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Digital Marketing Skills for Today & Tomorrow

by Mischa McInerney

Posted on Oct 14, 2022

In this episode, host Will Francis chats with DMI's Chief Marketing Officer, Mischa McInerney about where she sees a clear need for marketing skills today, especially in roles that didn't exist 10 ago - e.g. in automationomnichannelCRO, data science. A recent survey by DMI of 500 CMOs saw similar patterns of needs and gaps in marketing skills around the world.

So what are Mischa's tips for your top three skills? An understanding of data, an interest in CX & UX, but also those soft skills you've learned on the job or in your free time. Listen in to also hear her take on the role of creativity, hybrid working, and, as a bonus, some of her standard interview questions.

A full transcript of this episode is available below. 

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Podcast transcript

[00:00:00]
Will: Welcome to "Ahead of the Game," a podcast brought to you by the Digital Marketing Institute. I'm your host, Will Francis, and today I'll be talking to the DMI's Chief Marketing Officer, Mischa McInerney, who first appeared in an episode in July 2021 about behavioral science. And today who'll be talking to us about digital marketing skills for today and tomorrow. Mischa has over 20 years' experience in a variety of roles around the world, from co-founding an email marketing company in Australia and running her own consultancy in Ireland, to holding senior positions at major brands before landing here at the DMI in late 2020. As marketing head at DMI, Mischa brings to the table valuable insights from both her own work and also original research into where CMOs see the state of marketing skills today. Mischa, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:52.844]
Mischa: I know. Glad to see you again. You too, Will.
[00:00:55.794]
Will: It is great to see you again. It's been a while. And today we're gonna talk about digital marketing skills, right? Why is that on your radar? Why is that important to you at the moment?
[00:01:08.182]
Mischa: I think looking at the macro context, cost of living has gone up. We've got massive inflation that's including wage inflation as CMOs we need to be planning our skills for tomorrow to make sure that we're building the skills today. So, what I mean by that is that we've gotta diagnose what skills are missing within our team for what we wanna do, for what to align with our data, or with our overall marketing strategy. So, and you have to understand whether...and budget, I suppose, whether you want to import those skills, are you hiring for those skills, or whether you wanna grow them from within. A lot of people are going for grow within because a lot of companies are doing that because it helps make sure that people are in a continuous learning path within the company.
[00:01:59.663]
It helps attract and retain talent because if people know that they can grow and learn within the company, then they're gonna stay within their role. They're always gonna feel challenged and always understand that they're gonna learn more within their role. And that's actually the second highest behind salary, of course, the reason why people would stay at a company. So, I think you need to know if you're gonna import them or hire them in, then that's gonna be costly to the business. Then with the cost of doing business, a wage inflation on the increase then and budgets being, you know, forced downwards. Then that's better, that's a big challenge that we need to overcome as CMOs. So, I think you need to plan now for the future and make sure that the skills that you have or will need next year or the year after are being grown now within the business, or heard now within the business.
[00:02:49.640]
Will: There seems a bit of urgency around digital skills gaps at the moment. Is that because of the acceleration of digitization in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic?
[00:02:59.682]
Mischa: I do think that is. I think if you look at the industries like retail, you know, went all online and now you're seeing more of a hybrid, but everyone moved online. And then retail companies needed to be able to sell first online, give an exceptional customer experience online. You see new players, like the drinks industry, they went through supermarkets or through pubs, but now there's the home is one of the biggest channels for some of the drinks companies. So, the likes of Coca-Cola, or Heineken, they're all facing that. How do you engage people digitally to then realize a sale? So that's a big challenge for that industry. So, COVID has changed that industry in the way they operate, and then equally say pharmaceutical as well, which is massively highly regulated.
