Episode 0: The Three Whys

Welcome to the start of The Tech Marketer Podcast! In Episode 0: The Three Whys, I explain:

Take a listen, hopefully I’ll answer all these questions and get you excited for Episode 1 – coming 28th March.

I’d love your feedback, or ideas for what topics you’d like to hear about. Please leave a comment at the end of the post or tweet me.

Please subscribe to my podcast list to ensure you don’t miss the first guest interview on the 28th March!

Show Notes

I started in tech 2 years ago after 8 years marketing consumer electronics. I loved it but was swamped by the amount I needed to learn
I survived those first few months by asking a lot of really smart people, a lot of really silly questions. They luckily spent their time and energy helping me adjust to the world of tech, Agile and web development.
I knew there was no way I could test all the possible approaches, or learn all the possible tools available to me. There was simply too much to learn, and not enough hours in the day for an isolated approach to work.

I had an eureka moment at a developer meetup group. SIDE NOTE: Check out Meetup.com; it’s a website that allows community and professional groups to form and run events. It’s a great way to connect with groups of people with the same profession or interests as yourself.
I realised developers, especially in the open source community, are extremely generous with their knowledge. I was struck by how many people shared their own experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly, so that others could learn from them.
There were no limitations on how far into your career you should be, the only criteria was that you had knowledge that could help another developer. It was simply peers helping each other by sharing better ways of doing things.
Web development changes rapidly day by day. To keep up with the pace of change developers freely share their ideas and knowledge. The best developers surround themselves with smart people, not just at work, but at meetups and in online communities. Combining first-hand experiences with second-hand learning greatly accelerates the amount of new knowledge you can absorb.

I wanted the same environment for marketing so I started the Wellington Marketing Meetup group.
An amazing calibre of speakers have been willing to share their knowledge. Importantly, speakers have been frank and open, not just about their successes but also their failures. And that’s where I think the real learning happens.
There’s far too many marketing courses, conferences and online articles that focus on the big wins. The million dollar campaigns that go viral. But there’s actually a whole lot of mistakes and experiments that take place behind the scenes to make these big wins happen. We learn the most when they hear from our peers, the practical approaches and tools they found worked or didn’t.

The Wellington Marketing meetup group is still going great! We have an event next week, you should come!
But meetups aren’t scalable. We constantly have a waitlist for our events and it’s frustrating to have to turn people away because of venue restraints.
With a podcast, marketers from around New Zealand and the world can benefit from this knowledge sharing.
Also I’m going travelling. I’m leaving New Zealand for 5 months travelling with my husband across South Africa, Europe and South America.
I’m a marketing geek through and through, so I knew I needed to keep marketing in my life in some way. A podcast seemed like the perfect vehicle to keep learning, and also take advantage of the opportunity to meet other marketers as I travel the globe.

I love working in tech!
There’s also practical reasons why all marketers should be keeping an eye on what tech marketers are doing.
Tech marketers have a speed and ability to test and adopt new techniques that I haven’t seen in other industries.
Tech marketing interests me, not just because of the product on offer, but also because of the cultures that form around tech companies.
Software driven concepts like open source, continuous improvement, lean and Agile compliment marketing in any industry
Marketers need to understand, and be able to harness technology to take advantage of new trends like marketing automation and personalisation.
We need to break down silos between marketing and IT to deliver the best possible digital experiences to our customers.

The roles of Chief Information Officers and Chief Marketing Officers are overlapping more than ever before.
New roles like Chief Digital Officers are gaining traction.
Air NZ appointed their first Chief Digital Officer, Julia Raue, last year. Julia has held the role of CIO for 8 years previously.
The role was described as CIO+ and includes the full IT team, along with parts of the existing sales, marketing and operations functions. Marketing functions such as harnessing data to personalise customer experiences will come under the new CDO role.
Dedicated digital roles are critical to leading change.
Marketers must equip themselves to be able to take on these leadership positions

The last WHY: Why you should tune in weekly

Every week I’ll be releasing a new episode
These will alternate between shorter 10 min knowledge bites and 20 minute guest interviews.
The knowledge bites will cover practical tips and tricks I’ve learned that I think other marketers will benefit from. You should finish listening knowing at least one new tip that you can apply to your job immediately.
In the guest interviews, I get to sit down with super smart marketers and find out how they’re taking their tech products to the world.
The first five guests are lined up and they’re all people I greatly admire and have already learnt a great deal from
I’ll be letting you know more about these guests in the next two weeks
With the first proper The Tech Marketer Podcast episode airing the week of the 23rd of March.
So go on, hit subscribe, so you don’t miss the launch!