ech Salary: Monique Battiste is charging ahead.

We interviewed people to learn about their marketing experiences as part of our MarTech Salary and Career Survey. We’re speaking to Monique Battiste today, senior social media expert at Solera. This business offers asset protection and risk management software to the property insurance market and automotive industry. (Interview edited to lengthen and clarify). )

Q. What is your career path? A. I freelanced for the first five of my career. I applied for a lot corporate jobs. In one year, I must have applied for over 400 jobs. I had four job interviews and one actual position that lasted for about six weeks, because the person who left wanted to return, so they let go.

Today marks one year since I started working at this company. Everyone at the company said that was about 10 years. Marketing directors have quit in 90 days and marketing business partners within 3 to 6 months. For me to be able to say I made a year in my career, I have seen many people come and go in the past year.

There’s been lots of freelancing. In 2017, I started my own company. Around 2020, I thought: “You know what?” I’m done. Freelancing worked, but it was a headache for me. I don’t want to go through that again unless I get a regular check. There was no consistency in the checks. I closed it down, removed the website and everything. I only took on one client…I said, “Okay I’ll take it, but I need a contract for six months, and three of them have to be paid up front.” This is how I can tell you are serious. You’re not just here for the month. Marketing results don’t show up in a single month. If you cannot dedicate 90 days, I am not the right person for you. ”

Q. Why did you become a marketer?

Marketing reminds me a little of fitness. Fitness is my background and marketing reminds me of that because it’s not a cookie-cutter method. There is no one-size fits all and many companies use this approach.

They will say “Well, Nike did it. We can do it too.”

I must tell them: “We aren’t Nike. Let’s begin there. “Your audience is completely different.”

Many companies did not understand that you do not have to be present on all platforms. Many companies feel that they need to be on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and so forth. My approach to marketing is very logical and driven by data. I’m one of those marketers that doesn’t jump on every new bandwagon.

Social media was my mission when I ran my agency. Social media always made me feel like I was playing a video game. It’s a game. You have to play it. You’ve got to defeat this monster. It’s the same with marketing. It’s never ending. It is always changing. It’s always changing. It is a never-ending process.

MarTech Salary and Career Survey: 2023

In my current position, I was forced to tell people who had 20 years’ experience in marketing, “You are wrong.” It’s not working. This is what you’ve been doing for two years. You brought me into the picture. We are going to make some changes, and we will change everything. “Everything you do is wrong.”

It’s like trying get older marketers to understand that we are in a totally new era.

Q. What is so different about?

Most B2B companies don’t even realize they are influencers. They were doing B2B, and they said “I don’t believe there are any influencers.”

“Oh, I have 10 people and a template that I can pitch, so I will get their rates, then figure out the cost. What are you willing to spend to achieve the results you want? Here is their ROI and here’s the audience. This is the audience you’re trying to reach. “This is the person that you should use.”

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Then they said, “We have to grow our engagement and followers.” And then it was like, “Well can you maintain the number of followers you currently have before you start to grow more?” Are we there yet? No. It’s because I love marketing that we have to first figure out how to nurture our existing audience.

I enjoy the marketing community that surrounds me. We share a lot of the same frustrations. If I see another job posting that wants a social media expert to do SEO and WordPress, web design and InDesign, Photoshop and HTML coding, pay and paid advertisements and Google Ads and Google Analytics, and all of that and more, I will scream.

Q. And they will give you $25,000 per year for it, do you know?

A: Exactly. I’ve seen jobs where they said, “Oh, we’re getting to our limit of $65,000.” So, I told them to take some of these tasks outsource and change the job title to match the budget. You said senior but senior doesn’t get $65,000 per year. Senior means at least $85,000 and up.

Q. How do you keep up with the latest marketing trends?

I’m always learning. I’m always listening. When I want to learn, I look up the latest job descriptions. What do they expect from marketing specialists? What do they want you to know before being hired for a certain position? Many of the skills required are SEO/SEM (search engine marketing), HTML, web design and Photoshop. So, I’ll spend my time…I have my own activewear and blog, but have been rebranding, and now I need to learn SEO. Let’s practice on my website. I have been practicing by myself and keeping up with data and other things.

Q. What’s your opinion on AI?

A: AI can never replace a human. That’s something I wish more marketers would understand. AI won’t ever replace you because it has more personality. You can give it a new voice. AI is like a text book. It drains the energy you would get from a normal person.

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