The knowledge I’ve gained from my first year working at Embryo

This month officially marks a year since I joined Embryo – and what a year it’s been! After a long career working in PR in-house for various, renowned companies within the fashion and hospitality sector, I decided that it was time for a change. I wanted to explore different avenues within the digital marketing sector and gain further knowledge of different industries and technical platforms and be surrounded by exciting new clients and industry experts within their fields. That’s why when the opportunity presented itself to be a part of the fast-growing and past-faced team at a leading digital marketing agency as a PR Strategist within the Digital PR department, I welcomed the opportunity – since then, I’ve never looked back.

Over the past year, I have gained extensive knowledge of a vast range of industry sectors and the logistics of working for an agency, which we will look into further in this blog. But most importantly, I have been encouraged to develop myself, both personally and professionally. With the right support and guidance, I have gained the tools, knowledge and leadership skills to take on any task and develop my strengths to the next level. So much so that in my first year at Embryo I have achieved 273 pieces of coverage for the clients I work with within the Digital PR sector, with an audience of 1.9 Billion readers, and one UK PR award nomination for the ‘Best Use of Content in a Digital PR Campaign’.So, I wanted to share some of the knowledge, skills sets and personal insight that I’ve gained over the past year at Embryo:

Extensive knowledge and insight into technical services provided by Embryo 

I joined an agency with multiple technical departments that collaborate to create innovative and effective strategies. With a balance of creativity and technical excellence, the different departments secure impressive results for the brands that they work with. This stood out to me from day one, and by working closely with the industry experts, I have been able to acquire extensive knowledge into each department that allows me to take my own marketing strategies to the next level, which we will delve deeper into later on.

Digital PR  – From my first day at Embryo, I realised how important SEO is to PR campaigns created here and how PR can be elevated by utilising key work research and working with the SEO team to create effective backlinks across multiple channels while reaching a wider audience.

Search Engine Optimisation – SEO optimises brands by putting them in front of the right people in the right place and creating and executing bespoke cross-discipline campaigns for clients. I recognised that by combining creative and content-led strategies with high-level onsite work, the team lay the foundation for success across a range of industries.

Content Marketing – Good content marketing is the creation of insightful, witty, eye-catching and relevant content, giving users a positive experience and creating a brand voice through pages, posts and press that are not just attention-grabbing, but fully optimised as a part of a highly integrated campaign. I quickly learnt how the content team at Embryo takes time to truly understand businesses and balance creativity with substance to build brands and deliver ROI.

Pay-per-click advertising – The PPC team at Embryo get brands in front of their target audience effectively by giving businesses a competitive advantage through a presence in the coveted ad space at the top of Google search results and capitalising on new opportunities for their budget.

Paid Social – The Paid Social team at Embryo are extremely successful and understanding user behaviour online and identifying the right markets, platform and opportunities for the brand they work with. I recognised how quickly the social media landscape changes and how effective the team are at adjusting and implementing new features and targets to deliver great campaign management.

Web Design – An eye-catching website design is a necessity – Embryo’s web designs combine creativity with strong reasoning, to make a real difference to the organisations we work with. The web team is incredibly adept at understanding not just what our clients want their websites to look like, but what they want them to do.

Insight into the advantages of working for a past-faced agency

From day one, I became integrated into the world of digital marketing in an agency base. I recognised how different the logistics of agency life were in comparison to working in-house, where there tends to be a lot of focus on policies and an inflexible way of working. In an agency, the onus is on you to deliver. But with this also comes the freedom to be creative and work closely with corresponding departments to deliver effective results. It’s a high-pressure environment, and managing yourself and time across a range of clients isn’t also easy, but this working environment creates a constantly renewed self of responsibility, motivation, creativity and real gratification in seeing the results you deliver for clients.

Teamwork is absolutely essential for business success. Our teams work seamlessly to optimise brand exposure and deliver ROI across a range of different brands. Working with industry experts from different technical services gives further insight into new marketing strategies and allows you to collaborate in order to pull off exciting and integrated campaigns that span the entire digital marketing spectrum.

The key for personal and professional gain is to be adaptable, self-motivated and open to new ideas

Your brain is your ultimate asset and it’s up to you how you use it. Working at Embryo, I recognised, more than ever, how effective creativity is and how looking for the key hook or compelling factor is what creates innovative ideas leading to trailblazing strategies, and effective results for clients.

Be open to learning new things. Being around industry leaders and business leaders in an agency environment gives you the tools and insight to expand your knowledge of different sectors, in order to get to the nitty-gritty and build effective campaigns and deliver ROI. Learn from the experts and mentors around you.

Self-development is key. If you’re a part of the digital marketing world or looking to understand this landscape further, then you’ll know that self-development is key. Challenge yourself and come up with new ideas. Daily self-improvement, both personally and professionally, helps you to identify your strengths and play on them, to give you a better understanding of where you’re likely to thrive and how to get the best out of your day to day role.

Understanding and communicating data

Working closely with our data analyst allows me to communicate data in a case-by-case approach to give consumers and businesses the bigger picture when telling a story.

Our data analyst uses innovative tools that reveal high-quality and up to date findings to help people understand the data on different levels and to tell the story that they need to see using effective data sets. This not allows me to build upon a narrative when creating a press release, providing an additional advantage to my strategies, but the same data can also be used for internal and external reports in order to let team members and clients know how well their KPI’s are being met. It’s all about the story, the journey and who’s reading.

Further knowledge of the B2B sector

With all of these additional insights and pieces of knowledge, I have deepened my understanding of Digital PR and elevated my creativity and digital strategies to optimised levels.

Although I had a wealth of skills and experience in the world of PR, B2B strategies and clients were still something of a challenge to me, due to limited experience in this field. However, since working with a range of clients who required B2B, as opposed to B2C strategies plans, I have deepened my understanding of their audience and perspectives to craft engaging campaigns. I have also worked closely with the content and SEO teams to capture and communicate the brand’s tone of voice while optimising their reach by utilising keyword research in my campaigns.

As part of our digital strategies here at Embryo, we engage in newsjacking which also allows us to create or join in conversations in the media around a particular topic that is relevant to our brands. Strengthening this capability of recognising opportunities and identifying a niche angle in trending topics has secured quick wins across the board for my clients.