Spotlight On #2 – Chloe Fair, SEO Manager at Dunelm

Welcome to the Spotlight On series, where we get to sit down with some of the most inspirational marketing leaders from some of the UK’s most exciting brands. We learn about their careers, their challenges and their achievements, all to inspire you to grow your own career. 

Transcript

00:15 – Introduction to Chloe Fair and her role

Mikey:

Welcome, Chloe. So, I won’t ask you to big yourself up because that can always feel a little bit awkward but to give our viewers a little bit of background, you’ve had a wicked journey, starting your career out in Germany, before joining  us at Impression for five years which was awesome. You worked your way up through the ranks whilst working on some wicked accounts. A year or so ago, you moved to a huge retailer, Dunelm, where you’re working on the SEO side of things. But, rather than me giving you too much hype, how about you tell us about yourself?

Chloe:

I work at Dunelm now on the SEO team. I’ve been there for almost a year. I work with a team of four, reporting to our head of SEO and working collaboratively with him. He owns more of the technical-side of SEO and I work with content and commercial teams, getting really stuck into knowing the products. I now know lots about curtains, bedding, lamps and lights. Day-to-day I’m working with numerous teams to improve organic visibility, so there’s a lot of layers to the role.

Mikey:

I was hoping to talk to you today about the transition from agency to in house. Obviously you’re now in-house, but you’ve been in-house before as well, is that right?

Chloe:

I did a couple of years in-house at a company in Germany, so I learnt SEO in German which was obviously quite challenging. I did that for a couple of years, about 18 months working in Munich for a travel company. It was a role I just fell into as I was applying for marketing internships as a part of my year abroad, and that’s where I found my first role in SEO. I didn’t even know what SEO meant on the first day, but I got up to speed and worked on many site launches, rollouts and was responsible for the UK-US side of the website. Then I moved back to Nottingham and applied for lots of jobs and I picked Impression. I didn’t know much about agency life, I knew it was where I could be a little bit more agile in your role where you could change paths. At the time I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to be an SEO forever, but here I am eight years later. So that’s how I got into SEO basically.

Mikey:

How have you found the latest transition back to in-house and what do you enjoy most about that?

Chloe:

It’s like a tale in three parts really, So, one of the reasons why I joined Dunelm is because I think it’s really important that you like the brand. For me, I loved Dunelm as a brand, including their products and values. When I was interviewing with them, the thing that stood out for me was just how my manager was really keen for me to be able to immerse myself into the brand. Whilst this was something that I did agency-side, it obviously had to stop and then you’d be working on a different account. In my first three months it was challenging because it was a lot slower. There weren’t loads of meetings, putting together strategies or pitches and the pace was quite slow. But looking back at it now, if i didn’t have those three months, I wouldn’t be where I am now in the business and I wouldn’t have built relationships. I think I had about 60 introductions in the first three months, all with different people.

Mikey:

It is a company that’s 30,000 people, right?

Chloe:

We’re about 12,000 people. It’s crazy, because there’s so many people in tech who are very much siloed but are all so important. You may speak to them about something brand new and then after that you don’t speak to them for another six months. After my first three months, we decided to hire and grow the team while I’ve been there. Then I was able to train and still am training my two team members. Now it’s more like BAU work, that’s the thing that we say as it isn’t as fast paced like an agency. We’re not split between loads of different accounts but now I definitely wear more different ‘hats’ than I did when I was agency-side.

Mikey:

So one of the previous conversations we had is when you’ve moved into an in-house role, it’s more about that whole idea of wearing different hats and you’ve actually doing a lot more outside of SEO now, right? You’re now having to stick a commercial hat or or having to work with distributors or retail. So, how have you found the transition of being an SEO specialist and consultant to then having to still be an SEO leader, but with lots of knowledge on how the business operates?

