Career Growth Advice from Pam Didner, Tech Marketing Leader | Career Tips for Women in Tech Marketing

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 17
Featuring Pam Didner

Episode Title: #17 Career Podcast Featuring Pam Didner a Seasoned Marketing Expert – Women in Business

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Pam Didner



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. I am super excited about today's show. My guest is Pam Didner. Pam is a content marketing leader, author, and speaker. Her background is deeply rooted in marketing, previously working at Intel as global integrated marketing strategists where she led their product launches and worldwide marketing campaigns. Today, she travels all over the globe, educating organizations on ways to better market and increase sales. She's written three top selling books, Effective Sales Enablement, Global Content Marketing, and the Modern AI Marketer. Pam, thank you so much for being here.

Pam Didner (Guest): Yay. Thank you so much for inviting me, Mary.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I love it. I love it. And so today's topic, I am passionate about. I love campaigns, content strategy, and I could talk to you about this all day long. So let's just dive in with my first question. What is it about marketing that you love?

Pam Didner: I think the one I like the most is doing messaging and also value proposition. I know that sounds so boring, right? Who wants to do that kind of stuff? Everybody was like, why don't you just pick creative? That's actually more fun. And the thing I like the most is actually probably the foundation of the marketing is you need to get your value proposition. You need to get your messaging right. And from my perspective, if you cannot get that part of it right, then nothing else matters. And because the copy depends on it. And the creative development depends on it. You know, every aspect of a marketing outreach depends on your value propositions and also your messaging. And from my perspective, to get that one right is very, very critical. But what I also have discovered that not many companies spend a lot of time on the messaging framework and also the value proposition. They tend to spend more time on the creative because that's something that we like to do. And we like to evaluate. But from my perspective, nowadays, a lot, many companies offer similar products. And the way that you actually get yourself differentiate is actually spend some time to understand what is your unique value proposition? What can you say, either by salespeople or the marketing people that it's very different and unique about your product. And I think spending time on that is very critical.

Mary Killelea: Well, it is critical. And it's challenging because most of the time you have to do it in big organizations. And you have many, many different stakeholders who have many, many different agendas that they're trying to get across in this micro messaging.

Pam Didner: I know. I totally understand. I mean, you and I both work in a big company. So we kind of understand, it's kind of difficult. I do agree with you on the smaller company or the growing company or your product is not sophisticated and not sophisticated. That's just that's the wrong word. It's not complex or complicated. And I think the value proposition is probably easy to define. And you are totally right in the big organization. It tends, usually there are many cooks in the kitchen, and the many people needs to approve that. And that's substantially difficult in terms of getting your messaging to the point that if you have a specific vision that you want to you want to talk about, you want to convey, it's very hard to get like many people to agree. In a lot of situations like that in the past, what we have done, or what I had done is actually working with a marketing research team. And then we do, sometimes depending on the scale, smaller scale of focus group testing, or AB testing to actually test what actually works and use the data to convince the internal stakeholders, that certain messaging actually works. I mean, that's not necessarily the case. I wouldn't say that I won every single battle, you know, even with that research. But a lot of time you can have that information and have a conversation, if nothing else productive conversation with the internal stakeholders and to get their approvals.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, no, that's great information. So tell us how you got started on this journey.

Pam Didner: Marketing or?

Mary Killelea: Yes, well, and how you guys started marketing and then how you ended up like now traveling the world talking to people about, you know, their organizations, and you know, doing marketing and sales for them.

Pam Didner: So yeah, interesting enough, I was a CPA. I didn't know that really. Yeah, I actually passed the CPA exam, and I was a corporate auditory for KPNG PMOWIC actually for two and a half years. And I found that that's actually not my calling. I was like, Oh, you know what, that's enough. I don't think I can deal with numbers anymore. And then to be honest with you, I didn't know what I wanted to be or what I want to do when I when I grow up. And I know that is not something about finance and accounting, even though I did that. And I started and I that's that was my measure when I major when I was in college. So I moved to training, actually. So I was doing training for a consulting firm. And I also did a lot of project management. I like that part of it because it's very much operations. And I always consider myself operations type of person, to be honest.