[00:03:48.840]
And everything was, you know, paper-based. There was a direct channel by the sales reps into the pharmacies. Now you've got a direct-to-consumer channel where digital is paramount, but actually being able to keep the compliance element of do you need people that have strong compliance skills, but you need them to be digitally-enabled as well. So, that has accelerated the pace of that industry as well. And then I suppose companies like the financial services industries were on a path to digital transformation, probably laggards compared to telcos, etc. But they've had to accelerate the pace because branches are closing and now it's an online offer. You've got the fintechs coming in to take over as well and eating their share of the pie. So, they've had to accelerate the pace of digital transformation. So, I think with COVID, I don't think it's changed the world. I think it's accelerated the pace of digital.
[00:04:53.403]
Will: Yeah, I think that kind of acceleration of digitization is just exposed skill gaps, right? Where it wasn't maybe a massive problem that there were digital skill gaps. It kind of highlighted that there probably was a problem. And you know, companies need to be working harder and getting more out of digital channels because they're doing more business digitally, right?
[00:05:15.957]
Mischa: And also their budgets are being cut and they're being forced to get greater ROI from existing budgets. So, attribution becomes a big issue. We ran a survey to over 500 CMOs a few months ago, and one of the top pain points was marketing ROI and getting greater ROI from their existing budget. So, I think data analytics is gonna almost be the linchpin of every marketing strategy. And then it also of that kinda building the skills gaps. And I don't think it's data marketing, I think it's data and marketing. I think it needs to run through the veins of every marketer rather than be a separate silo. Because then you've got to have that short gap between data to insight to action. And the only way to do that is to build those skills within the team holistically. And obviously, you know, if you can forward as a company to hire data analysts or data scientists, that's great because that will accelerate the pace. But I think you need to build that skill within the team.
[00:06:18.671]
Will: Yeah, no, I get that. Now, before I dive into asking you about specific skills, just for the benefit of our listeners who are thinking of maybe transitioning into a marketing role, what do you think about the whole generalist versus specialist dichotomy conversation? If a friend asked you for advice, would you advise them to be a generalist or a specialist?
[00:06:43.163]
Mischa: A specialist, all day long. I think you've gotta build your craft. You've gotta understand what you like doing and what you're good at. And then build that craft and go for that specialism. I think if you're going generalist, I suppose you can work in a smaller company and build a wide range of skills. But I think in order for you to kind of build your career and build your craft, you gotta go with specialism.
[00:07:13.719]
Will: Okay. That's interesting. So, to what extent could I ask you about your team at the DMI and how they're made up, and what kind of skills you expect to have there?
[00:07:23.654]
Mischa: We've got lead generation, that's looking at how do we acquire customers at the lowest possible cost in terms of efficiency and get the maximum ROI from those customers. And I mean by maximizing their lifetime value and their conversion to sale. We've got marketing automation, and that is the ability to harvest data, our first-party data, our second-party data, and our third-party data. And to be able to automate customer journeys. If you're looking at PPC for example, it's very bottom of the funnel. It's high cost. It's quite transactional. It's not scalable because it'll erode your profit margin. So, you've gotta go top of the funnel, but the return on effort to top of the funnel, you're only converting a certain percentage of those kinds of passive audiences over time. You've gotta have automation that supports that. And so, we have marketing automation specialists that looks at our first-party and enables our first-party data strategy.
[00:08:23.890]
We also have conversion rate optimization because if you've paid 100 odd Eurodollars to get someone to the site, then you've gotta convert them. So, and you've gotta maximize that traffic to value and understand what their need state is. Because some of them are gonna be high intent, some of them are gonna be medium intent and some of them are totally passive. And you've gotta understand what that is. So that's kind of the role of the CRO. And then we've got a customer team, which is more looking at the customer value and harvesting that kind of passive data or harvesting the data and changing that kind of passive intent into high intent, understanding those intent signals over time. But using a low cost per acquisition channel, which is that one-to-one communication through email, you know, 0.1 cent versus obviously the 100 Euro, which is the PPC. So, leveraging email and omni-channel, but primarily email leading that and getting the most out of our existing membership base. That's kind of on the B2C side, our partnership side, and our B2B side.
