Every mentor has a unique story to tell, a unique perspective to share, and unique passion that sets them apart as not only mentors or marketer — but as wonderful human beings. We are so excited to share the first one with you all.
Hi Elena, can you share a little bit about yourself?
I’m currently Head of Growth at STOICA.CO, a B2B digital agency providing web design, development, and marketing services. I manage both the business development and marketing at our agency.
I am also the mom of an almost 5 years old boy and I try my best to spend as much time with him as I can, playing and goofing around.
I am a big believer in continuous learning and development. I know that if you spend enough time honing a new skill, you will eventually master it.
What is your marketing career journey?
I actually started my career in sales, working for a multinational software company first and then a video technology startup. In both roles, I was doing sales but somehow always crossed paths with marketing, writing an article here and there, doing social media marketing (when social channels were still young), or promoting company events.
My approach to sales was consultative, I was trying to educate, advise and help before making a sale. But as a salesperson, I was responsible for hitting my sales quota, and sometimes it just wasn’t enough time for educating. That is when I figured out that I want to make a career change and work full-time in marketing.
Back in 2018, during my maternity leave, I decided that was the best time to make the switch. I started by taking courses on SEO (this was one of the first areas in marketing that interested me), content marketing, email marketing, and later inbound and growth marketing.
By the end of 2019, I joined STOICA.CO where I currently work. Little by little, I began by taking on small projects at first and then bigger ones. As I was gathering more experience, I realized my sweet spot is inbound marketing, creating educational content that would help potential clients in their buying journey. And using that content in creating conversion funnels to attract the right audience for our clients.
I’ve learned a lot about managing different aspects of a marketing campaign, building and promoting long-form content, and what it takes to remain relevant in the mind of potential buyers.
In my current role, I’m happy to combine my sales and marketing background. I get to speak to potential clients, understand their pain points, what is working in their marketing or not, and also create content to help them solve those challenges.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I enjoy reading and playing with my son. I recently discovered author Fredrik Backman and I’m binging on his books since.
Who are the people that inspire you the most?
I get a lot of inspiration from my husband, he has this innate confidence that dreams and plans will eventually fulfill, even if it might seem impossible.
Do you have any tips for fresh marketers?
Explore as many marketing disciplines as you can in the beginning: analytics, SEO, paid media, social media, content marketing, and the list goes on. Take free courses on each, maybe try to do a small project and then figure out which one suits you best. And when you find your sweet spot, deep dive in that discipline - you’ll find out there is value in being a T-shaped marketer (expert in one area, but able to understand how everything ties together).
Don’t stop learning: look for the best courses in your field, search for mentors and people with more experience than you. Marketing is evolving and to “stay on top of your game”, you need to evolve too.
Talk to your customers or the people you want to sell to. The better you understand them the better you’ll be able to communicate in a relevant way and stay top of mind.
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Thank you for reading!
Elena is a high energy digital marketing professional with many years of experience. Currently her main responsibility at work is advising B2B clients on their strategies.
Having trouble getting into a digital marketing role? Not going through your interviews successfully maybe? Or you’re simply curious to have a chat with Elena?
Schedule a mentoring session with her - click here.
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