This week, we connected with Khushboo Sanghvi from Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management to know about her digital marketing career and how she manages to tackle the various challenges involved in this dynamic sector on a daily basis.
Here’s a look at her normal work day, learnings and what advice she has for the young aspirants who want to make a career in the digital space.
- How does your normal working day look like?
My day starts with silence. I prefer a quiet time for myself to start the day with as it allows my brain to unlearn and better absorb things during the day ahead. During a typical work week, one of my biggest tasks is checking and assessing how my day looks like. Hence, when at work I take the first half an hour only to plan my day and structure how my day needs to go. I also like to meet my stakeholders, team mates and co-workers to discuss on priorities and ensure smooth level of collaboration. I firmly believe that the quality of deliverables and execution should go hand in hand and no task can be done without collaboration. At the end we all have some dependencies or the other either in the form of agency partners or co-workers. I love my Fridays as much as everyone else. One most critical task of these all is to switch off from work when you leave your office. I haven’t been able to be an expert on this yet, but surely am trying my best.
- What are the most helpful tools according to you that help you get the job done efficiently?
Getting the right insights is the most critical element in a digital marketer’s life. As marketers, we depend a lot on how well we know our customers and what we stand for them. I garner these insights through social listening (Tool: Brandwatch) and harnessing the consumer’s social behaviour (Tool: Unmetric). I also rely a lot on what and how other industries world over are strategising around various aspects of their brand and business evolution and driving the connect with their customers. I pretty much rely on WARC for this along with Google search. One must activity I try and do as many times as I can manage in a quarter is try and meet or talk to actual customers and business partners to get qualitative feel of their lives and how can we, as a brand, compliment them with a solution even if it’s as simple as writing a blog about it.
- How did you get into digital marketing? What do you love about your job?
I am always digitally involved in my everyday life. I practically live out of my mobile phone. That’s how all our lives have evolved into. My relationship with digital began relatively later than the nowadays teenies. Mine stared when I got my first mobile phone when in my 10th grade. So digital was pretty much in my everyday life and became a natural choice as a career cause I wanted to learn more and grow more with the digital world of things. My romance with digital started like many people in the fraternity, with a digital agency. Starting with an agency gives you a lot of perks although being under paid J. It taught me all I needed to know about digital marketing and above all helped me get my basics in place. It gave me the opportunity to work across brands which kept the passion alive and vibrant. Once I picked up my skills at the agency world, I wanted to understand the business side to get to know how the entire flow works from brand to business to consumers and back. It was critical for me to understand what goes behind the entire chain to become more holistic with my learnings. What I truly love about digital and my job is because it’s also my passion and very rarely people get the opportunity to work on what they love – I do. I love all about it – the fun, the challenges that come along, the creation and see ideas come alive.
- Tell us about your hobbies. What do you do to unwind from the busy working life?
I absolutely love to travel and see the world. I sometimes feel that I live better out of a suitcase. I also love gardening. Sometimes I just go out with friends or family in the mid-week. Mid-week breaks are pretty much a great way to distress is what I feel.
- Any advice for people who want to get into this dynamic digital marketing space?
Here is what I call the rule of 6 that I believe all future digital marketing aspirants should follow:
- Be Informed
- Be Analytical
- Be Sociable
- Be Relevant
- Be Agile
- Be A Great Story Teller