[00:09:35.336]
Will: That's very interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, you've called out those specialisms. These are things that are very new and modern types of role, you know, they would be unrecognizable to somebody who works in marketing even just 10 years ago. And if you talked to someone like 20 years ago or pre-digitally, they're like, "Sorry, what language are you speaking?" So, that's very interesting. So, to unpack a couple of those, I mean, CRO has seems to have exploded because I think yes, in this increasingly digitized world. People have realized, "Well, with an incredibly marginal gain, like changing a conversion rate from 3% to 4%, which sounds like nothing, you've actually increased a bottom line of a company by a third, right?" So, that is very interesting. I mean, but do you still have some of those more traditional skills in the team as well that we wouldn't typically think about like copywriting, creative strategy?
[00:10:31.067]
Mischa: We've got copywriting creative and we've got content marketing, but again, a whole kind of lead-nurturing, top-of-the-funnel data capture, bringing them into lead nurturing journeys over time. And so, it's not necessarily social media, that's just a channel, it's content marketing. It's like getting the right content to the right people at the right time to help them in their life and in their learning journey. So, I think that's important.
[00:11:00.406]
Will: Yeah, because the conversations I have where we talk about this stuff, the words like data and automation and what have you, do come up a lot. And I think I wouldn't like listeners to kind of go away thinking that there's no room for the traditional creative skills in marketing. And it's all about, you know, data dashboards and using marketing technology.
[00:11:24.506]
Mischa: The last podcast that I was on and we had a great chat about it was using behavioral science in marketing and actually trying to understand who your customer is. And I think the creative and the copy that actually feeds into that is absolutely paramount because there's no point in having all of these insights and all the plumbing and pace, which is all the data automation which is at the end of the day, you're not communicating to your customer in a meaningful way or your prospective customer in a meaningful way. And that's when you're winning the hearts and minds. It's in the creative, it's in the copy, and how you're speaking to our customers.
We did some interesting research where we've scraped Reddit to understand because we have a way of speaking to our customers and we think that's the right way. But actually, how do our customers talk about us organically in conversations and threads? We're looking at mining that for kind of nuggets of how we should be talking to them in a way that they understand. So, absolutely. That is, if you don't have... You need good creative and you need really good copywriting to engage with that audience. The data will help you understand how that marketing automation is the plumbing. But if you can't talk to them, then you know you're not.
[00:12:48.291]
Will: And where are we with creative skills in today's digital world? What are your observations about that?
[00:12:56.311]
Mischa: I think it's undervalued to be honest with you. I think it's really undervalued the role of really going to creative. I think there's tech platforms now that analyze creative and help you understand what creative is engaging with your audience. So, I was looking at a data platform the other day called Video Mob [SP], and it basically hones in on even within a video still, what are your audience responding to. So, that will help you understand what creative... So, it's not just the fact that you engage with this audience, but what creative won over that audience. I think you need to understand that. And once we understand that, we can put a value back on creative and the importance of creative. I think we've downplayed creativity because we've built all these plumbing skills up. But if you don't have both, then you're not gonna be able to connect with.
[00:13:57.071]
Will: Yeah, and true. And I suppose the creative skills are currently... Well, and now a day is living alongside AI, and is currently quite happily, you know we tend to know AI-generated imagery when we see it. We're okay with that. It's used in various ways and that's fine. AI-generated copy seems to have become useful, but also clearly there's value in non-AI-generated copy and platforms like Google are having to kind of respond to that, the sort of tidal wave of low-quality AI-produced copy across the internet. So, you know, how does that impact, how do you think those developments impact the plight of a creative and their skillset today?
[00:14:50.010]
Mischa: I think it's new, it's novel. People are using it because it's lower cost and it's highly scalable. But I think if you don't have a good creative platform and it doesn't come from creative insights and data-driven insights, then it's just spray and pray really. And you're not really understanding who your audience is and how you're speaking to them, how you're resonating with them, which I think is what we need to do as marketers. So, I think everything's going into a black box as well. Like, you don't know what creative they saw that drove them to the site. You don't know what, like Google's Performance Max is gonna be a black box. You won't know whether, what type of creative, what platform, what channel drove it.
