Marketing and Customer Relations Manager
Andy Marriot, Marketing and Customer Relations Manager, Faculty of Engineering Sciences.
My role definitely falls under the Student Recruitment and Marketing job family, however, there is an element of the other job families included in this role. That is probably what I enjoy most about my job; each day you can face a variety of tasks and challenges. With a focus on student recruitment practices, I specialised in digital marketing at the earliest opportunity, meaning that our departments could come to me for help with their web content, PPC ad campaigns, online events and general conversion activity to boost student numbers.
I’d consider this activity to be the ‘bread and butter’ of my skillset and my career to date. I started at UCL as a Programme Administrator in a department 9 years ago and much of this knowledge was self-taught as I tried to transition from administration into marketing. Beginning with a view of the whole student journey helped me to formulate my approach and then with the unofficial mentoring from a colleague in CAM, I would attend meetings to help advise departments on how to improve their practices to achieve their student recruitment objectives. Eventually, this put me in a great position to get the Faculty marketing job.
My career pathway is clearer now and my experience in the Faculty helped me to get the secondment as the Digital Marketing Manager in CAM. This further honed my skills in the digital platforms and systems that UCL uses, which has played a large part in transitioning to my upcoming role as Digital Communications Manager, allowing me to exercise these transferable skills, with a different, internal audience in mind; staff and current students.
My advice is simple, because the Communities of Practice facilitate this: talk to like-minded people and share your approach to solving problems. Say yes to opportunities to get involved. Consider finding a mentor that you can truly learn from. Apply for secondments that would help you develop a skill. Learn a skill online if you don’t have budget e.g. you can learn a lot about Google Adwords/Analytics by watching their videos.