And then I joined Intel about 19 years ago. And Intel at that time, actually encouraged people to move around. And I was in on the manufacturing floor for several years, I was doing product marketing, I was doing project management, I was doing operations, I was moving around. And marketing was never part of my career development. I don't even consider myself a good marketer. And I was like –

Mary Killelea: Come on, come on.

Pam Didner: You see, I'm not kidding. So it's like, the marketing is really a twist of fate for me. And a manager, I have worked for a long period of time, and he moved to managing a massive event called Intel Developer Forum. And that was actually a very, very big event, I would say 10-15 years ago, and eventually expanded to, like, nine role shows, and then one master flagship event. And they need somebody to actually do the operation side of it. And then Rob basically said, Do you want to do that? I was like, Yeah, sure, no problem. I can do that. So I started doing the event operations. And then again, twist of fate, seriously twist of fate. And also working at big corporation, there's multiple different reorgs, right. So after IDF, I somehow got reorg into kind of like a marketing strategy team, the VP of the marketing at that time basically said, you had done even marketing for about four years, what do you want to do next? I was like, I don't know, you know, when you're only marketing organization, I'm not so sure. And I'm not kidding. Seriously, I was kind of like a dumbass.

Anyway, and then Nancy was like, Hey, are you interested doing kind of like enterprise and the B2B strategy? And I was like, really marketing strategy? I'm like, ops girl, like through and through. And so the initial first year, the first year doing the marketing strategy, I was responsible, literally, global go to market plan, the enterprise part of it for Intel. My god, I was struggling the first year. And, but after that ramp, and then I started getting very, I got challenged. Seriously, working in big corporation, if you don't have, if you don't know what you're doing, you get challenged all the time. My god, the first year I got challenged for my presentation, my global go to market plan, every single slide got challenged. That was hard.

Mary Killelea: I know, it's unnerving.

Pam Didner: Yes. And then, but I slowly I learned my ropes, and I got to know exactly what needs to be done, and what are some of the strategic elements that needs to be included as a part of go to market plan. I also have a lot of mentors that actually helped me out along the way. And so to make that transition a whole lot easier, but it still was very difficult. And then ultimately, I end up doing the global go to market plan for about six or seven years. And working very closely with the product team, and dragging in direct Salesforce, and various marketing function from pay media, social media, messaging, events, because all those elements needs to be incorporated into the global go to market plan that so in a way that you can provide guidance to geographies. So, it was a great experience. And that somehow led to the inception of my first book, because I was in a global role for a long period of time. And Intel was a global company, I end up working with… I was headquarters, and I working very closely with geographies. And we have a specific process that we follow over a period of time in terms of how that the corporate and the geographies work together. And, and I created my own framework, or crystallize a certain concept. And I use that to write my first book, which is How to Scale Content Across Regions. So that's my journey. It's like twist of fate, seriously.

Mary Killelea: Well, and I love it. I think it's great. And I do know that Intel encourages people to do different roles. And at first, looking on the outside, I always thought that is the bizarre thing I've ever, ever thought. But once you get in there, and you see the value of understanding all the different roles and responsibilities and how they work together and what the needs are, it makes a lot of sense.

Pam Didner: Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: And it really makes well rounded employees, which I think is great.

Pam Didner: You know, I was able to actually stand on my own feet, especially in the past six years, and working with other enterprise companies that have a lot to do with that experience at Intel. Because I have worked multiple different jobs. So, I can actually think very holistically. I've done operations, I've done manufacturing, I've done project management, and I have done product developments, and on top of it marketing, and then supporting sales, get myself yelled at multiple times in the past. Supporting sales is really not like, I would say a very pleasant job. But I enjoyed it so much because I learned a lot, actually, on the sales side. And that also helped me to write the second book. Anyway, so that's that.

Mary Killelea: And the second book is Effective Sales Enablement, right?

Pam Didner: Yes, exactly. It's really how to support and how to enable sales as a marketer. You know, as a B2B marketers, a lot of time we have to quantify our ROI, and also our contribution to sales, not just to the brand, but in the campaigns. It's basically, can you quantify your impact to sales? So, I had a chance and opportunities actually working with the direct sales force, and also working very closely with Intel's co-marketing team. Intel has a huge co-marketing team that actually co-market with many key accounts, right? You're probably aware of it. HP, Amazon, and everybody else.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. So I think one thing that, while I heard you saying all those various roles, is you never seemed intimidated or afraid of the new roles that were brought to you, that you were really just eager to embrace them, or you said, sure, I'll do it. And then you figured out a way to do it. What do you think is ingrained in you that makes you do that?