[00:15:35.955]
We all know that we get a ROI of two to one ROAS but we won't know what drove it. Like, so I think you have to stay close to your customer and you have to engage with them in a meaningful way. And just like chatbots, are kind of AI-driven that there's a certain point at which it's too impersonal. It's a robot. And I think that you've got to get personal and that needs creative intervention rather than just AI.
[00:16:06.816]
Will: Hello. A quick reminder from me that, if you're enjoying our podcast series, why not become a member of the DMI so that you can enjoy loads more content from webinars and case studies to toolkits and more real-life insights from the world of digital marketing? Head to digitalmarketinginstitute.com/aheadofthegame, sign up for free. Now, back to the podcast. What's the kind of impact of remote working versus hybrid working on digital skills? You know are some skills absolutely, you know, lend themselves to hybrid working or remote working? I mean, what do you think about that?
[00:16:46.822]
Mischa: I think there's a bigger issue to solve in that remote and hybrid working because I think, first of all, the soft skills are not transferred remote working. So, you know, you're listening to someone, you're watching how they're handling objectives or they're handling someone with, you know, when they're managing up or managing across or managing down. And you pick those up subconsciously. And I think that in-person interaction, I think that will be a big problem in terms of how people are gonna progress with their careers. Because there are those soft skills that you need to be able to move up the ladder. So, I think that is a problem that needs to be addressed. But if you look at it at a kinda, at a macro level we are trying to use the same tools or most companies are trying to use the same tools for internal communication that they used before COVID, bar Zoom, right?
[00:17:42.541]
But like, you're still using email as a channel. I thought it was interesting the other day an advertising company called TBWA, and they were offering employer branding and internal communications as a creative platform and creative strategy. And thought it was interesting because they wanted to be able to... We talk to employees the way they consume information. So, it's not about emails and it's not doing a pulse survey every once in a while to see if everyone's happy or engaged or disengaged. You've got that whole thing of that quiet, what is it the silent resignation? Where people are just, you know, showing up, but they're not really there, right? So I think internal communications and how you're communicating with your employees to get them a cohesive message and getting them feeling the company, but that can't be done through an email every once in a while. You can see companies like Facebook, they have podcasts, they have videos, they have bots.
[00:18:51.126]
Will: What internally?
[00:18:52.066]
Mischa: Internally. Internally. So, treating like there you were and analyzing that for engagement because email is just one channel. But there has to be a multi-communication channel that allows you to consume information the way you want to consume information, not the way it's... But then you'll see hiring employee engagement, it'll build the skills within the business. It'll make sure that all the employees, wherever they are in the world you know, hybrid or remote, they're all aligned to the goals, the objectives. They're all moving in the same direction...
[00:19:27.972]
Will: Part of a culture.
[00:19:29.487]
Mischa: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's going to be that employer branding teamed with the internal communications will be a skill that will need to be built within companies. I think it's a marketing because it is an extension of marketing. It's actually treating people within the business like they're their customer. How are they engaging? How do they feel?
[00:19:54.291]
Will: Yes, particular skills do lend themselves to remote working for sure. But there's just, different people have different ways that they like to work. Some people are very introverted, they don't really wanna be part of the culture, but look, if they're the best designer on the planet, then you should hire them. And if they wanna just be locked away in their room working away, then I think that's kind of fine you know.
[00:20:16.044]
Mischa: Moving everyone back to an office situation doesn't suit the introverts. They're liking their...
[00:20:23.025]
Will: Absolutely.
[00:20:23.897]
Mischa: Again, if you're bringing them back, then you have to cater for everyone and that kind of diversity of...
[00:20:30.278]
Will: Yeah. Or make some big decisions about who you wanna hire and how much you actually value skills you know. Funnily enough, talking about soft skills, there was a report that LinkedIn produced in September 2022 about the top soft or well, power skills as they like to call them that you need to future-proof your career. I'm always interested in these soft skills personally, or I'm gonna start calling them power skills. So, yeah, the top ones were leadership, communication, problem-solving, management, time management, and strategy. Which by the way, obviously are all included areas of instruction within DMI courses. They're all things that we cover at the DMI. How do you think that ties into, you know, what you are talking about this need to kinda fill digital skills gaps? Are these power skills a big part of that?
