite American centric because Amazon is an American company there are a lot of the agents there are more American agents that they are British it's still people sharing this is what, you know, literally I did this cause and effect I produced this, I did that so for me that's a great part of getting new things but even on top of that I'm sure there is a hashtag Google ads version there's a hashtag Facebook ads version so for me that's where I'm constantly looking for new things to try new things to learn but in terms of my daily what I'm actually implementing it's collaborative there isn't a specific tactic that I use I show to work so I have the advertising executive who run the ads day to day I have my marketing director who I report to and I have the account management team who I speak to, I have the client who I'm speaking to so there's never one tactic that definitely is always what what are the different sort of circumstances, what are the different factors and how can we manoeuvre within and outside of you sometimes they're not budget do we have it not stock, you know, things like that and then finally there are thought party tools that we use but if you're not in your role it's prohibitively expensive that wouldn't recommend but there are also some thought party tools that we use to help us automate some of the actions and that's a completely different conversation okay thank you, well dodged so somebody's asking what courses and skills are most important for a person that's planning a career switch so we've got a career change, you're asking that moving from traditional selling into technology driven selling like platform yeah, I'll say the three platforms Amazon, Google and Facebook those three are the their courses so again all of them have their beginner courses, intermediate courses and advanced courses and generally they tend to be way more Google ads jobs because it's the biggest in terms of advertising so if you want to increase your chances of getting an digital advertising roles then go for Google ads followed by Facebook, what Amazon will do so I think those courses will be the best place to start and most importantly they're free and you can do it online I think that's where I would start but on top of that because it's quite data-driven I would also recommend anything to do with Excel so again don't ever pay for an online Excel course you don't need to if they're coming to training in person, fair enough but if it's online don't pay for it whether it's just for the certification to put on your CV or more importantly for the knowledge we don't always use Excel but a lot of the logic of if or filtering data, finding commonalities and all those different Excel formulas will replicate them in their own internal database to what Excel is the best soft foundation for being comfortable with data analytics or data analysis basically so if there's any Excel course you feel happy to jump on whether it's a three week course one week, one month, whatever it's just Excel YouTube videos the only thing I'm apprehensive with Excel YouTube videos is that if you're not doing it you might as well just watch and tell it if you're just watching people do Excel and you're not doing it yourself then I doubt you're going to remember but again YouTube's also there another supplement I highly recommend and then you don't have more advanced tools like SPSS, Tableau Way more advanced, Python and all that crazy stuff you don't need to but if you do Excel and go actually I really like this what's next at that Excel then definitely Tableau Power BI Python will be the next step Amazing that you've blended the two old school worlds with all the new funky tech as well Excel doesn't go away it's fit for purpose isn't it So we've got an undergrad who's asking probably on behalf of all the undergrads really who are moving into marketing or at least looking to get into marketing who have got no experience in marketing I'm talking professionally here what steps can they take at the moment to increase their chances of success in industry and I'm going to sort of add to that I think that's probably success in terms of when they get into the role but I'm guessing there needs to be a step before that which is how do you make that leap Yeah it depends on your course if you're an undergrad so if there are any courses that lend themselves so different undergrad courses give you options some undergrad courses you don't get an option you don't start on the business management course and that's it you just have to take all the courses that are offered to you but if you're in one of the courses where you have options of different models absolutely pick the ones that lend themselves towards digital marketing and then for your final year dissertation if you can get as close as possible to digital marketing so for example you might be doing a psychology degree or a sociology degree okay how can you focus slightly more on consumer behaviour or online purchase behaviour so bend things a little bit to your advantage we've already spoken about public speaking if there's any opportunity for presentations any opportunities for giving feedback jump on it if you're in a group of five and only one person needs to present absolutely you want to be that person you want to get as much practice as you can but also if you're doing presenting you would also get feedback and hopefully most lecturers are kind they will give you feedback to help support that process and I've mentioned courses too many times but that's also there and it's never too late to start applying you can look at placement years one of the advertising executives we have is we taught for a year placement as well so again depends on your university so some universities don't let you switch some let you switch so if you don't if you're in your second year if it's possible within your university see if you can switch to a placement year course and then most a lot of agencies are more willing to take the risk on the placement years you don't rather than you've graduated with zero experience and if you can't switch that's still fine but then don't wait till you're ready to work before you start applying for roles I would recommend that three to six months