Pam Didner: When I was working in the corporate world, and a lot of time, I happen to work with many great managers, I have to tell you, Mary, I've been very, very lucky. And a lot of time, the managers, they challenge you, right? They basically said, hey, you have done this, do you want to take on additional scope? Or hey, you have done this, do you want to take on a different job? And for a long time, I kind of just feel like, oh, you know what, let me just be a team player. And obviously, the team needed some sort of support over there, and we have a gap, let me just go there and figure it out. And you are totally right, I did not know marketing. When I started, swear to God, the first question I asked, I mean, I went to a meeting, they kept talking about copy, copy, copy, you know, the copy is not great. And I walk out of the meeting, and I asked one person who is like a creative director, and I said, what is copy? And he looked at me, and he almost passed out. He's like, you are doing the strategy for us, and you are asking me what copy is? Oh my God, we are doomed. This whole year, it's like, we are like, all right, this girl just doesn't know jack shit. Anyway, I apologize, I curse. And I look at his face, I say, oh my God, I have to get myself ramped very quickly. And to answer your question, I think I just find a way to embrace it. And kind of like, I was not afraid, because I know within that environment, I can find help. Does that make sense? It's different than like, I'm working for myself right now. Like, if I don't know anything, I was like, oh my God, what should I do? Where can I get help? But in the corporate environment, one of the biggest advantage is if you are, if you've been with that company long enough, you know where to go to ask for help. Right? So I know that I was not alone. So I was not afraid per se. It's just a matter of like, how fast can I ramp?

Mary Killelea: Right. That's great. And I think it's key to, to be willing to ask and not be afraid to not have the answers. So many people think, oh God, I can't ask that. I'm already supposed to know that. You know, you just have to raise your hand and say, I don't know.

Pam Didner: Yeah. I ask a lot of many dumb questions.

Mary Killelea: No, never a dumb question. You know that. So, marketing has changed so much over the last decade and continuously changing. You’ve got rapid growth of technology, you've got AI. What are your thoughts on how marketing has changed over the last 10 years, where it is today and where you see it going?

Pam Didner: I think the biggest part, and let me just explain that in a way that maybe your listeners are familiar with for a long time, we have what we call a traditional marketing and digital marketing. Right. And I would say that I was a traditional marketer. So, when I started like print, like a pay media is still a big thing. And they are not integrated print is print payment. Yeah. It's pay media. Yes, you can do pay print, but still they are not necessary. You don't treat them the same. You still say print. And then you say, TV commercial as a separate media channel. But I think what has changed is technology plays a critical role for integration. And you can say that about, you know, Amazon bookstore and also bonds and noble, right? Bonds and noble was the traditional bookstore, right? So when they thinking about the book selling, they are not necessarily thinking about how technology can help them or enable them. But when Amazon starts selling books, they were thinking about, okay, how can I deliver the books as fast as I can? How can I recommend the books quickly to the person who just purchased a book similar to that? Does that make sense? So they were thinking in terms of using technology to accelerate their sales, right?

But the traditional bookstore, they didn't think that way. And I want to say the same analogy applies to marketers, right? For the traditional marketer, we don't think technology first. And I'm not saying technology strategy. That's not my point. Okay. We don't think about how to use technology to change something, to accelerate something, to improve something. Because we think about print, we still thinking about, okay, what's the creative? What's the copy? What's the layout? Right. But on the digital marketing front, what you need to think about is how technology needs to be integrated so that print ad can also apply to a digital or multiple channels simultaneously. And that's what I feel that in the past probably seven or eight years, especially, after I left Intel, the technology plays even more critical role. And what I have learned, working for myself, to be honest with you, is to accelerate that digital ramping and digital learning. Everything I do has to be digital. But at the same time, how can technology in the backend is integrated? And I don't have IT person to help me out. And a lot of that I have to figure it out myself. And that was a painful journey. We'll talk about it over a drink one day.

Mary Killelea: So where do you think it's going from here? I mean, I know you just wrote the book on the Modern AI Marketer. So how does artificial intelligence come into marketing?