[00:21:21.983]
Mischa: I think they are. I also think...I don't know, didn't hear you mention it, but I think influencing others should be a big skill. Because you've got your digital natives who know what to do and can see...have grown up with digital in a transformation journey where you've got maybe people who aren't as digitally literate, potentially making decisions that are maybe the wrong decisions or maybe ill-informed decisions. And I think that the role of that, maybe I don't wanna be ages, but maybe a younger generation is to influence them and to bring them around to their way of thinking so that they are making informed holistic 360 decisions. And I think that's a really important skill to cultivate as a digital marketer. And also, you know, you win arguments with data, but you also need to understand the language people are talking so that you can talk to them in the language that they understand and that you're playing back to them a language that they understand as well. So, there's subtle ways that, that skill can be cultivated. But I think, again, that is a power skill, that is difficult to transfer in a hybrid environment.
[00:22:49.410]
Will: True that. And, you know, I deliver a lot of courses around digital marketing, and I've been doing so quite intensively over the last couple of years, particularly. And there's something that I've noticed when I talk to people on these courses is a very common sentiment is, "Well, this is all great, but now I'm gonna get a lot of pushback when I go back and internally try and explain that when we are doing things in a maybe old-fashioned way, we're not really talking to people in the right way, in the right channels, etc." And I sort of, I've realized that a massive part of working in marketing is explaining to senior stakeholders, etc., why this is a good idea or that is a good idea and justifying things.
[00:23:43.054]
And because digital marketing moves so fast, you're always faced with the problem where you've got to challenge out-of-date assumptions and out-of-date kind of, you know, ideas within usually a more senior and usually an older, you know echelon of the company. And so, you're always kind of battling the internal dinosaurs as it were. And I think if you can't do that, actually it's probably no exaggeration to say your ability to get really good marketing done is very likely compromised. Would you agree with that?
[00:24:19.456]
Mischa: I would. I would agree. And I'm always an advocate of like data wins arguments, but as I said earlier, it's more subtle than that. Like you can present data, you can present research to win your argument, but you need to understand what the blockers are, what are they thinking and what obstacles do you have to overcome to get your point across. Because it might even be... You have to understand what their issues are or what their obstacle is first. And then when you understand that, then present your data and maybe do it twice or three times until it sinks in. Because sometimes the first time doesn't work, because you gotta plant the seed and then you gotta water it as well, you know. So, I think persistence beats resistance. Is that what they say? But again, like it's not just data, it's not bulldozing them with data. It's understanding the language that they speak. What are the obstacles? What is their mindset? What mindset shift do you need to overcome or to tackle to get your point across, you know?
[00:25:28.315]
Will: Yeah. Absolutely. That's important. Another thing I come across that's just so common in digital marketing is this idea, "Well, there's a million things we could do." And people are very distracted because there are a million things you could do in digital marketing, right? And so, I suppose to bring it back to skills, how do you prioritize and how do you, therefore, work out what skills to focus on, really kinda going deep and honing and therefore, which channels and strategies and tactics to really lean on to you know, achieve your own objectives.
[00:26:06.858]
Mischa: So, I think that actually speaks to another skill that you need to cultivate within marketing. And that's kinda that like testing and learning culture that you have to kind of fail hard and fail fast. I know that's a coined phase, but when we're looking at a hypothesis and how to prioritize, we're looking at, okay, what is the data-driven insight that underpins? What problem are we trying to solve? What's the data-driven insight that actually, it supports the hypothesis, and then how do you implement it? And what does that testing cycle look like? And then is it easy to implement? And what is the potential ROI? So, it might have a low ROI, but it might be really easy to implement and therefore you do it. And if it's got a high ROI but difficult to implement, then what's the return on effort there?