ahead get into the application and that's because you can start practicing interview techniques you can read all the interview techniques as much as possible but until you're on that hot seat your first interview you most likely not do well that's natural your first job interview will not go great but if by the time you're three, four, six months in you've done two, three interviews that's when you're ready to go and of course be honest in the interview when they ask you when can you start be honest I can start on this date and depending on the business circumstances they will make your own decision to start applying at the better I think a year advances a bit too soon but yeah three to six months I'll say start putting your application out there thank you, good answer obviously we're going to talk about the marketing and technical skills that made people successful in their jobs but I'm really keen to push those transferable skills as well and say that that is absolutely key for any job that you do and Ladi touched on that a little bit earlier so I would say familiarise yourself with the types of capabilities so I'm talking behaviours, knowledges and different skills that are transferable across any sector and industry and that will give you the tools to move into different space and you can always learn the technicalities along the way another thing that that CIM does that supports undergrads is we run something called the pitch competition which is open to second and third year undergrads currently, we're looking to expand that eventually and that competition is designed to give people the opportunity to work on a marketing challenge a real challenge where they work in teams of two or three and it's that work experience that will help you understand what a real organisation that you potentially would go and work for would give you if you're interested in gaining experience in that way the pitch competition is actually open now and live checkout on CIM webpage for that and that's free, I'm not going to be flogging anything today so next question how effectively is advertising used to promote mobile app businesses and what strategies are you applying to that? So the one to sell that application using digital advertising is it's probably the most effective really I'm sure you've seen ads the person who asked that question has seen ads for rage shadow legends, it's everywhere you can't avoid it and go look at how many downloads they get per month, millions so it's you still have to be clever about especially if you don't have a rate budget you still have to be quite clever in terms of you're selecting your targets who's most likely to convert and other things but that's probably the most effective way of getting people to download because if you're using traditional advertising for example if they see the ad for this app they then have to go search for it on Google or Apple yeah Apple Store App Store, yes Google Store App Store, well if it's a digital ad usually if they click on the ad it takes them straight to where they can download it and it's about reducing the friction between creating the the demand for your product and also allowing them to get hold of it so making that journey as short as possible is quite important and digital if you're selling a digital software service experience then advertising on digital is probably your best bet really okay thank you I've got a bit of a juicy question here and probably my fault I mentioned sustainability earlier it's quite a hot topic for most organisations definitely for the brands that you're selling I'm sure they've got sustainable targets and things like that or ambitions at least so working with Amazon did they highlight the net effect of reducing emissions using deliveries is that something that comes into play in your role specifically around counter negatives on the sort of the pressure and the impacts on high street and local shopping and that kind of thing so the two separate questions they say out a bit just you know for longer shots capital footprint so that's one conversation there and Amazon is you know they are doing what they can do you know they are looking at a lot of their plans now are electrical or they are using oil cooking oil okay stick to electrical so a lot of the bands are increasing the electrical bands and then in terms of even deliveries to their customers it's still optional but if you have Amazon Prime you can select for all your deliveries to come on a certain day so because of Amazon Prime you have next delivery so you can buy four different items across four different days so you're going to have four different deliveries from Monday to Wednesday that's quite wasteful the environmental impact and that's not nice so you can say actually Amazon bring all my deliveries in on just the Wednesday so I set mine on Wednesday because that's when I walk from home and then if it's urgent so it's an emergency I can say for this product I want to deliver tomorrow so that's on the consumer side they have different things that can help to reduce that environmental impact and they're also changing their packaging as well you know they're trying to use less plastic more paper you know more recyclables so I'm sounding like an Amazon rep now and I appreciate that but that's where I work I need to know these things so the environmental impact is large and Amazon is trying to reduce that but then what we then do for our clients is something we call SIOC which is short for shipped in own packaging so we encourage our clients to deliver their products into Amazon warehouse so Amazon doesn't have to wrap it Amazon doesn't have to put it in a package so one that saves Amazon time and materials because it's somebody's job to do that that doesn't get paid and also the paper needs to wrap it as well they get to save that and also the clients as well can add that to their sustainability credentials that they have packed they're not shipping they're not shipping air because usually Amazon has standard boxes so unless your product is affected to that shape you will be shipping a little bit of air but if you can send your product with our packaging you don't have to ship air so there's lots of different things we are doing in