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Meet the Gardeners: Marina McManaway
This week we’re beginning a series that delves in the heart and soul of Social Garden, the Gardeners themselves. To start off, we’re getting to know a recent contributor to the blog and Digital Campaign Manager superstar Marina (aka Rini, aka Maz).
If you haven’t already, definitely check out her recent post, ‘Audience Overlap in Facebook Custom Audiences.’
Background
Marina joined the Social Garden team in January 2015, starting her journey in digital advertising copywriting and community management. She now finds herself heading lead generation campaigns for our property clients.
Without further ado, as Marina herself would say, let’s get down!
Tell us a bit about yourself!
I love R’n’B music, ranking Messina ice-cream flavours, Serial, and Vice Munchies (especially the Pizza Show). I am best represented by the ‘She reminds me of West Side Story’ emoji: ?
What kind of work to do you day to day?
As a Campaign Manager, I’m involved in the end to end process of Property LeadTech campaigns. This involves the briefing session, to landing page and advertising copywriting, audience development and analysing the data in reporting. I love finding ways to continually improve our campaigns to create new leads and customers.
Campaign Management is both an art and a science: I walk a fine line between adhering to best practices and data analysis and breaking all the rules!
What are your top 5 ways for ensuring campaign success?
- You can always think of a better solution to a problem – think harder!
- Collaboration – I love working in teams and learning about different aspects of Social Garden. I could go and talk to anyone about a campaign and I’d be running back like ‘this is the best idea ever’.
- Be flexible – things aren’t always going to be perfect. Learn to let go and launch – you can always go back and refine.
- Patience – every campaign is different and even if we can’t get immediate results, we’ll keep analysing and optimising until we can find the right fit (ref: point 1).
- Learning – whether it’s staying ahead of the trends or analysing our own results and benchmark, there’s always an opportunity to make improvements.
What are your best sources for work inspiration and wisdom?
To become a better marketer, I turn to expert advice.
Jon Loomer is always ahead of the game when it comes to everything Facebook related. You think you’re an advanced Facebook marketer and then Jon Loomer comes up with something that changes everything. His blog posts and webinars are super relevant, easy to digest and keep me up to date with the latest updates in online marketing.
The Unbounce blog offers endless advice on conversion rate optimisation, it feeds my obsession with how copywriting affects conversion rate.
Finally, my team inspires me. For campaign management and LeadTech advice, I go to our General Manager of Advertising, Brendon. From helping crush our campaigns and continually innovating and optimising our product, Brendon is awesome and a highly valued mentor to me.
What’s the best part about your job?
We’ve formed a culture that is very inclusive. We’re all friends! It’s never like ‘Oh man, I have work’, it’s more like ‘I’m going to catch up with my buddies today’. Everyone loves what they do, listen to each-other and we’re super collaborative. I like people who work hard – there is a lot of energy in the office.
We all make an effort to have team lunches on Fridays, and grab coffees together to stretch our legs and of course, for the caffeine hit.
What’s on your desk?
They say your work space is a great reflection of who you are and how organised your thoughts are. My desk is kind of cluttered!
I’ve got notes, a calculator, strewn coffee cups and of course, plants! I also picked up a Charmander figurine, which keeps things fun and allows me to play puppeteer. I share a desk with some of the greatest minds I know, keeping me focused and inspired to keep up momentum.
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