We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Holly Landis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Holly, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

Working in digital marketing for the last 8 years, I’ve seen how easy it is for companies to get caught up on the wrong channels for their brand. There’s significant emphasis on being at the cutting edge of the industry or trying to jump onto platforms as soon as they launch, without really thinking through a strategy behind them. It’s easy for managers to ask marketers to launch a TikTok channel because it’s the new big thing, but there’s little to no support for the work that has to go into that like content creation or promotion, let alone an understanding of whether that brand’s audience is even on TikTok to begin with.

This leads to the marketing team feeling burned out and throwing ideas against a wall, hoping something sticks. Teams are under increasing pressure to perform and show incredible results for directives given by senior management who, in most cases, don’t understand the intricacies involved in what they’re asking. This is something I’ve experienced myself while working in a corporate position – being asked to make the miraculous happen with little budget and in a competitive field where it was going to be impossible to outperform the big players.

While marketing is an old industry, I think many in Corporate America think it’s easy and everyone can do it. That often leads to situations where marketers are being tasked with multiple jobs at once, where there should really be more people on the team to lead one vertical at a time. Ultimately, I think marketers are being asked to do too much with very little support in many corporations.

Holly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started my career in digital marketing when I relocated from the UK to the US in 2014, first working at a digital marketing agency where I was an SEO and paid advertising account manager for upwards of 20 clients at once. It was a challenging position but really helped me get to know the industry quickly and start building the skills that have formed the foundation for my career.

From there, I moved in-house to a liberal arts college to co-manage the digital marketing efforts – between myself and a coworker, we ran all SEO, social media, paid advertising, wrote the website copy and put together the email marketing program for both the Admissions office and the academic departments. We were a small but mighty team and I credit that role, and my subsequent promotion to digital marketing manager, for giving me the experience I needed to make my dreams of self employment happen.

In the months before the pandemic, I decided to go back to school for my MA in digital marketing and data analytics. I also took this time to start building up my freelance portfolio on the side of my full time job, before leaving this position to go full time with school and continuing to build my business. I’m incredibly proud that I managed to complete my master’s program and take my business full time within a year, all while navigating the challenges that came with the ever-changing global situation.

I’m now working as a freelance writer and SEO consultant, primarily working with small and creative businesses to help them grow their organic presence online and establish a solid base for their businesses on platforms and channels that they own. I think of myself as a true partner to my clients, and many have since told me the same, I’m as invested in seeing their businesses succeed as my own.

One area that sets me apart is my experience in both the SEO side of marketing and copywriting. I’ve found that many marketers and writers focus on one of these areas, but rarely have extensive experience in both. This has been particularly helpful as I’ve grown my business and also allows me to give my clients additional feedback and suggestions outside of our project scope when necessary.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I had never considered working for myself until a few years before I decided to make that happen and I put that down to my mindset shift towards two different goals: 1) being able to have the flexibility and freedom to build a career around my life, rather than my life around a career
2) being able to focus my skills towards helping small businesses grow to allow those business owners an opportunity to live the life they were dreaming of

Now living over 3000 miles away from my family and many of my friends, having the opportunity to work from anywhere was incredibly appealing. In my previous corporate positions, this wasn’t possible. While I could have possibly found a remote job, working for myself has given me the flexibility to travel at short notice when family emergencies arise and work from any location, along with giving me the freedom in my schedule to incorporate non-work activities that fulfill me and give back to my community like volunteering.

I also knew that, of all my clients in my previous roles, my favorites were the small businesses. Hearing a client tell me that they had to hire 3 more people because of our marketing work was incredibly rewarding, knowing that not only did I help my client to put food on their family’s table, but that they were then able to give additional people a job because of our work. When I started my business, I knew that small and creative operations were going to be my focus. Although I do work with a handful of medium to large corporations, the majority of my clients are still one-person or under-five-people businesses.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I started freelancing while still working fulltime and never intended, at that point, to shift from side hustle to full time self employed. I accidentally picked up my first couple of clients when my boss asked me if I’d be interested in helping out a friend of hers with their website. From there, I slowly acquired more clients via word of mouth and realized that I really enjoyed that aspect of my career.

The biggest milestone moment for me was when I signed my first retainer client. Knowing that I had that recurring income each month was a significant factor in helping me start to budget and plan for possibly taking my business full time. At that point, I was working part time while still in grad school, so I had some finances to support me as I grew my business even more.

Over 12 to 18 months, I added more clients to my roster and asked for referrals from any existing clients. To this day, most of my business comes in via word of mouth referrals, although I have cold pitched several of my now clients after seeing callouts on social media. But building great relationships with my existing clients and doing good work for them has been the biggest factor in scaling my business. With each project, I’ve built my portfolio and the proof points that I know what I’m doing! That’s helped me to onboard new clients and steadily increase my prices as I continue to gain more experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hollylandis.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hollyrlandis/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/hollyrlandis
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/hollyrlandis

Image Credits
https://petalandglass.com/