Pam Didner: Yeah. So the next stage or the next phase, and I'm not pretending I have answer. I don't. And I'm not pretending I'm an oracle. I'm not. The thing I can see is the technology plays a critical role now is going to be even more important in the future. That has a lot to do with the data we've generated, like how much data we generate every single day, every single second. Like literally you click like and shares on your Facebook, on LinkedIn. That piece of data will give marketers or the advertiser a clue what you like. So, like if I click over 100 likes today, and I click on over 200 shares tomorrow or next two weeks, all that data has been generated. But what can marketers do to analyze that data to better understand Pam? So if I click on that, just because I like it at that moment, or do I click on that with the intent to purchase in the future? If I click on that, is that something I'm interested in? So, because there is a lot of factors that play into it, and so much data has been generated just about Pam. I'm talking one person. I'm not talking 7 billion people on the planet. That to analyze that data, it has to come from machine. I mean, humans can do some work, but it has to be the machine take the first step. And maybe we can feed into our criteria to do it. We can build a model to it, but the machine will need to do that analysis first. So that's where artificial intelligence will come into play. That's because we have so much data and the humans will be overwhelmed, but we still need to analyze the data to understand our audience much better. And I think, moving forward, the AI will be embedded. Like the selection algorithm is the algorithms that will be embedded into many marketing platforms that we will be using.

Mary Killelea: And that'll equal more personalized marketing.

Pam Didner: Yes. Let's assume that AI is doing the right way to personalize. And then I'm like, oh, Pam just clicked on the mail, sure, about a 13-year-old. All right, maybe she is going to someone else's birthday, or there will be some assumption that AI will need to make. And that's just the personalization is great, but I think that assumption needs to, in terms of how the algorithm needs to be written, or the codes needs to be written, that one needs to come from human.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. No, that's fascinating. And we could talk all day long about that and what can of worms that opens up.

Pam Didner: I know.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. Okay. So I'm curious, because someday I want to write my own book. I'm not sure, you know, what it is.

Pam Didner: Yay! Go for it. Make it 2021. The second half resolution.

Mary Killelea: So take me through a book creation process. Do you go somewhere quiet? How do you get the idea? Like, do you start it? Tell me what it goes on.

Pam Didner: All right. I drink a lot. I'm kidding. All right. Okay. Actually, I'm always thinking, this is like hashtag, always thinking. All right. And I always thinking like, okay, what are some of the topics I can write? And that has a lot to do with, I don't follow like, oh, what is the popular topics out there? Like, oh, social media, oh, AI. I try to also look at myself and try to understand what my strength and also skill sets and the expertise are. And then I want to write a topic that I can talk about. So, a lot of people want to write like a popular topic, great. That's very good. Good for them. And that's one approach, right? And the approach I decided to take is what topic that I can talk about. So, I started from that. Okay. So then I started thinking it is like, is there's a gap, right? Is there's like a gap I can fulfill within the marketing or B2B marketing area. And what I have noticed at that time is there are many content marketing books, but they weren't not a single book about global content marketing, how to scale content across region.

So, I wrote a book proposal to actually a publisher. And I said, hey, there's many content marketing books, but there's no book about global content marketing. So what do you think? So obviously they want to also have a categories. For that specific category, they want to have a series of books that serve different needs within that specific field, for example, content marketing. So I presented, but it's a niche. What I have come to realize is that's also a viewing narrow niche. So, if you want to write a book, my advice to you is not just like figuring out, figuring out why your expertise, but also find a gap that's not served in the market. But balance is don't find a very small niche. Right. So initially when I started, eventually that opened up for many, many doors for me. But what I have learned over time is the global content marketing, that was such a niche and only apply to enterprise companies more than not SMB, not startups. So when you are looking for a book proposal or book topic, in addition to evaluating what you can write and also find a niche that's somehow not too big and not too narrow. Okay. So that kind of led to my second book. And I want to write something in terms of how to better support sales team.

From my perspective, I also feel that's a gap. There's not many books out there to actually tell marketers how to better support sales team. And I debated, to be honest with you, about what that term should be because in the industry definition of a sales enablement is really sales onboarding, sales training. But the way I defined it is how we support sales as a marketer, how we enable sales. But there's no like one consolidated definition about sales enablement. So I use that because I feel that's a category that has been established. And then for AI is literally, it's a marketing technology and a mod tag that I feel that, again, nobody is writing like AI as a marketer. And I feel that's something I want to address. So I'm always coming from the perspective if there's a gap out there, and can my knowledge and expertise fulfill that gap? So that's one. And to determine the topics.

