Hi, I'm Chay!

I'm a digital marketer currently working at a marketing agency in Sudbury but less about where I am but rather how I got here.

How I Got Into Marketing

I started off going to university in the Netherlands for around 3 months before I decided that it wasn't for me and I'd rather go out and start working full time, the biggest issue was I didn't know what I wanted to do, what I'd enjoy doing and what I was good at. I kept looking at new jobs being posted while I was still studying so that I didn't get bored sitting around at home endlessly waiting to find a job that I could do with my A-levels and also enjoyed doing.

I've always enjoyed working with technology, when I got my first part-time job in high school most of my money was put towards new parts for my gaming PC, be it a new graphics card, some LED lights or a whole new system. Putting everything together and troubleshooting when things went wrong was always good fun and satisfying when the problem was finally overcome. At high school, I also got my first smartphone which was a very basic Andriod phone but this was great for playing around with. Back in those early days and in my budget over the air (OTA) updates didn't exist and if you wanted to update Andiod you had to unlock the bootloader, find the right image for your phone and flash it on. Most of the time it was successful but other times I could be up late into the night trying to fix my phone so that it would work the next day.

My First Marketing Job

While still at university I found a growth hacking job, based in Ipswich which turned out to be a great role. The job itself was growing Instagram and Twitter accounts for influencers, businesses and our own network. We also helped businesses with lead generation through LinkedIn automation. This job was a perfect start to marketing for me as it had the techy side of things with the software we were using and staying ahead of Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn algorithms. There was also the marketing side of things where I learnt how to plan a campaign, define target audiences, execute a strategy and then analysing the results to feedback into the next strategy. 

My Second Marketing Job

After leaving this job I took a marketing assistant role based in Colchester which allowed me to learn more about marketing as a whole rather than just social media marketing. I started to develop a passion for all things web with regular monthly reporting for all of our clients, letting them know how their website was performing, where the opportunities were and what we could do to improve what we were doing. I also started to do quite a bit of email marketing which I had never done before but quite enjoyed. It was good fun learning a new skill and I got the opportunity to do a lot of a/b tests which help to drive up open and click-through rates.

My Current Role

Now in my current role, I get to further explore the digital side of marketing that I haven’t been able to before. I still get to do the SEO and other web bits that I enjoy but I also have the opportunity to learn more about digital advertising on Facebook and Google. I had touched on LinkedIn ads in my previous job but these campaigns were hard to optimise as our clients had very small budgets and the cost per click was very high on LinkedIn.

More About Me, Less About Work

I’m sure you’re bored to death reading about my job history, you probably came to read an interesting blog but ended up spending the first few minutes reading my job history, apologies for that!

I start work at 09:00 which is great if you have kids, not so great if you like to get cracking early in the morning like me and get out of the office early. To make the most of my time, as I still get up early, I head to the gym for an hour and then get into the office which isn’t the end of the world as by the time I get into the office I’ve woken up a bit.

I’m in the office between 09:00 - 17:00 so nothing too exciting to report but it’s always nice helping people out when doing support, watching people’s web traffic rise or brand development.

My evenings after work generally consist of me getting home and getting everything ready for work the next day, making breakfast and lunch, gym clothes in the washed and ready before settling down on the sofa to do some personal work such as updating my useful marketing tools or writing a new blog post. This is usually working on my own website, working on a friends site or catching up on boring jobs I’m behind on like updating my budgets, checking email or doing some cleaning. After dinner, I usually crash out on the sofa and catch up on the news, Twitter and Netflix. Currently, I’m bingeing Designated Survivor and Sex Education season 2 but I’m they’ll be finished soon enough and it’ll be on to the next, any recommendations welcome!

The weekends are usually for switching off from work. Saturdays are usually my productive day where cleaning gets done, the fridge is filled up and the fish tank topped up with fresh water. After that, the weekend turns very lazy and my time is usually spent gaming, catching up on any TV such as the new Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season or more Designated Survivor. Sundays can be a real mix depending on how lazy Saturday was. If I was particularly lazy the Sunday morning turns into a gym session, bike ride or quick run to make myself feel better and the afternoon is usually spent either cooking dinner, baking something or going fishing with a few mates (weather dependent).

Hopefully, you’ve learnt a bit more about me and why I’m doing what I do without falling asleep and if you did fall asleep at least you know what to read before bed:)