Chloe:

It’s been great because I feel like I’m still learning so much. I learned for five years at Impression about SEO and how businesses work, but that was still very much a digital specialist role. Whereas now, if I wanted to become a generalist, which is the path I would like to take in the next 5 – 10 years, I now have an understanding of distribution and product design as well. I’ve been to a mock shop which was so fun and have spoken to loads of different people, from those who have designed our most popular brands and products to the people who are responsible for making sure we have the stock in our stores. It makes you understand that I’ll never be able to own a business, it’s far too complicated!

06:16 – Transferable skills learnt agency-side

Mikey:

What are the things that you valued the most from working agency-side? What’s facilitated you to be able to do your current role so well?

Chloe:

Definitely stakeholder management. At Impression, some of the accounts I had, I wasn’t speaking to SEOs, but then on some of them I was, and now I have even more empathy for SEOs in-house. I remember some of my old clients at Impression and some of the in-house SEOs that I would report to, they would say; I’ve got these meetings, sorry, I’m busy for three days. I wouldn’t know what would be going on in those meetings, but now I understand that there are so many things that you don’t know about until you start being in those meetings. Some of those meetings can be really exciting, but you’re pulled into so many different things as an SEO because the business knows that you should be involved, but you don’t know why until the meeting. So I have a lot of empathy for that. The other thing I learnt the most when agency-side is making time for yourself and your own development. I almost came to Impression being not very confident, not really understanding how businesses run. After working with you, Tom and Aaron, as well as other people, I better understood how to run an actual agency business. Then I learnt how to pitch and all the other things that gave me the confidence to sit in a room with directors, which can still be intimidating of course.

08:07 – Finding your niche

Mikey:

Is it important to have a niche and for everyone to rely on you for one particular thing?

Chloe:

I’m going to say it depends.

Mikey:

A good answer!

Chloe:

I think it’s just really important to be open minded. I came to Impression, not knowing what I wanted to do in terms of SEO, I was learning a bit of everything. I felt supported by other people spotting things in me, like I may be good at doing one thing or with a particular brand or website. From that you can find a niche and having people around you that can elevate that is really important. My niche could have been International SEO or it could have been something else, like content or technical SEO. But the fact that I had a language background and I loved working with so many different people, especially when it comes to different cultures and languages, I found my strengths even though I never thought about developing a niche. Some people don’t like working with a broad range of people in SEO, some prefer to strictly talk about technical SEO and like getting their head stuck into a computer all day and that’s their niche. I think if you’re looking to develop a niche, understanding your strengths is the biggest place to start. If you’re waking up every day and you’re feeling stressed about a certain task, then that’s probably not your niche. For me, when I started doing international SEO work, I found it quite fun and myclients always seemed to be happy.

10:11 – Finding the right role

Mikey:

When you were searching for a role, at any point in your career, what were the key things that you were looking for that you knew would help you to continue your progression? Would it be the people who you would be working with, the culture of a company, or something in between?

Chloe:

There were a lot of things, the two most important things were the maturity of the brand and the manager. So, with the maturity of the brand, I wanted to work for a business that was established, well known and was a household name, so I wouldn’t be always trying to work constantly with the PR or Communications teams, because that’s not my strength. So, now working with a brand that’s already established, a brand that is clean, meaning for SEO a site that hasn’t had any issues or hasn’t been migrated in a terrible way. I didn’t want to go in and do any recovery work, so I needed to make sure that the brand knew what they were doing. There were other big brands I was looking at within the fashion and food industry, but I wanted something that was a bit more specific. Even though there are lots of products at Dunelm, the products weren’t too broad. The other important part was the manager, this was super important to me. I wanted to learn from somebody who was calming and organised but also had a really good, grounded understanding of SEO. Sometimes when you go in-house, you can report to a digital marketing manager, marketing manager, or brand director. But it was important for me to have a good manager who was a head of SEO. This would mean that the business is bought into SEO. When working with loads of brands at Impression, one of the biggest challenges is when other stakeholders in a brand haven’t bought into SEO and your contact at the brand has to continuously sell SEO to someone else, it can get a bit tiring. It’s often because there is not an individual that is bought into SEO that says, right we need to invest in this. In my case, this led to the hiring of my manager which happened just about a year before I joined. So the manager aspect was really big for me. I had a lot of interviews with Dunelm and I got to meet loads of people, and during those interviews it was important to understand different mindsets when it came to SEO, so I asked the same question to different people and got quite similar answers, which was quite positive.