And then the second thing is write a book proposal, and I send it to multiple different publishers, and then and check if they are interested or not. And then if they are, then we started having conversation. And then usually, the whole writing time, it's about six to nine months. So, you really have to buckle down doing your work. And at the same time, you have to buckle down and write that book. And in a way, I told everybody is like you have a two full time jobs. You do. So, you do your full time jobs during the daytime. And then after dinner, guess what, instead of watching Netflix, you just have to sit down and write a damn book. And then you just have to do that. And that's usually take about six to nine months. And after that, enjoying that whole time, if you work with a publisher, and you can send them, depending on how you work with them, sometimes they, they say, okay, send us a final version when you are ready. But I have the way I work with my publisher is I sent like each chapter, you know, to them. So I have a framework that's already been built. So, they kind of know they approve my framework. And they know like table the tape the table of contents. So they just I send the chapters to them. But before I send a chapter to them, I revise I really I rewrote every single chapter before I send it to them, probably nine to 10 times.

Mary Killelea: Wow.

Pam Didner: When I send it to them, it's pretty button up. That means the edit is very less. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. I don't write like draft and send it when I send it is literally from my perspective is like 80%. So there's a lot of going back and forth, obviously. And then they usually have a deadline. Like they said, okay, you know what, you're going to start writing, I want the final final draft from you at this date. And then, of course, like eight weeks before that you start losing your hair. You're not sleeping well, and you are taking sleeping pills. And then you're drinking a lot as well. You know, that stuff. I'm kidding. Every time I say that everybody was I do drink a lot of it.

Mary Killelea: So the books, so are the books for products and revenue or the books for credibility, or both or they the entry point into a sales pitch to get you the account?

Pam Didner: I would say in general for many B2B marketers or the B2B marketing consult, any consultants, the book is what I call one pound resume. It's basically that it's show that you know this subject very well. Right, right. Like you know it so well, you are able to write 50,000 words. So in general, on the B2B side of things, I mean, very, very few, like I would say b2b marketing books like selling like, you know, hundreds of thousands, like 10,000 or 15,000. In general, if you sell thousands of like a B2B marketing books, that's pretty good. But of course, the marketing part of it is actually very, very important. And to get the words out there and then actually get people to notice that. And then so there's a lot of promotion to it. But in general, when people write a book, majority of the authors use consulting business, then the book is not the primary income, if you will. It's not like writing. How should I say it?

Mary Killelea: Like a nonfiction or something?

Pam Didner: Yeah. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: Okay. All right, we're switching and it'll go on towards social media now. So social media, so challenging to keep up with the trends, to keep with up with all the different platforms that are available today. For our listeners, do you feel it's better to hone in on one or two channels, or do you think it's better to kind of get your word out and market on many channels?

Pam Didner: All right. So to answer that question, I want everybody to understand it depends on your budget. It also depends on your strategy. Okay. Mostly your budget. If you have small budget, my take on this is honing to one or two channels. But if you have small budget, but you are willing to put into a lot of hours, then of course, you focus on more channels, because you don't know where your customers will come from. Does that make sense? Yeah. So yeah, usually two schools. And they are one school, basically say you're honing to one or two, you're doing incredibly well. And that's one channel you focus on. Like there's a lot of YouTube celebrities. Okay. They only focus on YouTube channel. They really do any promotions on Twitter or anywhere else. They really, really focus on YouTube channel. That's because they have subscribers that was already built into it. And so, you need to determine what works for you. I don't have an answer for it. I'm not going to, I'm not going to provide you a recommendation because I don't know your business. So my take on this is you have to determine what works for you.

I have a friend and he only writes blogs. He knows that his blogs gets attention and he doesn't like to do video. He doesn't like to do podcasts, even though those are very popular medium out there. He only focus on blog. That's it. Okay. So, I want to say is if you hone into one or two channels, they are success case studies out there and you have to determine what actually works for you. For me specifically, I try all the channels and they are reasons behind it. And I won't tell you why Mary. So, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on YouTube. I'm on Instagrams, on Pinterest. I'm like on Facebook, not just a Facebook business page. I have Facebook community as well. Mary join my Facebook community, please.

