We never stop learning

This fall, the 5 Fold team heads back to school with marketing classes.

Okay, technically back-to-school season has been over for about a month now. But, for the 5 Fold team, it’s time to hit the books. We’re starting multiple training programs this fall so that we can expand our expertise and begin learning new skills. Read more about our continuing education in our latest blog post!

What we already know

As a collective group, the 5 Fold team has an incredible amount of marketing experience and know-how. Different members of our team have different skillsets, have worked in different backgrounds, and bring different perspectives to client campaigns. Some worked as “in-house” marketers for companies and organizations before coming to 5 Fold, such as Tori and Kevin. Others, like Scott and Drew, come from agencies.

All those years of combined marketing knowledge and experience has allowed us to build effective marketing campaigns for our clients (like this one, for instance).

Why go through training?

Combining work experience and education, each member of 5 Fold brings something different to the table. There are no general “marketers”, but, rather, specialists in different areas of marketing. For example, Drew knows the ins-and-outs of pay-per-click advertising, while Tori has worked for years as a social media marketer. So, why would we need to learn anything new?

There’s actually two reasons for why we continue learning and training:

1. Marketing is a fast-changing field: Much how the education of a computer technician can become fast outdated by new technology, the world of marketing has shifted significantly since the time we first learned how to do things. Just as we’re constantly making small changes to improve our marketing campaigns, our team needs to keep up on the latest research and develop new skills and areas of expertise.

This doesn’t always mean that the fundamentals of what we do have to change: just the way we do things. As an example, think about content marketing. What makes up grammar, spelling, and good sentence structure isn’t changing, but the ideal length, subject matter, and arrangement of content is, to a certain degree. Our job is to find what works, and that starts with keeping up on our studies.

2. Marketing is becoming more integrated: One of the things that sets 5 Fold apart from other marketing companies is that we use an all-in-one marketing strategy. One of the reasons we do this is because the different subfields of marketing are drifting closer and closer together.

Here’s one example: 3-4 years ago, a PPC specialist and social media manager would have had little in common to talk about. Flash forward to today and the industry-wide embrace of social media advertising, and it’s a completely different story. A good website, with good content, is the foundation for a good social media strategy, a good PPC campaign, and—overall—a great marketing campaign. This is just one of the reasons our team is cross-training in other specialties.

Training matters because a marketing company that is sitting still is failing. One of our prime values as a company that we walk past every single day? “Never stop learning.” By taking classes, we’re embracing that goal very literally.

So, what classes are in session?

Here are just a few of the classes that our team is taking this month:

John Klohr, Project Manager

“I will be taking advanced courses in Google Analytics. The first courses that I will be taking are through Google Analytics Academy. I will cover topics such as Google Analytics Platform Principles, Mobile App Analytics, and Tag Manager Fundamentals. These classes will take about 30 hours to complete and should be done some time toward the end of October. I will be using what I learn to further optimize our client’s campaigns.”

Drew Martinez, PPC Specialist

“I will be taking the Bing Ads Certification exam. This will help familiarize myself with the key differences between Bing and AdWords.”

Tori Ericson, Social Media Manager

“I’m currently working on my Facebook Blueprint Certification. This certification has over 35 online modules on advance-level advertising and will help us optimize Facebook and Instagram ad spend for our clients. The e-learning platform includes courses on everything from A/B testing to how to target the correct audience.”

Kevin Bertram, Content Writer

“I’m taking a full 18-hour course this fall titled ‘Become an SEO Expert.’ Although I already know quite a bit about on-site SEO, I’m hoping to learn some new tricks and add even more value to our client campaigns.”

What does this mean for client campaigns?

All this learning is happening at an opportune time. Fall is a time when 5 Fold reviews our processes and strategies, both to close out the calendar year on a high note and to get off to a great start in the coming year. 2017 has a lot in store for 5 Fold, and now’s the time where we’ll be making adjustments—built on research—to campaigns to boost future performance. This is especially pressing this fall. Fast-moving changes from Google alone have forced us to do what we do best: adapt. There’s no better time for some of us to learn new skills that we can directly apply to our marketing strategy revision.

We’re all excited to learn. We’re even more excited to take what we’ve learned and apply it to our work. If you’d like to learn more about our all-in-one marketing and what makes 5 Fold different, get in contact with us. We’d love to hear from you.