New job hooray, not much to do though.....

[8-P]

So to cut a long story short, a few months back I was at the point of posting "how am I ever going to get out of my job" post, when something new landed on my lap and I took it.

In a nutshell I working in digital marketing and a job came up 5 mins from home, good size company, nice environment, good money, seemed perfect.

Im nealy 2 months in and Im wondering what my predecessor did all day, the people around me dont know either. I suspect the answer is not a lot.

Ive had some tasks to do, Ive done them and Im at the point where Im looking around for things to fill my time with.

So what do I do?

Tell my boss straight out, keep looking and just be as productive as I can, after all it isnt my fault or face up to the fact Ive been oversold and look for something else quick smart(well probably in the new year now)

Any suggestions/experiences welcome.

[shouldbworking]

What could you do to improve the company? develop that idea and discuss it with the boss.

[The Moose]

Digital marketing is surely pretty endless in scope, and I assume it's vague enough that you can come up with ways you can expand and refine their digital marketing strategy further? Take these ideas to your boss and see where you can take them.

[4x4Tyke]

shouldbworking said:

What could you do to improve the company? develop that idea and discuss it with the boss.

This, treat it as an opportunity, looks like you have plenty of scope.

Does an existing digital marketing strategy exist? If it does exists the go from there, if not, then produce one based on the overall business strategy.

If they don't know what he did how do you know it was little and not the ignorance of others? Could it be that he was beavering away and not getting recognised? Could it be they don't really understand it. Educating the business at large might well be necessary and reporting your successes.

What is your experience? Digital marketing, marketing in general, technical, none? It is hard to make any concrete recommendations when we don't know the current details or your level of experience.

Do you have a budget?
What existing tools do you have available?
Are you digital marketing for a website or other channels?
What is their existing approach, organic website SEO or Adwords? Discuss with the technical/development team.
Are Analytics used?
Do they have a social media presence and daily content?
Are they doing continuous engagement, follow up emails and surveys, etc.

You would probably get better help in Business or CG&S than here.

Edited by 4x4Tyke on Friday 15th December 14:31

[Yipper]

Use the slack time to improve yourself, not the company. Ask if they will fund a part-time digital marketing degree or professional industry quali such as CIM, or whatever. Of course, tell the boss you want to do it to bring more skills to the company, increase their RoI, etc. etc.

[Shuvi McTupya]

Yipper said:

Use the slack time to improve yourself, not the company. Ask if they will fund a part-time digital marketing degree or professional industry quali such as CIM, or whatever. Of course, tell the boss you want to do it to bring more skills to the company, increase their RoI, etc. etc.

If they say yes, tell them you will be working from home a lot too, but will probably check your emails atleast once a month should they need to get in touch.

[Ninja59]

I have been in my current technically marketing position, but mostly digital for the last 10 months, every day is busy.

2 months in hopefully you should have been able to get a picture of the current website position and how it can progress to be even stronger, competitor analysis, email marketing campaigns and social media.

In my position I wondered what the f*ck the person I replaced did all day as on my first day I virtually walked in and said it is all ste. Which now explains why we have doubled the number of visitors and conversions per month, 7 times as many keywords (leading to 4 times as many organic visitors), introduced PPC, Email campaigns are effective (but now need extending to automated flows) and revitalised the SM (although I do struggle to get FB to properly convert consistently). And is now why I have literally not long requested spending even more on our website to push it further.

[cat with a hat]

8-P said:

So to cut a long story short, a few months back I was at the point of posting "how am I ever going to get out of my job" post, when something new landed on my lap and I took it.

In a nutshell I working in digital marketing and a job came up 5 mins from home, good size company, nice environment, good money, seemed perfect.

Im nealy 2 months in and Im wondering what my predecessor did all day, the people around me dont know either. I suspect the answer is not a lot.

Ive had some tasks to do, Ive done them and Im at the point where Im looking around for things to fill my time with.

So what do I do?

Tell my boss straight out, keep looking and just be as productive as I can, after all it isnt my fault or face up to the fact Ive been oversold and look for something else quick smart(well probably in the new year now)

Any suggestions/experiences welcome.

It sounds like you're in a role that requires you to be proactive. Sitting and waiting for someone to ask you to do something is quite literally a waste of time.

I assume your manager is also incapable?

[8-P]

Thanks for all the comments, in most cases!

Its not a straightforward situation and Im still learning how things work but Im basically in an agency, but all the customers are internal(1 big company, lots of small ones). To make things more difficult, weirdly enough one of the small companies employed a junior marketing exec at the same time I joined. Hes in another building, and if I thought I was short of stuff to do, he must be going insane. This means one project less to do than I was expecting which is a shame and one quite large Adwords account Ill have less to do with than Id like.

The big brand is oddly low priority and Im left working on a startup who are miles away. To make things worse the owner is a proper programing genius but is meant to be growing his business not developing the website.

Dont get me wrong I have some things to do, but you cant play in an Adwords account all day. Ive gone from very hands on, to dont even have a backend login. So Ive ended up writing reports/strategy on what needs to happen to grow his business online, all I can do. Once this has been ok's, Ill have a bit more on but we have a team of graphics guys, social media, programmers etc - All areas I used toget involved with when needed but not now!

I like working and having lots to do, I might regret saying that but Im struggling to see how Im going to get this job to that point.