My Career: 'My advice is to take opportunities as they present themselves'

Name: Marie Wiseman

Age: 56

Lives: Durrus

Job title: Owner and founder, Wiser Marketing, a West Cork based marketing consultancy offering training, advice, and practical help in delivering all forms of marketing.

Salary bracket: €45 to €65k

Education background: My education path to marketing wasn’t particularly straightforward! I left school with little idea of what I wanted to do, so I decided to opt for a practical option and undertook a two year Secretarial and Business Studies course in Cork.

From there, I moved to London, where I got a job as a secretary in the marketing department of a large food manufacturer called RHM (Rank Hovis McDougall).

I fell in love with marketing straight away, so went back to college to complete a two-year Marketing Diploma course with the Chartered Institute of Marketing, before getting a job as Marketing Assistant.

Since then, I’ve completed various training courses at work and completed a Train the Trainer course here in Ireland to allow me to practice as a trainer. Most recently, I completed a Post Grad in Digital Marketing with the Digital Marketing Academy of Ireland.

Hobbies: I love being out in nature, and in particular hill walking and sea swimming. I also enjoy yoga, and weight training, and have ambitions to write a memoir.

Describe your job in five words: Social, varied, rewarding, fast-paced, creative.

Describe yourself in five words: Reliable, friendly, organised, detail-conscious, self-starter.

Personality needed for this kind of work? More than anything, you need to be a people person – not only in terms of working with clients and participants of training courses, but also in terms of understanding customers, and their needs and wants in relation to a business or brand.

You also need to be organised, and able to manage multiple activities and deadlines at once. You need to be able to cope under pressure, on days when everything seems to be needed yesterday.

Reliability is also important – your clients need to be able to put their trust in you and have faith that you will deliver.

How long are you doing this job? I’ve worked in marketing for over 30 years. For the first 20 years or so, I was working in the UK, as an employee within large marketing departments.

I moved back to my native West Cork in 2017, and since then have been working in my current guise, which is as a marketing trainer, and marketing consultant, working with small business owners here in Ireland, and in particular in West Cork.

How did you get this job? I sort of fell into marketing, by joining the marketing department of RHM as a secretary. I fell in love with marketing right away, and that gave me the impetus to go back to night school and study it.

Once I had my CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) diploma, RHM gave me a role of Marketing Assistant, which is typically an entry level role in marketing.

From there, my career went from strength to strength. RHM was a great place to work as it was made up of lots of well-known food brands, eg, Bisto, Paxo, Hovis bread, etc. I got to work on lots of different brands over the years.

Then in 2017, I made the decision to return to Ireland. Having bought a holiday home in my home village of Durrus, I found I was enjoying spending time here more and more. Couple that with ageing parents, and the time had come to give a life in West Cork another go.

I was sure there was an opportunity for me to become a marketing consultant, offering advice and help to small businesses. However, my experience was all with big businesses, and I had also never worked in Ireland, so had some learning to do before I could realise my ambition.

I started by taking a part-time role with the festival, A Taste of West Cork, where I was responsible for creating events that would extend the season for hospitality businesses. This was coupled with a part-time position at the Southern Star, where my initial role of Digital Marketer, was soon expanded to manage the paper’s first West Cork Business & Tourism Awards.

I also engaged in training, completing a QQI Level 5 Digital Marketing course in 2019, to build my knowledge and experience in the more technical fields of marketing.

I also completed a QQI Level 6 ‘Train the Trainer’ programme, to allow me to deliver training in Ireland. As my name became known in West Cork, I started to secure a few marketing contracts, including Durrus Cheese, SCAR, and the West Cork Garden Trail.

I also took on the role of marketing trainer with West Cork training company Business IQ in 2018. They had contracts with a number of LEOs (Local Enterprise Offices) for Start Your Own Business courses, as well as Digital Marketing programmes and a Grow Your Business Management Development Programme aimed at experienced business owners.

At this point, I also took on training work with the Cork Education and Training Board (CETB), including Marketing Your Small Business, Instagram for Business and Canva Workshops, each of which I continue to deliver to this day.

Today, as well as delivering training as outlined above, I also work with a number of small businesses and other organisations throughout West Cork, providing both strategic and hands-on marketing help. I am also on the mentoring panel for Cork County Local Enterprise Offices.

Do you need particular qualifications or experience? To get an initial role in marketing, most companies would expect a degree or equivalent related to marketing in some way, eg, business, communications, etc, whereas relevant experience becomes more important as your career develops.

When operating as a marketing trainer, experience is crucial so that you can share this with participants. A love of what you do, also helps immensely.

Ongoing development is also key. Marketing, and in particular digital marketing and social media, changes by the hour.

Describe a day at work: It’s hard to specify a typical day, as the work is so varied. But generally, I’ll start on a Monday with planning out the week ahead. I’ll note the training and meetings I have coming up and then work out what I need to do in terms of preparation for these. I also typically spend Monday morning developing social media content for clients who I offer this service to.

I deliver a lot of training which requires a lot of preparation, particularly if it’s a course I haven’t delivered before, as I’ll need to create the training materials from scratch. On the consultancy side of things, there could be some client meetings.

I also have a few voluntary roles; I’m a Social Media Officer with Network Ireland West Cork, and I sit on the board of West Cork Beacon.

How many hours do you work a week? On average, it’s about 35-40 hours, but it can be a lot higher in the winter, when there are lots of training courses, and less in the summer.

Is your job stressful? How? Rate it on a scale of 1-10: I guess it depends on how busy I am. In the depths of winter, when there are several training courses on the go, plus other client deadlines, it can reach 8-9, but when I can keep on top of things, it’s probably about a 5.

When do you plan to retire or give up working? For now, I’m thoroughly enjoying what I do, so I’ve no plans to retire for at least the next 10 years.

Best bits: The variety of work is great – literally no two days are the same. I love getting to work with people across all different industries. It’s also wonderful to be able to help people realise their dreams, particularly in the training courses.

Finally, I love the flexibility of being able to work more in the winter when there’s less to do outside of work, and then reduce hours in the summer, so that I can make the most of living here in West Cork.

Worst bits: The long days can be a challenge, particularly if delivering training late into the evenings, or a long way from home. Also, when things are very busy, it can feel like you’re being pulled in different directions.

Advice to those who want your job? Whilst it’s not essential to have formal marketing training, or even to have worked in marketing as an employee, I find that my experience as an employee, and the training that I received as part of that, is invaluable to me now.

I would also say take opportunities as they present themselves. Even if something doesn’t seem to quite fit your long-term plan, especially when you’re starting out, every opportunity provides a stepping stone to where you end up. I’ve particularly found that since moving back to West Cork.