13:21 – The key to retention

Mikey:

Shifting on then to retention. In the digital marketing industry there’s a lot of work at the moment for businesses and there’s certainly a staff shortage. What is it that keeps people in a brand or company? What is the most important thing to you personally?

Chloe:

Open communication is a big place to start. It’s something that Impression always did super well and that’s why I think so many people stayed at Impression for a long time. Sometimes you go into an agency and think it’s like a stepping stone in your career, but that wasn’t the case. You have to communicate well with team members, but you also need to be careful not to over communicate and allow people to have some autonomy. Definitely autonomy and communication are two big factors. The way I’ve always tried to manage and retain people is by asking them what they enjoy. You can wake up with a knot in your stomach, thinking that you have to work on something that you don’t particularly enjoy working on today. Sometimes you can just power through it, but it is important to have that open communication and sometimes you need to bring this up yourself to your manager, otherwise you will only go round in circles.

14:54 – Specialist vs generalist roles

Mikey:

I want to explore the idea of specialising and what that can bring. It sounds like you specialised during your first role at Impression, but what does the future look like for you? Are you planning on broadening out? If so, what does that potentially involve?

Chloe:

I don’t think I’ll be in SEO forever. Naturally the way businesses are evolving, there will always be SEOs, but there is a need for a lot of manager roles. A lot of SEOs now own agencies and that’s sometimes the natural progression for a lot of SEOs, that is to move onto different roles like digital content directors, or head of digital content, for example. Where you’re not just in meetings as an SEO but also as a digital content person who has 10 to 12 years of SEO experience. For me, I think the natural progression path is towards that. A lot of businesses like Dunelm have been moving more online, especially in a post-COVID world. To work and market a huge website like this you do need SEOs, PPCs, and specialists in different areas, like UX, CROs and such. It’s something that is definitely going to further evolve the future, it’s a good question.

Mikey:

Let me rephrase, what are you specifically doing to potentially pick up a role like that in the future? What do you think are the key attributes you need or the skills that you need to develop?

Chloe:

This probably sounds cliche, but I genuinely think that relationship building is a massive part of it. If you’re working for a big brand, where there’s loads of people doing loads of amazing things everyday, you need to know where you can tap into work and projects which can otherwise be quite siloed. Even in an agency, you have PPC and SEO very siloed, and in-house you have even more silos. So building relationships with different people and getting an understanding of where things sit in the business and how to grow them is important. For example, in the last year I’ve learned more about shares than ever before, as well as doing research into why our business is doing well, like why IKEA has grown or why DFS has declined. Getting a macro-level view and keeping up with what is happening in the world is also key.

Mikey:

So it’s like taking yourself out of the day-to-day and trying to understand more about the market and how that’s influencing performance.

Chloe:

Yeah, that’s probably the biggest difference when compared to working at Impression. It got to a point where I didn’t really want to read about SEO every day, but a part of the role was generalist with the International offering as well as managing a team. Now I feel like I’m in a position where I can understand the market more or I’m in a meeting where we’re talking about market share and GFK data. Whilst at Impression, it was more focused on SEO, which is good obviously as it now means that I can have a specialism, and the only way to get into some meetings is to be a specialist and then you can learn from others. 

19:14 – Keeping on top of trends

Mikey:

You’ve gone from what you were doing at Impression to now something slightly broader. How are you still making sure that you stay on top of everything that’s needed from a SEO specialist’s perspective? It must be tough? Is it through reading, conferences or other things?