terms of encouraging our clients to be more sustainable and then within mean state itself we are looking at our own footprints as well so in terms of electricity who are we buying our electricity from things like car sharing recycling so even as a business itself we are trying to reduce our footprint so that's the first half of the question the second half is more political in terms of the impact of digital on high street and I don't want to stray too far down that road because my political opinions will come out but I think that's something that needs to go beyond just the business it needs to be a bigger conversation between city councils and state governments so I'm not just talking about the British government I'm talking about all the different governments that digital businesses thrive in so not just Amazon the city councils the state governments, the businesses themselves and how they can work more collaboratively because I love my high street high street is not just about buying stuff it's also a third space it's a place where you've been indoors all day you want to go somewhere, you want to see people you want to have chance encounters you want to talk Tinder is great, Instagram is great TikTok is great but sometimes that human connection is needed and high street plays a big important role in that but in terms of the relationship Amazon has with that high street I think that's a bigger political conversation and the future of the high street as you touched on is a real big challenge people have predicted that most people will live out of cities and only travel into city to work or to shop but they got that wrong, more people are moving to the city and want to be in that space so it's really difficult to plan from an infrastructure point of view because we can't predict the movement of people I would also say that and something you touched on there green space and using your cities in a different way is probably where it needs to be the cities really is a microcosm of people that learn work, travel to and use it for tourism as well it's not just a high street so maybe the high streets and some of these brands need to think about what their role is in some of that and culturally as well so somebody you don't work for Amazon but obviously Amazon is a big part of what you do but somebody is asking if there is anything that continues to surprise you in a positive way about working with Amazon I think it is the advertising side which I spent my day to do it the Amazon advertising today is way more sophisticated than the Amazon advertising that I started with when I was an executive on day one I had to nerd out a little bit so before we had sponsored products, sponsored brands, sponsored display and all the three different advertising tools on Amazon more or less did the same thing with very simple differences so they did the same thing and we used all three but today each one is actually very distinct and you have to think carefully in terms of how you deploy them so that's one in terms of it's just getting more sophisticated and that gets me positively excited but then there's also another thing called DSP which is the display side of advertising usually Amazon's a lot of the clients would deal with focus on the search side but what we're now seeing is a blur in between the two so display advertising is looking one more like search and search advertising is looking one more like display so it means that we can bring those to Amazon advertising a lot closer and from what I've seen that's only going to accelerate so for example video ads on Amazon didn't exist two years ago now video ads is about to become a staple on Amazon advertising and that would only just get more more interesting so when you see a video ad on Amazon you hear it here first Thank you Lincoln into my world a little bit the CIM qualification that you got the accreditation that you have with us is that important for undergraduates? That's a tricky one because I got my after so I'm not it's tricky because I got that doing my master so I'm not sure how relevant that would have been for me during my undergrad I did an engineering undergrad so it's quite difficult for me to answer but I would say it's a positive especially when I'm speaking to traditional especially when I'm speaking to marketers on the client side who come from the traditional path they're new to digital so having that CIM qualification at least gives me the language to communicate with them a little bit better in terms of its specific use for undergrads I can't really speak on that Yeah that was a little bit unfair for me to ask you that I'll try and pick up a bit of that question so we know from talking to our members and recruitment organisations that CIM qualifications is the most looks after qualification after most looks at qualification after an undergraduate degree so employers if I give you an example if they're shortlisting and they've got a bunch of CVs they're more likely to recruit or interview those that have got CIM qualification it shows that additional learning and it shows that they've got that understanding of the skills and the knowledge and the competencies to be successful in the profession I think I think it's something like 60% of people who have done a CIM qualification in the first year go on to either get a pay rise or a promotion or something like that as well so it's instilling a bit of confidence to people too I said I wouldn't vlog anything but it couldn't help someone asked the question I've got to answer it so what about the opportunities for digital advertisers across the UK I don't know whether you have any views on what the size and the scale of the market is Oh it's massive I have a decker I present it to students about the size of digital advertising so in terms of cash value in terms of people spending on advertising I believe we've crossed over to digital advertising having higher spend than traditional advertising on asset traditional that's everything tele, billboards out of I don't know what you call them where the boss stop signs everything is the pound value is lesser when compared to digital so in terms of the industry itself is absolutely massive get going to them but in terms of the actual