[00:26:55.921]
And then that helps you build a prioritization framework, but then you've gotta do fail hard and fail fast and people, it has to be okay. You have to give people permission to fail. It has to be okay for that experiment not to work. And that it's okay because this is part of the learning process, and yes it was built on data, but that's okay. Like, people don't feel comfortable doing that. If you think about the whole kind of like social media culture, everything's about perfection. It's not okay not to be okay. And so, instilling that and cultivating that is really, really important. And that is something that you can do remotely because it's about the process that you build. And if somebody says, like, "Here are some companies that have like... Okay, this is the biggest failure of the month." Like, and they're celebrating failure because that's how you learn. But you don't have to go to that extreme, but you know, "That didn't work. Okay, well what are we gonna try next?" And that you're comfortable with that and that's okay because that's a failure.
[00:27:57.253]
Will: Yeah, that's very true. So, again it's just a culture-shift thing. If I'm a listener who has maybe done a DMI course, maybe DMI PRO, something like that, what would be my next steps in terms of actually starting to develop those skills I'd learn on a screen? And bringing them into, you know, the world in practice and honing them, developing them.
[00:28:26.887]
Mischa: I suppose one of the things that we do get a lot of feedback on is that are the toolkits that we have in our membership. So, if you're learning for example, about content marketing, you've got a content-marketing profile builder or content-marketing persona builder downloadable that helps you bridge the gap between the theory and the actual and implementing it. So, what we see in our feedback is that a lot of people who have done our courses and used our toolkits is like, it's easily implementable, it's bite-size chunks and you're able to implement it. So, I think the only way that you're gonna learn is by doing and getting yourself into a position where you can implement what you learned and use those toolkits, use those templates, use those guides and deploy them. And you can see the results that people are saying that it has an impact on their career, on their salary because they've measured the results somehow. They're performing on the job. So, I think bridging that gap between the theory and what you're learning and the doing, seeing those practical tools and doing it.
[00:29:38.708]
Will: Yeah. And it's about getting out there and doing it, isn't it? Either through getting a job, an internship, or helping a family business, trying to launch your own side hustle, like whatever it takes, that's what will get you using Google Analytics and setting up some marketing automations and stuff.
[00:29:55.330]
Mischa: Trying a little bit of SEO.
[00:29:57.418]
Will: Yeah. You know, what's it like out there, do you think in the jobs marketplace with someone who's got a specific skill? Is it, you know, a candidate's market? Are companies finding it hard to hire people? Are they finding it hard to retain people with these specific skills, do you think?
[00:30:15.386]
Mischa: I think they are. I think obviously the cost of doing that as well has increased. So, people are looking to kinda build those skills within and train and earmarking the people who want to have an appetite to learn those skills and trying to develop those and you know, knowing who you're kind of writing for.
[00:30:34.705]
Will: Okay. So it's more efficient to train people up internally than find those skills.
[00:30:39.471]
Mischa: Absolutely. You're going out to the market and you're paying more to acquire those and then you've obviously got your ramp-up period. I think there was the Human Resources Management Institute, they published that it costs $4,700 just in kind of business downtime and just to hire someone new. And that's before the wage-increased costs as well. So, I think training from within and growing and building skills from within is key. So, if your company does offer that opportunity, you gotta put your hand up because I think when you're looking at CVs, the person with the project skills and they've gone beyond their day job and their business as usual job to take on those chunky, meaty projects that are gonna transform the marketing department or the business, that's what you wanna see when you're looking at it. So, you know, you put your hand up and get involved in those projects.
[00:31:44.055]
Will: Yeah. And talking of CVs or resumes what three skills do you think people should really be looking to develop and get on their resume or CV?
[00:31:56.516]
Mischa: You've got your core digital marketing skills, right? And I think if you really wanna set yourself apart, it's data analytics, understanding data, and being able to use data to drive insights and actions. And also, you know, attribution or ROI, so data analytics. You know the next is CX and UX because they're people that you're talking to. You gotta understand from the data points when they drop out of a journey, why? Like, and what can you do to make sure that they stay engaged, that they are... You gotta understand that sitting behind the data, it's people, you're talking to people, what are they thinking, seeing, and doing throughout that journey. It's not just when they press buy, it's the experience that they have afterwards that will realize the lifetime value.
