Let’s be honest. Digital Marketing is possibly the industry with the most resources available to you for free online at a snap of your fingers. It is the nature of the industry itself.
A good digital marketer knows that you need a lot of content to rank for the keywords you want to target and if those keywords are related to digital marketing, then you need to be putting out there as many guides and as many how-to blogs as possible. Do you want to rank for “Email Marketing solutions”? Then be prepared to start a whole blog series about it. It is a self fulfilling industry!
If that was not enough, there are also thousands of marketing “gurus” out there selling their books and their courses, promising you unlimited knowledge and claims of making you an expert by revealing all the secrets of the trade. The prices of those vary from free (for the “gurus” that want to increase their personal brand) to a few thousands for face to face lessons and fancy certificates.
Well I am here to tell you that everything that you could possibly learn in those fancy courses, is also available online for free, only a few Google searches away. As I mentioned before, Digital Marketing is a self fulfilling industry so there is nothing that those fancy courses can teach you that is not already out there.
And at this point, you will probably ask me “If this is the case and everything is available for free online, then what would we need a mentor for?”. I do not blame you for asking this question as it is a very justified one. I will answer by breaking the reasons down and explaining each one.
Reason 1: A Digital Marketing Mentor will help you identify the correct path
Digital Marketing is a huge industry with many different disciplines that each can take years upon years to master. If you ever meet a digital marketer that tells you he is an expert in all digital marketing areas (seo, ppc, email, social etc) then laugh at their face and know they are a liar.
A mentor can help you find what you are most likely to enjoy and then help you discover which discipline would be the most appropriate for you. This is not possible when you are part of a big class with another 20 students or when you are reading how-to blogs on your own. That experienced guidance is what sets mentors apart from any other resources out there.
Reason 2: An experienced mentor will share their industry lessons with you
Just like in every job, there are some things that you cannot learn from reading books or following best practices. Dealing with difficult clients or distrusting bosses is not something that can be easily learned unless you experience it and use those experiences to avoid similar issues in the future.
Your mentor will likely have many years of experience dealing with just that and will be able to give you actionable bespoke advice to help you navigate those situations. And I say bespoke because you will be able to discuss the exact issues that you are facing instead of reading random “best practices” that might not even apply to your situation. Having someone to guide you through those challenging times can be extremely educational and important. It is always good to benefit from someone else’s mistakes and successes.
Reason 3: You will be able to get direct answers to your problems
I am sure you must have been in a situation like this - You are having some sort of technical issue with your computer or you are trying to do something specific on a software and you can’t. You then go on YouTube or Google to try and find a solution and while you can find multiple examples of people having similar problems, none of them is the exact same as the one you are having, meaning you can’t find a solution.
Having a mentor means you will never be in this situation again. Your mentor will be able to go through the challenge you are having with you, decode it and then help you with the solution. No matter how difficult or how unique the problem you are facing is, through mentorship you can get direct answers to your exact issue without you having to spend hours upon hours trying to find the answer on your own.
Reason 4: A mentor can give you impartial feedback and advice
When asking for advice from your manager at work or from your friends and family, each of them can be a little biased either towards the company you work for or towards you. You manager might never tell you when you might actually be in the right during an argument with a client and on the other hand, a family member might not always tell you when it has actually been your fault that caused an issue.
When speaking about those issues with your mentor, you mentor will be able to give you impartial advice and highlight when you are to blame for example or when your company is trying to pin things on you without you noticing. This feedback from someone outside of the situation that wants to help you identify your strengths or your mistakes, will be extremely valuable when it comes to your personal and professional growth.
Reason 5: You will likely gain access to your mentor’s network
While it might sound a little shallow, having a mentor can help you increase your network and to meet people that can influence your future career. I do not suggest making this your main goal or motivation when you try to find a mentor as it might feel like you want to take advantage of their connections and nothing else. At the same time, a mentorship relationship is one that usually lasts for a long time and your mentor is more than likely to help you by leveraging their connections.
By sharing the above reasons I hope you now have a little better understanding of what the main benefits of using a digital marketing mentor are. Mentoring will be completely different for every person since the very nature of mentoring means that each person will get a different approach, bespoke to them. As you can understand, finding the most appropriate mentor for you can be a challenge of its own so I will be covering that in a future blog.
Until then, if you are looking for someone to help you kickstart your career or to guide you and help you elevate your personal growth, feel free to reach out to me as I would love to chat and see how I could potentially help you!
Comments