individuals getting jobs there I don't have any values on that but if a lot of companies are spending more on digital than they are spending on traditional they need people to manage it they need people who sometimes are native to it so that's where the rare occasion where being young is an advantage because a lot of young people are native to digital, the digital ecosystem that's something like 8 5-8 hours on the 25 is spent online so you already have the advantage there so there is a lot of opportunities I'm sure of it and like I said it's also broken down so you have the Google ecosystem you have the social media ecosystem currently led by Facebook but TikTok advertising is a fast rising platform we have a lot of clients sending traffic from their TikTok to Amazon a year ago I said that's a silly concept so there's always that there's always something new on the horizon as well so yeah there is a lot of opportunity out there and one of the good things about digital is you also have a higher chance of finding either a work at home job or a flexible role so I'm currently flexible like going twice a week but I know there are many many digital advertising jobs that are purely remote and again I know that's something a lot of young people are quite keen on but even just the industry as a whole yeah it's massive yeah exactly and we're seeing a huge demand for digital skills in the UK regardless of whether that's marketing or otherwise so absolutely do concentrate on those digital things at the moment again going back to transferable skills they are really really important and there are lots of them but I would definitely do some research around the types of transferable skills that people need we're probably going to have a chance for maybe one question before we wrap up so somebody's asking about what employers look for when hiring graduates now that's quite a broad question because it depends what the role is depends where they've come from so do you want to have a stab at that one? yeah I think we've saw touched on it multiple times but I think that that you know whether it's the TV or that this person is willing to learn this person wants to learn this person isn't just applying for a job because they need one and that can be communicated in multiple ways so it's like this is some of the courses that you can put on your CV and also the kind of questions you ask as well during the interview because sometimes the interview is both ways we always forget at the end of the interview when they go do you have any question and I'm caught on that whether oh yes I'm supposed to have a question prepare for that ask questions that suggest you're genuinely interested in the business and not just in the business exactly what they're doing was their core proposition and you're interested in that but from a CV perspective you just need something on your CV that makes you slightly slightly I don't want it to be slightly different because it means you need to say everybody else is CV but something that suggests you're not going through the motions ok thank you we've got a few questions I said that was probably the last question but I'll try and combine a set of questions into one here people are asking about getting a CIM qualification whether that be level 6 level 7, level 4 or level 3 and doing that in addition to a marketing degree now I would say that and Ladi you may have a different opinion on this so feel free to jump in I would say that it's additionality so there's no point doing two courses at the same and gaining skills from two different organisations at the same but actually look at what you've learned and look at what you want to learn that's in addition and choose a pathway that gives you that additionality and again that goes back to understanding who you are what you're good at what your needs are do that bit but also look at what kind of role are you going to go for if you're going to go for a role that actually means that there's something that's missing have a look at the qualifications that can give you that additionality and I would say that that would make you more rounded and definitely make you more competitive in the industry so I'm going to close questions there sadly I hate doing that when the questions are still coming through but I just wanted to touch on a few up and coming things bear with me so so if you've enjoyed this session we've got future sessions so we've run about 10 webinars a year we've run about four boost your employability sessions academic year traditionally the next sessions which you can see on screen now we've got one with Daniel Rouse on the 26th of October and that's going to be about latest trends in digital marketing he did that last year and he did that year before that was really really successful so we're continuing to do that it's constantly evolving check that out and again boost your employability the next session I'll be hosting will be on the 7th of December and again at one o'clock and we'll be talking to somebody who employs over 100 people remotely and those people don't have an office they work all over the world they work on people's brands and things like that so that's really interesting and Laddie touched on that kind of remote working aspect now it really does change how we recruit and if you want to check some of those things out you can absolutely go on to CIM web page and basically search for events in there we have a list of events that are coming up you can search for specific things or you can search by and finally we will be emailing you a short survey that helps us decide what we do going forward so we want to hear what's good what's bad, what you want more of what you want less of and that will inform future discussions and also the types of guests that we get on you might want Laddie back on the questions are still coming through so we could probably try and arrange that I don't know he's smiling but we'll see and that survey is really sure it's anonymous so please get that done so finally I would like to say thank you very much to Laddie thanks to everybody that tuned in I love that discussion I wish we had a bit more time and I look forward to seeing everybody hopefully on a future webinar have a great day cheers