[00:32:50.604]
And it's mapping that journey all the way through and giving them reasons to believe at the start, but also moments of delight where they come back, you know. And I think trying to build that experience and being focused to building that experience. So, if you can get the kind of theoretical or the kind of the knowledge to be able to do that so that if you do go into another position, you've got that knowledge that you're able to make a difference in that space. And then I think the third thing is, don't underestimate the power skills that you've acquired. If you're new, if you are at an entry-level position. There's power skills that you've acquired through your sports, through the extracurricular activities that you've done, being part of a team. You know, influencing the manager that this person needs to come on as halfback or whatever, you know that, that's really important. And don't underestimate that you have acquired those power skills and maybe you're not in a job setting, but you've acquired them and they're transferable and really bigging them up in your CV I think is really important.
[00:33:58.530]
Will: Hey, if you've gone around your community and persuaded people to donate to charity, that's a really valuable skill, right?
[00:34:05.156]
Mischa: Absolutely. Like you've raised money for charity, you've made a difference in the world. And it's those people that actually take themselves out of their comfort zone and then are, you know, lifelong learners. They're the people that they're curious, they stay curious and they're always improving themselves. They're the people that you want. I also ask one question in every interview, and that's like how do you stay up to date? How do you stay current? You know what blogs are they listening to? What blogs are they reading? What podcasts or you know, what YouTube videos? I wanna know that they are dedicated to lifelong learning, that they wanna learn more. Because in an ever-changing world, people have to be able to learn something, apply it, do it. And I wanna see that. And if they can't get back to me about some of the answers, then...
[00:34:57.344]
Will: That's really good. Any other regular interview questions that you have? I'm curious actually.
[00:35:03.417]
Mischa: I say, "What are you most proud of?"
[00:35:07.405]
Will: Interesting.
[00:35:08.244]
Mischa: Yeah. I also like to say, "If your friends were describing you, what would they say?"
[00:35:15.847]
Will: Oh really? That's a good one.
[00:35:17.208]
Mischa: Like because you gotta try and relax them and they got to get to know who they are as a person. And that's when they start to relax because they're talking about themselves, like in and on kinda, and then you can see who they are and or get a glimpse of who they are. And I think that's good.
[00:35:35.421]
Will: That's very interesting. Well, we're all a bit more prepared for an interview at the DMI now in the marketing team, but okay yeah great. Well, Mischa, thanks so much. Our time is up, unfortunately. I could talk to you all day about this stuff, but I really appreciate that. We've learned a lot in the short time. Just one final thing, just do remind our listeners where they can connect with you online.
[00:35:59.658]
Mishca: Yeah. So it's Mischa McInerney, the spelling of my name will be in the show notes, hopefully. Because you can go on to LinkedIn or Twitter. And you can connect with me there if you've got any questions. If you wanna have a chat you know, DM me. No problem at all. I'm happy to get back to anyone who has any further questions or wants deeper insights. Absolutely, no problem at all.
[00:36:21.784]
Will: That's great. Thanks so much, Mischa. And I hope to talk to you again on an episode sometime soon, hopefully.
[00:36:27.649]
Mishca: Thanks Will. All right, take care.
[00:36:29.354]
Will: Thanks. See ya. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And for more information about transforming your marketing career through certified online training, head to digitalmarketinginstitute.com. Thanks for listening.

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Mischa McInerney
Mischa McInerney

Mischa McInerney is the Chief Marketing Officer, Digital Marketing Institute. Mischa has over 20 years' experience in various countries, industries, and roles across the world. She is fluent in Japanese and once hosted a cooking show on Japanese television. She was a co-founder of an email marketing company in Australia, before moving back to Ireland to set up her own Marketing Consulting company. She then moved into Ulitities as Digital Marketing Manager of Ireland's largest energy provider, where she won several national and European awards for innovative digital brand campaigns. She then moved to Bank of Ireland, Ireland's largest bank as Director of Digital and CVM. 9 months ago she moved to the Digital Marketing Institute as CMO of the world's largest provider of on-demand certified Digital Marketing Courses.


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