Dear Reader,
To break out of our pandemic bubble and fear of crowds, my husband and I headed north to see a Broadway play.
Standing in the center of Times Square is truly a marketing experience. Local laws require the buildings around Times Square to put up oversized billboards.
Table of Contents | Volume 11, Issue 20
- Marketing Lesson of The Week – Graduates: How To Land Your First Job
- Marketing Reads – The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever
- Mark Your Calendar
Surrounded by bigger-than-life-size ads complete with lights and video, you feel the excitement of this bustling area of Manhattan in the heart of the theater district.
These giant billboards help make Times Square a New York City tourist mecca. Even better from an advertising perspective, these out-of-home marketing messages get captured in personal photographs and shared across social media.
Recommended Reading
Marketing Lesson of The Week
► Graduates: How To Land Your FIrst Job
Graduation season has started. Dining at a Chinese restaurant near Columbia University, we saw graduates and their families and friends pass by in their light blue graduation gowns.
In terms of student population, New York City ranks as the largest college town in the US (Source). Across the five boroughs, NYC has over a million students who attend college, graduate schools including law, business and medicine, and specialized programs like dance and art. They account for over 10% of the city’s population.
Does this surprise you?
It shouldn’t since students flock to New York City for reasons beyond academics.
If you can’t afford or don’t want to attend graduate school or take a gap year, graduation means finding a job. Unless you’re lucky enough to snag one of the plum job opportunities offered through your school’s recruiting office.
Getting a job is an important life skill because most people no longer work for one company for their entire career. Despite this, most educational institutions don’t teach you how to go about finding a job or negotiating salary and benefits.
► Are Your Salary Expectations Realistic?
Despite recent layoffs and market uncertainties, the job market has improved. To attract and retain top talent, employers expect salaries to increase 4.6% over last year. (SHRM)
While this sounds like good news, graduates expect salaries of $84,855 one year after graduation, roughly $30,000 higher than the average graduate salary of $55,911 according to one survey of 1,000 undergraduates. (Source) In part, this is attributable to students’ need to cover their living expenses, student loan debt and inflation.
When broken out by undergraduate major, student expectations widely diverge from the median starting salary.
Bottom line:
Graduates will either modify their job and salary expectations or anticipate a long period of job search, possibly requiring accepting lower-level jobs short-term to cover your bills.
► Job Search: Personal Branding At Its Best
At its core, job search is about marketing yourself to business, not-for-profit and government entities seeking candidates to meet their human resource needs.
Many newly minted grads as well as seasoned professionals, take an online-only approach. They polish their LinkedIn Profile marking themselves as open to work. Then, they submit their resume to other job boards and company sites.
While this approach makes candidates feel like they’re making progress toward finding a job, many resumes submitted online get rejected by HR software due to formatting issues.
Instead, treat looking for a job like the work it is. Spend your time networking since a large portion of jobs never get posted.
Actionable Job Search Tips
- Polish your LinkedIn Profile to attract potential employers. Use this article, 12 Killer LinkedIn Profile Examples to Inspire You to Update Your Own, by my friend and colleague, Neal Schaffer to guide you.
- Build your network. Start with the connections you have to meet other people and to surface unadvertised opportunities. Realize that you need to give people a reason to connect or talk with you. To help you, read How To Build Your Network: The One Easy Thing You Need To Do.
- Jump into the job pool by taking an unpaid internship or short-term project. Get on-the-job experience and build your network while continuing to look for other opportunities.
Recommended Reading
For those entering the marketing space and those looking to improve their skills, here’s a list of marketing books recommended by top marketers.
Marketing Reads
► The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever
My good friend and colleague, Mark Schafer, decided to test the thesis of his last book, Belonging To The Brand, that community is the last great marketing strategy.
Schaefer started the process by dropping a question into his RISE community’s active Discord channel asking if anyone was interested in creating a marketing book together. To his surprise, the community response was quick and overwhelmingly positive.
To guide the community, Schaefer created an outline of 34 chapters that community members could volunteer to author. In addition, he wrote the book’s Introduction and an example chapter on Personal Branding displaying the requisite format for the 1,500-word contributions.
The goal of the project was to teach the community how to write and promote a book on Amazon. While the book is published by Mark Schaefer to facilitate the copyright process, each contributor gets an author listing in Amazon’s database.
Based on his publishing experience, Schaefer created a budget to edit, publish and market the book in Kindle, audio and print formats. Each author contributed $200 towards the costs and will share in future revenues.
At every phase of the project, the global book team stepped up and contributed additional support in terms of editing, design and marketing.
I’m proud to announce that Actionable Marketing Guide CTO, Larry Aronson, wrote the chapter: The Magic of Search Engine Optimization.
Get your Kindle edition NOW for the jumpstart sale price of $2.99!
Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar
► CX Connect– June 13–15, Online via Zoom
CX Connect will feature three days of thought-provoking presentations from the leading experts in customer experience.
► The Conversation Design Conference – July 24th – 25th in London, UK
bringing together the leading thinkers and doers in Conversation Design
Organized by VUX World.
► Marketing AI Conference – July 26 – 28 in Cleveland, OH
Register now with the promo code: RAIMOND100 for $100 off of the purchase price.
► Voice and AI – September 5th to 7th in Washington, DC
► Content Marketing World 2023 – September 26 – 28 in Washington, DC
► MarketingProfs B2B Forum – October 4 – 6 in Boston, MA
► Are you hosting an event that you’d like us to add to the Marketing Calendar? If so, let us know by using our Contact Form with the Subject Line: Event For AMG Newsletter Calendar.
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Happy Marketing,
Heidi
P.S.: Want Heidi Cohen to contribute a quote or other commentary to your next article, presentation, video, research, or book? Then hit reply to this email and ask.
P.P.S: Did you miss last week’s AMG Newsletter? Previous newsletters can be found in the AMG Newsletter Archive.
