Digital Fundamentals: Kristina Causer
Kristina Causer attended a cohort of the Digital Fundamentals course in 2022 and used the course to help progress her career.
This course is delivered through the Branch out in STEM project, which is part funded by the European Social Fund. Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is pleased to offer free (fully funded) places on this course to support employees of small and medium businesses that are based in Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire.
Kristina Causer at our marketing networking event on 30 June 2022
Now I can hire a marketing team to sit with me and it is thanks to this course and the networking. Because it is practical and you’re working with businesses, we are the students, but we are all businesses so its real-life instances. I have got so much out of it, it's brilliant.
Kristina Causer, Marketing and Communications Manager at Baxter Freight
Below you can find a question and answer session with Kristina Causer from Baxter Freight on her time on the Digital Fundamentals course during a networking event held by Nottingham Trent University on 30 June 2022 to celebrate our ESF-funded marketing courses.
Who are you and what company do you work for?
I am Kristina Causer I work for a company named Baxter Freight based in Nottingham, it is a family business that has grown phenomenally. This is an SME on the larger end of the scale. They had a marketing team but they were quite traditional in their approach, therefore the concept of developing marketing was quite radical.
Why did you decide to take Digital Fundamentals?
I was employed by them and really wanted to up my marketing skills, I have been in marketing for a long time, but I realised that the older I have got the more disconnected I have gotten to the digital platforms and new emergences which is what prompted me to take this course.
What did you enjoy about the course?
The interactivity of the course was great. I work in logistics, and everyone needs logistics so the team would say they would be able to market to any and every business, but as a marketer we are taught not to do this. It was great that in this course you got to choose what you wanted to do, and I chose customer acquisition and looking at the segment of manufacturing and apparel. This was a good mechanism for me to have a meaningful conversation with my Managing Director and say well how about we try it this way and we apply my marketing course to what we are doing now, following this every week there would be an update and they could see the results developing positively. It was great because it felt really fulfilling, but it also helped to reset me as a marketer, so even if you don’t work in marketing and you must do this yourself, from a marketer’s perspective this was such a great reset, and it really helped me in the role that I am in now.
What were one or two things that you really felt you learned from the course?
When you think digital a lot of what you think is social media and websites, for me it made me really question why would we do digital and what channels really are going to work best for us. I am looking at email marketing and websites, specifically web to lead acquisition and using linked in as a three-tier approach. For me, that was important for understanding how these three things would link together when setting the customer buying journey which was a game changer for me.
With this course there is an assignment, how much time do you think you have spent on it?
It has taken some, but I really wanted to get a lot out of it and I wanted to apply it to the business, so I saw the assessment as an important document to get us moving. Having had that conversation with our Managing Director I think that helped me to frame it as we need to do this if we want to do the next part right. Realistically I probably spent one or two hours a week on the assignment, but now I am using it as a tool to help me work through my week, so for me it’s a massive positive as I am applying it to my work environment.
Finally, what impact has the course had on you personally?
Personally, it has been good as it has elevated my career and I have got a promotion. It has also given me much more confidence to be able to think about why I am doing what I am doing and have a reason for why we are deciding to do something.
How to access the support available
If you are interested in our marketing courses and would like to find out more, please take a look at our marketing courses.