Groups such as BC Chapter of the American Marketing Association and International Association of Business Communicators are astounding professional organizations that young marketers must join. By attending their events, young marketers can gain insights on the latest marketing trends, learn the latest marketing practices, and connect with like-minded people. This is particularly critical for young marketers who want to accelerate their careers or start your own companies one day as a large network enables them to find climb the corporate ladder faster or interact with prospective clients. Regardless of their desires, joining professional networks and engaging with other marketers will benefit your career profoundly.

At Smartt, goals and metrics are everything. It’s how we assess our performance and determine what actionable steps we must take in order to improve your results. For instance, if we fall short of our goal of increasing blog traffic by 15% in 4 weeks, we’ll evaluate if our article titles are attractive enough and if our content is suitable for our audience. Regardless of the approaches we take, everything starts from goals and metrics. For young marketers, you can also adopt this methodology personally and professionally. You can assign goals such as “I want to pass my Google Analytics certification exam in 6 weeks” or “I want to increase my company’s Twitter followers by 12% in 6 weeks.” This will help you organize your daily activities and make you more focused. Additionally, it allows you to assess your performance and see how you can improve going forward.

“Knowledge is power” - Francis Bacon. Gaining more knowledge is the only way for you remain open-minded, become more innovative, and have greater insights to the marketing industry. After all, our current world is flat. Everything is connected and everything affects one another. Hence, to become a prolific marketer, you have to understand different fields. You have to understand politics, technology, psychology, finance, as well as a boatload of various industries as they’ll impact you one way of the other. It’s only by becoming an encyclopedia will you be able to see the bigger picture and acknowledge the fact that different fluctuations across affect you tremendously.

Aside from reading tirelessly, you can take classes at schools such as BCIT to gain hands-on experience. Institutes such as BCIT offer specific digital marketing courses such as Social Media Marketing to allow young marketers to have a greater understanding the different digital tools and skill sets that they need to learn. For instance, by taking the Social Media Marketing course at BCIT, you can learn how to conduct a social media audit and social media report. This will enable you transfer your in-class knowledge and skills to your work and enhance your performance. Moreover, it allows you to augment your networks by working in small group projects and befriending instructors. This further increases your chance of finding fertile business partners, mentors, or even employees.