My primary responsibilities break down into three main areas:

• Helping to identify and contact suitable marketing partners and negotiating with them to ensure we get the best deal possible
• Working with the conference organizer to put together a strong marketing campaign
• Organizing and executing the campaign and giving input on what works and what doesn’t

Our ‘marketing partners’ often consist of magazines or websites which have a readership of people who might want to come to one of our events or buy our reports – our ‘target audience’. These range in size from niche publications to global corporations. I create partnerships based on the principle of mutual benefit; how similar our target audiences are, and whether they are interested in some of the marketing activities we can do for them.

I also carry out most of the internal marketing communications; contacting people who already know about us. What’s important is that we contact the right people with the right message at the right time. It’s my job to think about what a specific message should say to certain groups, and to schedule marketing to go out at the most effective point in the campaign (which is often a time when Conference Organizers are busiest).

The other side of “Who do we send out what to when?” is measuring the results and judging what was a success and what wasn’t. This is not always easy and we’re having to find out new ways to do it the whole time, but it’s the secret of success and we can never do enough of it. 

The beauty of the role is it can incorporate whatever skills you may have. My interest was in copywriting, and being creative with language. I also had an eye to put the website and brochure design in the bin and start again. So far I’ve had a chance to do all of these to an extent, and watch the results improve as a consequence.

A new recruit will learn quickly how to multi-task, how to handle responsibility much sooner than you would with another company, and how to communicate well with your team. In the long run your role is likely to adapt to how best if fits you, and you’ll figure out the type of job you’re best suited to in practice, rather than what you like the idea of.

There are loads of career development opportunities, and most people leave the job further down the line with an idea to start up their own business or develop a role within the company post-university.

Ian Gambier
Ian is a marketing intern who is working at FC as work experience within a 4-year degree in xxxx at xxxx University