Joining as a Web Marketer with No Experience: A Day in the Life in Year Two

Hello, everyone.
I am Shindo, currently the youngest woman at NowVillage (for now).

I joined NowVillage in February 2021 as a web marketer with no professional experience at all, and a year has now passed.

In this article I want to talk about what NowVillage is like as a company and what makes it appealing,
along with how the past year has changed me and what a typical day looks like now.

If you are interested in digital marketing but nervous about jumping in without experience,
or you simply want to know what NowVillage is like, I hope this is useful.

1. Since joining

I joined in February, four months after NowVillage was founded.

Joining at that point, there was of course no training programme and no manual.
My first task on day one was sitting in on a client meeting.

I came in with no hands-on experience as a digital marketer and almost no knowledge of the work.
I shadowed my colleagues on their projects, and as a second on those projects
I took on real work, was taught as I went, and gradually learnt the job.

There was a great deal I did not understand along the way,
but it was easy to ask questions,
and nobody at NowVillage ever looked put out about teaching me.
I was genuinely grateful for that, and I worked at it every day
wanting to learn fast and catch up with the rest of the team.

With daily guidance from my colleagues and a culture of writing things down,
what started as putting decks together turned into making proposals, and I now run several projects on my own.

A year in, I have worked on 29 projects in total.

The work covers
a wide range: Twitter account management and advertising, Instagram and Facebook advertising, LINE advertising, search advertising, writing YouTube scripts, affiliate advertising, SEO articles and email newsletters, through to consulting.

I am also helping launch a new media site due to go live in May,
and I handle back-office work such as accounting.

NowVillage covers every approach there is in digital marketing,
and because it is a start-up you get back-office experience in accounting and administration as well as front-office work as a marketer and consultant.
There is a lot to learn and it can be demanding, but it is a company where you feel yourself growing every day.

2. A day in the schedule

Here is how one of my remote working days goes.

8:50 Getting ready　　
I check the day’s tasks and any chat messages and emails that have piled up.

9:00 Start of work

9:00-9:45 Morning meeting
Every Tuesday and Friday the whole team holds a morning meeting online.
Staff take turns chairing it, and the agenda is set by anyone writing in what they want to share by the day before. The purpose is to pass on company-wide news and whatever each person has learnt on their projects.

9:45-10:30 Chat and email replies
I work steadily through the backlog of emails and chat messages.
Tasks sometimes appear out of nowhere in that day’s email and chat,
so I adjust the day’s schedule by priority.

10:30-12:00 Preparing materials
I work on proposal decks.
Whenever a deck comes up, I make a point of checking the purpose, the approach and the picture of the finished result
with a senior colleague.

This has become part of the culture at NowVillage.
Because everyone is carrying a lot of projects, while it is still fresh in mind
fixing the picture of the finished deck

• makes it possible to build the deck in less time
• and avoids major rework when it turns out differently from what was expected

— that is the aim.

12:00-13:00 Lunch
I tend to pick something quick to eat.

13:00-14:00 Setting up ad delivery
I set up the ads that are due to go live the next day.
Once the banners, the tracking and the rest of the setup are done, a senior colleague gives it a final check.

14:00-15:00 Internal meeting
On this day, a colleague going on maternity leave from April walked us through her handover and shared the accounts for the work she had been running.

15:00-16:00 Meeting
This was the monthly review meeting.
We checked project progress and proposed improvements.

16:00-17:00 Accounting
Working with our contract bookkeeper, I check that invoices have gone out and that payments have come in.

17:00-18:00 Wireframes
I build wireframes for a landing page.
I keep in mind the client’s strengths and competitive advantages from our earlier conversation,
and design with the advertising that will follow in mind so that it performs.

18:00-19:00 Drafting posts
I draft posts for the social accounts we deliver to the client.
I work on the exact wording and the emoji so that the appeal comes across in very few characters.

18:30-19:00 Sorting tasks
I check what needs doing tomorrow and set the next day’s schedule.

19:00 End of work
On days with a lot of meetings, tasks slip later
and I sometimes finish a little later than that,
but as a rule I am done between 7pm and 8pm.

3. Goals for my second year

A year in, I have settled into the work to some extent,
and my immediate goal is to be able to support clients confidently on my own across all of it.
Beyond solving the problems a client already knows about, I want to spot the ones they have not yet seen
and be able to propose solutions.

I enjoy the accounting side a great deal too, so I plan to keep building out our back-office processes and to carry on studying for the level 2 bookkeeping qualification.

4. In closing

Thank you for reading to the end.

I have described what has happened since I joined and what a day looks like now.

Everyone at NowVillage is ambitious about their work,
and working alongside them is a constant spur.
I think how well everyone gets on is something you only find at a small start-up.

• Anyone with even a passing interest in NowVillage
• Anyone who wants to become a digital marketer

No experience required.
If you are interested, do apply here.
https://www.wantedly.com/projects/812274

On Wantedly
we publish stories packed with the feel of NowVillage and what makes it appealing,
so do take a look.