Mary Killelea: I will. And then we're connected on LinkedIn, Twitter.

Pam Didner: Yeah. And, and so I have Twitter. So if you think about it, I have like six or seven channels out there. And I also write my blog post, right? The reason I do all that is because I am a marketer. If I'm going to tell my clients, like, okay, I want to give some feedback and insight in terms of their podcast or their YouTube channels or their video scripts, or their podcast grip. I want to make sure that I actually had done it. That makes sense?

Mary Killelea: Yeah, totally.

Pam Didner: So I want, and I come to realize it was a painful lesson for me to learn as well. Like the video script, podcast grip and the blog, the writing styles and the opening and the endings are very different, even for the same topic, right? Like the same topic, like all the thing you translate that or convert into a podcast or to a video, they are very, very different type of writing. So, when I did the, when I trying to make the transition, I tested the podcast out initially. I want to tell you that my first, okay, my first 50 episodes, I sucked. I have to tell you, I sucked. Guys, if you really want to and see how bad I was, go listen to my episode one. You're going to laugh so hard. Okay. Long story short. And that's because I write my podcast script just like the way I write my blog post. That was dumb. I was just like, I write it and I just like, I was out repurposing content. No, no. It took me like 50 episodes to figure out, you know what, I need to write a little bit differently.

And then when I crossed to creating the video myself, and then again, I kind of went through that kind of I learned from my podcast and I was like, okay, I need to write my video a little bit differently than the podcast, you know? So I come to realize for me, like to actually have multiple channels, and it's probably on surface look like, no, I'm very, very like broad, but my objectives is actually to learn how each channel works. Does that make sense?

Mary Killelea: Yeah. Totally.

Pam Didner: So I, from that, from that objective, I try many things, but if I, if I could just focus on one or two, I would literally focus on blog and the podcast because I think that's the two I really enjoy the most. But unfortunately, I have to understand many channels. Also, I have to understand the content production side of things. So I try many things and just trying to get myself well rounded and educated.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. I know that's awesome. And it's so time consuming. So, I don't know.

Pam Didner: Talk to me about that. Man, so much work. People don't understand that digital marketing is so much work.

Mary Killelea: It really is. It totally is. And one of the biggest challenges with marketing, digital marketing, all marketing really is showing ROI. What's the advice? What's the secret sauce? What's your recommendation for showing ROI on marketing?

Pam Didner: Okay. So the most important things is you have to determine your KPI, right? What's your key performance indicator? How are you going to measure the success of your marketing campaigns? That's one thing you have to decide. Nobody can tell you how you're going to measure your own success. You are the one who has to make that decision. Is it based on number of leads? Is it based on how many views? Is it based on how many hot leads that you pass to sales team? Whatever that is, you have to decide what that is. Okay.

Then the second thing from what I have learned working for myself is your back end needs to be integrated. Whatever you decide your measurement is, you need to make sure you have a process and you also need to make sure you have like the tools and technology that's built up to actually track that. So initially I was like, oh, you know what? I want to increase leads by 50% or I want to increase my pipeline. But you know what? I did not really have the process, it was pretty fragmented. It was very hard for me to track. So whatever you decide to do, if you want to quantify your ROI, set up your goal, whatever your goals are. And then second thing is set up a process to actually be able to monitor and track that goal. And by the way, those two are not easy things to do. For me, I change my KPI every single year. That's because I have grown or my tools have grown or my value proposition has grown or my business model has changed. So in the past six years, every single year, my KPI is different. And the people who were supporting me was like, Pam, I don't understand. I was like, you know what? Let me explain to you why. That's because I'm still growing. I'm still morphing. I offer different services and that's why my KPI needs to change on regular basis, annual basis, if you will.

Mary Killelea: God, I'm having fun talking to you. Okay. So I'm thinking of my audience and their career minded, say they're interested in marketing, but there's field marketing, channel marketing, partner marketing, outbound global campaigns, always on direct marketing, account-based marketing, product marketing. What should someone do if they're young looking to go into marketing? Be well diversified? Try to hone in on one? Not everyone's going to have the benefit of working for a big organization and being able to do rotations. So, from a strategic mindset, from a career, what would you recommend?