Chloe:

So definitely for me, I learn a lot through my manager. He’s been an SEO for about 15 to 20 years. He started off building websites and then fell into SEO and like me, he’s worked agency-side before. We’ve been able to talk and bounce ideas off each other and sometimes debate. As you can imagine, we have a lot of discussion about SEO and what we should be prioritising. Being able to learn from someone who has a top down view is great because he’s worked on so much retail and I didn’t really do a lot of retail at Impression. I did a lot of ecommerce of course, but in terms of having both physical and online stores, it’s something that I didn’t have too much experience with. There’s loads of people within the business where the majority of their job is to do with the physical stores so it can be quite different. I can also talk to my other team members, who are also SEOs, as well. I think we’re lucky to be a team of four and I think that’s important, as I wouldn’t have moved to a job where I was a one woman band because I would have had to sell SEO to everyone else. So I think working at both agencies, smaller channels within Dunelm and with clients at Impression was great as we could bounce ideas off of each other. But don’t think you must have a team of 3 or 4, that’s not always going to be the case, some in-house brands have a team of 50 SEOs. More importantly for me it was about finding a team where I could have weekly meetings to talk about SEO news and algorithm updates. We attended BrightonSEO as well which was great, but it’s not always necessary to go to big conferences as that can be expensive and a lot of businesses just don’t have the budget for it. Instead, just starting a conversation and getting people involved is good enough as you may not always have the time to read all the new updates.

Mikey:

So I guess it’s about having an internal culture that openly shares knowledge and relies on each other, as opposed to going out and having to source everything yourself every time?

Chloe:

Yeah, so if you’ve got somebody who’s just joined who is new to SEO or has a years experience, they can then tell you new things as well. It’s something I think Impression and my team had as well, especially when we first went into lockdown, we had daily huddles. Being able to share knowledge really helps people’s confidence grow. If you’re just telling people and giving out tasks all day, they’re not going to have that confidence. So it’s definitely a key part of it.

22:48 – Dealing with rejection

Mikey:

You’re in an absolutely awesome role now and it’s really admirable. There must have been times where you’ve experienced either rejection from job applications or something that hasn’t gone to plan. Can you elaborate on any of those situations?

Chloe:

I was looking for an in-house role for quite a while and I knew when I was at Impression I wasn’t ready to just leave. I wanted to work for a brand that I really cared about with people that also cared about the brand itself. Naturally, I applied for some jobs where I did get some interviews and I spoke about my specialism and the skills and things that I enjoy. There were rejections, some wanted a specialism somewhere else or just didn’t think the role was right for me. It did make me go away and learn more and pick up new skills. Every business is completely different and it made me reflect on what I actually want to do. When I learnt more about what some jobs entailed, I realised that they weren’t right for me either. Sometimes you do get rejected, especially early on in your career when looking for internships. I went looking for jobs thinking that I’m perfect and I’m going to be so good at this, and when I spoke German, most businesses hung up on me, which was really hard. Everything happens for a reason, and a couple of years ago I didn’t think I would find an in-house job because I loved my clients and I thought they were amazing with what they were doing. I didn’t think I would find a job that would tick all the boxes. If there is one thing you should do is definitely ask for feedback. Get feedback from colleagues, or when in 1-2-1’s or during reviews. Asking what you did right or wrong and trying to get people to give you feedback is really useful to be able to grow and develop, because not everyone can get the job. You just have to think and learn from that.

25:17 – Career defining moments

Mikey:

Let’s look back across your career. What have been some pivotal moments for you? What has really helped you level up at various different points?

Chloe:

There’s one thing that comes to mind immediately and that’s with you. I guess my biggest adult career moment was winning a pitch with you, and the massive RFP that we worked on. It was hard and I had a lot of confidence knocks along the way and I had a lot of stress cries, not knowing if I was good enough or not. It was pivotal because then having worked on that account until I left, it was sad to say bye to it. But I was happy from seeing where I’d grown with the account. Things like that are just amazing. I remember going into the pitch and you’re sweating, flustered and worried that what you’re about to say probably won’t make sense. But then everyone’s like, yeah, that’s really good, can you sign this massive contract with us? 

