Category: Career Upgrades

Today we’re talking about what analytics has to do with music (check out this music about analytics by songwriter Kai Feng). We’re looking at a musician’s work style and seeing what analysts can adopt from it. According to today’s guest, these two disciplines have much in common.  

Fred Pike is a father, a grandfather and a string musician who both plays in and is president of the Milwaukee Mandolin orchestra. 

He is also a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager expert, having been a founding member of the web development agency Northwoods which just celebrated twenty five years in business. He has also shared his knowledge through various courses and at CXL which is better known as Conversion XL and sessions he has presented at Superweek. 

He approaches marketing analytics in much the same way as he approaches a musical performance. So let’s listen to how he does that, in my chat with Fred Pike. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Northwoods, the agency which Fred co-founded

Fred on LinkedIn

Fred on X/Twitter

Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra

Great video by Kai Feng singing about data: https://youtu.be/D_upBpY1U2I?si=DxFHdl-PO7CqLGXH&t=147

Simo Ahava

Jeff Sauer

Julius Fedorovicius

Sonke Ahrens

This is the second episode in a series on having a thriving career. There is one specific subfield where this challenge is harder than usual – it’s marketing within paid and organic search. There are always new tools and techniques coming along, and In our guest’s opinion, to be a search marketing professional means upgrading yourself, to master them while the iron is still hot. 

I’ll be talking with someone who has dealt with more than her fair share of change – but who feels she is better as a result. Originally from Peru, Giannina Fumagalli has lived in Montreal Canada for the last 18 years and who has been working in digital marketing that whole time, including both agency and client-side roles. She is currently the Growth Marketer at Vircom, a pioneer in B2B Email Security.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Giannina works at Vircom.com

Parisian vs Quebecois French

RSA = Responsive Search Ad

Episode Reboot. “Not all clicks are created equal”

There’s a lot you need to deal with in a marketing career, such as: 

• What skills you should chase after when in an entry-level vs what’s needed at higher levels
• How to manage both above and below your level
• What continuous learning actually looks like
• Knowing when a job isn’t panning out and you need to cut  your losses
• Balancing whether to join a company based on the brand’s cachet, the title, the salary and what you will get out of the experience
• Advice when interviewing for marketing roles – what she looks food when hiring
• How to cultivate your profile within your organization
• When to stay a generalist, or when to gain a specific skill by joining a special project 

This episode’s guest is eminently qualified to cover these topics. Marissa Homere is the VP of Marketing at Irwin, an investor relations and capital markets software company. She is a demand generation leader and for the last decade, she has built and scaled marketing teams in a wide range of industries. She also teaches in an online marketing program. 

In this episode, Marissa shares her thoughts on the marketing industry as a whole, how young professionals can be best prepared for today’s rapidly changing environment, and what it takes to succeed in a fast-paced marketing role. Most importantly, she talks about how, as a wife and mother, how societal issues have muscled in on her life as a marketer. Like being a working parent, handling old oppressive tendencies in the workplace, struggling to balance career ladder-climbing with family responsibilities. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Marissa works at Irwin

Dave Hale

uOttawa Marketing program

Modern Marketing Certificate

Episode Reboot. Marissa’s 3 questions: Are you growing? Are you learning? Are you fairly compensated?