Pam Didner: If you are young and beautiful, okay.

Mary Killelea: Keyword young.

Pam Didner: Yeah, the key word is young. Young and ambitious. How does that sound? Okay, if you are young and you are just tapping into this field specifically, either by accident or by your passion or by your study, I would suggest that you try as many fields as possible. Because like now I mentor many young and seasoned marketing professionals. And for young, seriously, I call them aspiring. Marketing professionals, even I explain very clearly, at least from my perspective, very clearly what co-marketing is, what direct marketing is, what indirect sales force is, what direct sales force is. They don't understand. Just like when somebody explained that to me the first day I started the marketing job, they'll explain that to me. I was like, huh? I will try to pretend I understand, but I seriously don't. So my recommendation for just whatever job you are at, take on as many responsibilities as possible. If you work for a small company, the rotation itself is you wear multiple hats. If the company needs to email marketing support, well, go make that happen. If the company needs somebody supporting sales, well, go make that happen. Try it. Once you start trying different things, you will start realizing what you like to do and what you don't like to do. So my take on this is just try different things. And then that's probably going to be the case in the first five or six years when you started doing the marketing jobs.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. I mean, for me, I had my business first and did that for 16 years, and then I went to go work for Corporate America. I think my business would have flourished so much more had I gone to Corporate America, got my education first on all-

Pam Didner: I actually agree with that.

Mary Killelea: And then go start my own business. I think I could have ramped so much quicker.

Pam Didner: So much faster.

Mary Killelea: Oh my God. Yeah.

PD: Yeah. Actually, Mary, to some extent, I agree with that assessment. I mean, if they are listeners, you guys are on the agency side, you learn so much on the agency side as well. But I always encourage people on the agency side, actually crossed, and go to the corporate side and work in the enterprise actually for several years because it's a completely different world. I learned so much on the enterprise side, to be honest with you, even though I was never on the agency side. But if you think about it, I'm an agency anyway. But the reason I can still work with the enterprise clients is because I know them so well. I was in that side for 20 years. Global enterprise, they are very similar. When you work for Intel, when you talk to Cisco, HP, Dell, IBM, you know what? Very similar type of organizational structure, and they talk very similarly. And then you can carry that conversation very quickly because you were actually in the corporate side for a long time.

Mary Killelea: Totally agree. So why did you leave corporate America?

Pam Didner: I love Intel with passion. And I was there for 19 years and had a great time. And I think it has a lot to do with age. I call it midlife crisis. I didn't have a fair, I didn't buy a red car. It's more kind of like, your heart, it's just, you changed. That's the only thing I'm saying. Right? It's like, after like 19 years, I look at myself in the mirror every day when I was working in a big corporation. So I don't think it's that fun anymore. It's like you're looking at yourself and you just feel like, okay, this is not what I'm enjoying anymore. And I want to do something different. And I think at a time, my husband was like, so does that mean like you don't want to work Intel? And I was like, it's well, what about HP? What about Dell? What about IBM? I was like, that sounds great. But is that same shit different days?

But anyway, long story short, I gave a lot of thoughts. I didn't leave right away. And when I had thought about I need to do something different until I pull the trigger, that was about three years. And I gave a lot of thoughts in terms of what I want to do next. And I know for sure, I'm not going to another corporation. If I do want to go to another corporation, I might as well just stay where I was because it's not like I was pushed out. It's not like I was not having a good time. I think I did pretty well. I was well respected. I just want to do something different. And I did not know what that is. And also, it's to the point I feel like, hey, maybe I should do something for myself. I always want to write a book. I always want to share some of my learning. And maybe I'll do that. And that's how everything got started. And it was very hard to be honest with you, Mary. I mean, you were on the other side for 16 years. So it's actually pretty hard. And I worked nonstop 24/7 in the past six years, I have to tell. And I have people come to me and say, I want to do what you do. I was like, I don't. It's too much work.

Mary Killelea: And I thoroughly admit that. I think when I had my own business, I worked harder than I've ever worked in my life.

Pam Didner: Yeah, it is. And I was like, you know what, perception is not reality. I do travel, I did travel around the world. I loved it. And I speak in multiple different countries. I loved it. I do a lot of training. I loved it. There's a lot of, and I do have the freedom. Okay, but at the same time, you always worry about your pipelines, you always worry about your business, you always worry about growth, you always worry about, okay, how can I, if you have IT challenges, how can I solve that problem? So there's always something.

