Petra Lazarova has been working as an Information Developer, Tech Writer, and Content Developer since forever, as she puts it. Last year she decided it was time for a change. In the summer, she joined the Progress’ Product Marketing team. As a new addition, she had to jump in fast. She felt that she needed to know more. Petra had marketing knowledge, but part of it was scattered, and she lacked practical experience. She had to connect the dots and build upon her understanding of the field. That is why she applied to the Telerik Academy Upskill Digital Marketing program.
“I have always been more interested in the “people” side of the product lifecycle story. I was trying to think and work towards better customer experience, by understanding who our customers and prospects are, and analyzing their behavior and the performance of the content that we were making”, explained Petra.
She was attracted to the marketing industry because it is “an ocean of opportunities, options, data, aspects, stages, metrics, reports, activities that you can dive into to understand your audiences, their journey, their needs and tend to them while at the same time bringing value (and revenue) to your organization as well.”
“Marketing is about people and not about the features.”
Following her interest, and despite still working as a Senior Technical Writer, Petra started to get more involved in the creation of marketing materials and content.
“I’ve read some books, followed some publications, and had a solid common sense on the digital marketing topic. But that’s about it”, Petra remembered her early steps in the marketing world.
The transition that Petra started reached its pivot point last summer when she joined the Progress’ Product Marketing team as a Product Marketing Content Development Specialist.
As part of marketing, Petra engaged with a myriad of initiatives, including content marketing, GTM, sales and partner enablement, initiatives with demand generation, SEO and funnel optimizations, and building the customer journey.
“As a new addition to the Product Marketing team, I had to jump in fast”, Petra explained her situation and added, “I had to know more. I had to do tasks I have only read about before”. At this point, Petra decided to join the Telerik Academy Upskill Digital Marketing program.
We are leaving in a time when it is so easy to find information online. Just a quick Google search of the term gives over 3 billion results.
And the truth is that there are a lot of good sources of information - from professional blogs like Neil Patel and books to YouTube tutorials and podcasts. If you are a curious one, you can spend hours just reading and taking notes, but there is one setback - with so much information out there, you won’t be able to connect all the dots in a useful way.
That is if you lack practical experience.
“The Digital Marketing program helped me connect the dots and bits of the previous knowledge I had and it did it in a holistic “full-blooded” way”, explained Petra.
“Each and every lecture felt like it was a new course in itself, yet every lecturer managed to fit so well in the program. The whole digital marketing story, lecture after lecture, building on top of each piece of new information, tool, knowledge, exercise, discussion.”
This way, all the information started making sense. The more you learn, the more you are able to connect things. Those connection points of intelligence, wisdom, desire, and experience give you the confidence to deal with different situations and to explore more unique ways to develop your digital marketing strategy, thus achieving greater results.
In the end, this is how you become a sought-after professional - with results and creativity.
During a Wired interview in 1996, Steve Jobs talked about the same thing. When he was asked why there aren’t more products made with the aesthetics of great design, his answer was simple - a lot of people in the industry haven’t had a very diverse experience, so they don’t have enough dots to connect. Therefore, they end up with linear solutions.
As Petra sums it all up, “The Digital Marketing program gave me the confidence, theoretical background, and practical knowledge to be an esteemed and valued part of my new team”. She added that after finishing the program she was able to understand the different aspects of digital marketing and juggle between diverse tasks, teams, and initiatives without a doubt how it all threads together.
“I just know and do now”, Petra smiled.
“This was a no-brainer. I was well aware of all the prerogatives that Telerik Academy entrails - knowledge, credibility, great people, and an impressive career start booster. I am so happy that now the Academy has so much more diversity and opportunities going beyond just young students and just development tracks”.
The program met and exceeded Petra’s expectations.
Besides the knowledge of the lecturers and their willingness to go the extra mile to help and answer questions during or after class hours, she was most impressed by the people themselves – classmates and lecturers. This fostered an environment that encourages teamwork, the contagious passion of the seasoned marketing professionals, their experience, skills, and the holistic method of learning through real-world projects.
“Each and every one of the lecturers was amazing - a treasure chest of expertise and experience, bringing a wealth of examples and demos, making sure we all understood, learned, and last but not least, had fun in class. They made us feel at home.”
Want to bring your marketing career to the next level? Join Telerik Academy Upskill Digital Marketing and become a full-stack professional. Admission ends on Feb 20.
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