Digital marketing : The disruptive journey
Q . How were you able to identify and capitalise on the opportunities before the advent of digital marketing ? I started my business back in 1994 . I was a vet in those days . I had a veterinary practice in the UK and we used to do newspaper ads and magazine ads and that was it . Then Google came along . I could see that the world was going to change and I remember saying to my business partner , “ You know people are going to buy stuff online ,” and he went , “ Nah !” and I went , “ No , really it ’ s going to be big .”
So what I did in 2000 was build my first website using a really old program called FrontPage . That was what is was in those days . I built this website and it worked ! The three or four people who were online every week , which wasn ’ t many , but those who were , they found my veterinary practice and they came to me and they told me they had seen my website and I said to myself , “ Ah ! There ’ s something here .” So basically it was a case of seeing it and jumping on it . Which I guess is what you do in business .
Q . What are the current challenges facing the field of digital marketing ? Sometimes it ’ s just the volume of stuff that ’ s coming at you . That ’ s a bit of a challenge , just keeping up with the demand , but that ’ s a nice problem to have . There are still a lot of dinosaur businesses , there are still so many old stuck-in-the-mud businesses who just don ’ t understand how digital marketing works and that ’ s a bit of a challenge to persuade them to move and do something or they ’ ll lose their business .
Q . “ Traded my stethoscope for a mouse …” could you tell us a bit about that journey ? It allowed me to stretch my creative muscle and I really enjoyed that . And then I built a few more websites and got a really good hang of SEO ( search engine optimisation ) and that was a big thing , handling globally successful websites . Then I realised I was actually enjoying this more than my day job . There was so much opportunity and I was
4 AGSM
Interview by Divya Mathai ( MBA cohort 2017 )
Deb Jeffreys , founder and CEO of Brilliant Blue , traded her career as a Veterinary Surgeon to build her first website in 2000 . Her company speacialises in deliverling complete digital marketing solutions to small and medium businesses – an end to end service . When she is not working she spends many happy hours with her partner and 4 daughters . Caring for herself through yoga , and mindfulness is very important .
a parent . Still , a parent never stops . I just realised then that there ’ s a career here that I can make that is much more flexible around my family . So I finally decided to sell my veterinary practice and sell my house in the UK and move to Australia . And this was pre-GFC , so we were able to make a little bit on that and be in a position to re-invent ourselves . I ’ ve got all this knowledge , I can be a good parent and I can start building the next career . People today don ’ t just have one career , that ’ s life , you move along . I started freelancing initially and actually there ’ s a good story in that , because the first person to give me my first gig is now my business partner . So what happened was we grew his business to such a level through digital marketing and then eventually sold it last year using a website specifically built to sell the business and now he ’ s a partner in the business .
Q . What is the secret to a successful online marketing campaign ? It is so many things , but I will tell you some of the big errors people make .
First of all , they make it all about them , but it is not all about you , it ’ s about what you can do for the person out there . The first thing you ’ ve got to be able to do is identify the target market out there – who you are going for , what they actually want , and what is the problem you are fixing for them . And once you are there , you start to articulate the content around these questions and you design the website or social media platform to fit that .
Photo Credit : Provided by author