Mary Killelea: But one good thing I think is, while I am in corporate America, I don't feel that golden handcuff because I know I can make it on my own because I've made it on my own. So, there's that different mentality. Some people can't see themselves outside of that.

Pam Didner: Yeah.

Mary Killelea: And so I kind of feel bad for people who can't see themselves out of a world where they've spent 25 years or 20 years. It's like, there's just so much, but you know, I mean, I could be a florist tomorrow and think that would be an amazing job. That'll be okay. Yeah.

Pam Didner: Yeah. Yeah. So it took me a while. I mean, when I left, I was in corporate for 19 years, right? I mean, if you think about it, it was like, okay, so it was pretty comfortable there. And now all of a sudden I'm going to jump off the cliff without parachute. Oh my God. It was scary. And I always had self-doubt the first two years. I always feel like, you know what, there's no way I can make it. There's no way I can make it. There's no way I can make it. It's like literally into probably the fourth or fifth years. And I look at myself one day, I was like, you know what, you'll be okay, Pam. You'll be okay. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: So how'd you tell yourself when you heard that self-doubt in your head? How did you tell yourself buck up and keep doing it?

Pam Didner: My husband was like, do you want to go back to corporate? I was like, not really. Okay. Then buckle down and do whatever you have to do. Okay. Tears in my eyes, but I'm still doing this stuff. You know how it is.

Mary Killelea: So, okay. So just a couple more questions. What or who has been your biggest inspiration?

Pam Didner: Actually, there's one, David Ogilvie, you know, who actually founded the Ogilvie Agency. And I read his book and he was a copywriter and he was a great copywriter. And being a copywriter and be able to build a business like that way back then, I think that was pretty impressive. And I wrote his book and he writes very, very well. I think I have this affinity to actually admire people that can write very well. And he's the one that, not that I don't think I will ever be to achieve that kind of caliber, but I really, really enjoy reading his books and also like in terms of what he has done. And a lot of things that he was talking about, even way back then is he has data to support. Like when he writes copy, it's not just writing copy for the sake of writing copy, right? And that he actually do focus group testing. He has research to support what words actually will resonate. And everything that he does actually is really have a direct ties with the sales. And I like that a lot.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. So what does to be bolder mean to you?

Pam Didner: Try something or do something that you have never done before. And that doesn't mean for me, it's not like, Oh, you know, I go jump off the cliff. That's not what I'm talking about. It's really kind of expand my skillset and always trying to learn something and then test something like that I have never done before. Like before, I did not know anything about CIM. My job did not require me to do that. Then I bought Salesforce, I learned and I tried to connect the marketing automation tool to the CIM. And I really tried to learn that. So for me, it's the continuous learning. It's like, try to do something that you have never done before. I mean, job wise.

Mary Killelea: So yeah, I love it. What's next for Pam, where do you see yourself in five years?

Pam Didner: Well, next for me gets to COVID-19 in one piece.

Mary Killelea: I know, gosh. Everyone.

Pam Didner: Oh my God. You know, I would like to write probably a couple more books, to be honest with you. And then I don't know what the topics I want to write just yet. And I want to structure. I think five years from now, yeah, increase revenues, grow my companies. Actually not. What I really want to do is I want to structure like some of my learning in the past six years. And then how I made that transition from like traditional marketer to like a full digital marketers. I kind of want to structure that learning and structure that knowledge. And then share with the people who are interested in the marketing field or even share with the people who would like to make that transition from corporate to kind of like be independent. So that's actually one thing I kind of want to do.

Mary Killelea: I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, I have absolutely, absolutely loved talking with you.

Pam Didner: Oh, it was a lot of fun, Mary. I'm sorry. I'm a little crazy.

Mary Killelea: How can people get in touch with you?

Pam Didner: All right. Every single social media channel, I promise I'm on it. But you can always come to my website, pamdidner.com and get in touch with me. And also you can Twitter, LinkedIn. I'm checking on that all the time. So if you want to talk to me, want to reach out, you can reach out, just Google me, you'll find a way.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much. Have an awesome day.

Pam Didner PD: Thank you so much. Bye, Mary.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guests. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two, little b bolder.com.