Caitlyn Curran

I would say that I did always have a pretty singular focus and drive. I didn't grow up with any money, I didn't have anything to fall back on, really. So it was already pretty silly that I wanted to study poetry, but I knew that I wanted to ever since I was a small child, and nothing was really gonna get in the way of that, because I had a vision, and I was going to execute it. Similarly, with the marketing job, I had been saying maybe I would work in marketing, but I just didn't even know what that looked like. I'd never met anybody that worked in marketing. I had no idea what the actual specifics or day-to-day was until I got in there. I just have a lot of confidence in my skills and my ability to walk into a room, even if it's completely unfamiliar, and figure it out. It might take some time and a little bit of training, but I know that once I am trained up, and once I do understand the concepts and the goals and objectives, I will be very highly skilled at it. So I would say a focus and a drive and a confidence to be unfamiliar with a certain role, but still be able to step into it, learn about it, and excel.

Feedback that I get from mentors that is really valuable for me always sort of comes down to leaning on your strengths, while also staying open and curious about what you don't know. I think that's something that I always advise to people, and something that I just find has helped me so much in my career, and also just in life, in so many aspects. When people are faced with a challenge, or a new channel that they haven't run ads on before, or they don't know all the ins and outs of, it's natural to find yourself shutting down a little bit. But that's kind of where I find really exciting opportunities, in that space of uncertainty. If you can get past the uncomfortability of the uncertainty, a lot of really great things can happen. It's like saying yes to challenges, saying yes to new experiences to learn new things, even though you understand that you're accepting that it's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be difficult, it's going to take time. But if you work with a team that is open to fostering that learning environment, then really great things can happen, and you can sort of level up your career a lot faster than the people that just want to stay in their lane and just want to do what they already know.

I do recommend it. It's a great spot, a great place for women to be. A lot of it is remote work, and it's both creative and analytical, so I think for people that love both sides of that, it's perfect. It's a people-person type of job, but it's also a numbers job. That does maybe sound like it would be more difficult, but I think for that reason, it's very interesting, it's really dynamic, and it's always changing. It can be a very women-led space. In all of my agencies - it's only 3 agencies, but in each agency, my boss, my manager, my team lead, my directors have been women. I think it can be a place that is very women-led, where your perspective and your skills can really shine and be appreciated and be put to good use.

There's always the ups and down challenges of just performance in these marketing channels, because it's dependent on the tech companies that run these ad channels, like Meta and Google and YouTube. They'll change something on the back end with the algorithm for targeting, and then we have to sort of adjust our strategies and our audiences. Once we get used to a new normal on these platforms, and we have our strategies hammered out, then they change again. But I've always said that that's actually kind of my favorite part about the job. No two days are the same. Anything can happen almost at any time that you have to quickly react to, because it's digital marketing. It's based on algorithms, it's based on human behavior, and a lot of it does get connected to current events in the news. When gas prices go up, people are less likely to shop online, which makes it more difficult for conversion rates, and all these things are interconnected. That you have to hold space for every day while just opening your computer and analyzing performance. So that is both a significant challenge, but it's also a really interesting opportunity to take a 30,000-foot view of performance and high-level trends across several industries, but then also zoom in and say, in this account, this has worked with this new setup because of this, and this is what I'm going to present to the client. What I love is fostering client relationships. The people-person type of aspect of the role comes pretty naturally to me, and so when I'm able to develop trust and a rapport with a client, which isn't always easy, it's really fruitful, and then we can do really interesting stuff together, and we can test more, because they trust my instincts, and they trust that I have their business performance in mind. So that is also a challenge and a really fun opportunity, that when you can crack it, and when you're really cooking, and when you're really vibing, then really kind of amazing things can happen.

A lot of my week is a lot of collaboration, and I manage a cell of about 10 to upwards of 50 people. Everybody on the team, especially when we're having creative jams and creative talks and talks about copywriting and art, is going to have a completely diverse and unique perspective on it. I think that's something that's so valuable when collaborating - getting everybody's diverse experiences and opinions and ways that they see something, ways that they think about it. We're able to see from a 360 and see all the facets of it because of that diverse level of collaboration. So I guess the words would be collaboration and diversity and valuing where everybody's coming from, and how they're seeing it from their unique perspective.