In-House PPC Blog Series: Duane Brown from Unbounce

8/25/16

In-house life… What’s the deal Duane?

I used to work freelance and agency life for a number of years. The reasons I love working in-house boil down to 6 key areas from startups to growing businesses.

  • Time
  • Ideas
  • Training
  • Business
  • Veto
  • Tracking

But let me expand on each one and tell you why I love working in-house at this point in my career.  I get to spend all my time focused on growing one brand each and everyday. I can go from having an idea on Monday and launching it within a few days. Sometimes launching can take a few weeks if I have to chat with a new vendor or set up some complicated tracking in Google Analytics/Tag Manager.

Where I work, Unbounce, we have professional development days where we can devote to learning a new skill related to our job. We can also partner up with an internal mentor to learn a skill from another part of our business. Right now I’m focused on Hubspot, but I’ll be looking at SQL and more coding as we finish off the year.

unbounce logo

Coming from a transparent company, I have a strong idea of what’s going on in the business despite some days not knowing everyone’s name as we’re growing at a fast pace. I’m a face over name person. (I can tell you if I met someone 10 years ago by looking at their face, but bloody hell if I could remember their name.) Everyone is super friendly at work, and you can find out a new person’s name in no time flat if I have a question outside my department or team.

The veto, aka our CMO, sits a few doors down from my desk. If I have a question for him or anyone in senior leadership, I know they’ll answer it when they get a chance. Plus I have the opportunity to test out and try new ideas even if they may fail in the long run. The only risk is staying complacent.

Lastly, we have crack teams of data, business intelligence and analytics people at work. They can pretty much make anything happen or tell someone in marketing why something we want to track may be a challenge. Working in-house isn’t for everyone but I do think right now it’s been the best thing for me since sliced bread.

duane brown unbounceDuane Brown is a digital strategist and global citizen. He has done work for clients including ASOS, Telstra, Jack Wills, Cineplex and Grant Thornton. Living and working in 5 cities across 3 continents has allowed him to launch digital marketing campaigns around the world. Duane has been featured & interviewed in a number of publications including PSFK’s Good Brands Report, and .Net Magazine. He has spoken at MozCon, Google, Digital Summit, HeroConf and SMX London.

Follow Duane on Twitter @duanebrown