Mikey:

It must have definitely been a confidence thing, retrospectively realising that you’re good enough.

Chloe:

Absolutely. That was a huge pivotal moment. The other big one that I can think of was getting the job at Dunelm. But before that, seeing my team grow at Impression and giving promotions and eventually seeing them becoming managers. That was something I always wanted to do, selfishly, but obviously I care about them growing, but seeing that and watching people grow, you end up learning a lot about yourself as well. So growing a team has been pivotal and seeing my team now grow has been great.

27:46 – Breaking into the marketing industry

Mikey:

You’ve talked about how you got into marketing, but what about your university degree, what about anything pre-university? Was there anything that’s really added value to your career that’s helped you progress?

Chloe:

It’s been a really big challenge because I studied German philosophy, and I’m not a German philosopher. It’s hard because I do think there is value in going to Uni, but I don’t think that everyone gets the chance to go to university but also, it’s not for everyone. For me, going to university was good as I moved to a big city. I’m from a small town in North Shropshire which is tiny, so finding a city with lots of job roles was really eye opening, but wasn’t something I discovered until I was applying to jobs. My point is not necessarily saying that you should go to Uni, but about looking broader in terms of city and places. It’s something that really helped me. You should also keep in touch with business news, I found this quite helpful. I don’t think A-levels helped me as much, but it does equip you with public speaking skills because I was involved in drama, which in hindsight also helped me with my confidence. Languages were helpful, I think everyone should learn another language even if you don’t want to travel or can’t travel, learning another language through an app on your phone just allows you to broaden your mind in that way. It allowed me to immerse myself into different cultures like when living in Baravara in Germany. I think just staying open minded has really been important for me early on in my career.

30:00 – Career advice for search marketers

Mikey:

What sort of advice would you give yourself, thinking back to when you started your career in search?

Chloe:

The biggest thing I’d say is do your research before an interview. Be prepared by just relaxing your shoulders and smiling. Being relaxed is important. This might be cringey but I can be quite philosophical and sometimes you just have to sit in the moment and focus on taking things in steps. Thinking about everything you’re going to do once you get a job can be exhausting. There were a lot of times whilst agency-side where I didn’t sit in the moment and just enjoy it. Often I was planning ahead for something else instead of focusing on something. That’s something I’ve learned to do now but I wish I’d done it sooner. Realising that life does go on is important, but this doesn’t dismiss stress. Don’t dismiss stress. Try to enjoy it and bring that energy to the people around you, because not only would you big them up, they would also big you up also. This will make you into a more confident and happier person.

31:36 – Knowing when to move on

Mikey:

What about anyone who’s been working in a similar situation for a while, feeling perhaps like they’re starting to stagnate a bit and are looking for that next role?. Do you have any advice for anyone who might be in that position?

Chloe:

It’s definitely about understanding what you enjoy and what you want to do. Ask yourself why you’re even thinking about moving, does the grass look greener on the other side? Because it’s not always greener. Often in digital marketing things change all the time, you could move into a business where you’re really valuable and you’re doing everything you want to do, and then the business can change where you could be perceived as being less valuable. At that point, there is always another business that would thrive from having that skill set. So I think that understanding what has changed is really important. Is it because you’re managing a big team, or is it because you’re working with developing and having to learn new things, or is it because you’re working on your own? Once you understand that and what you’re looking for, then you can start asking questions at interviews. I’ve interviewed a lot of people as a hiring manager, and when they don’t ask you questions it can be a bit concerning because they need to pick you as much as you need to pick them. If you like working with people, then that’s something you need to say, or if you want to learn from other people, or you’re really good at getting your head down on tasks. You have some people who know exactly what they want to do, like they know their technical SEO skill set or they know what type of copywriter they are. So in an interview, just ask questions and find a job where you match with it, because in digital there’s no shortage of job roles at the moment. Every business needs to think more digitally and you might teach them something in your interview as well. I’ve interviewed specialists and realised that the business may really need you and that’s important.

Mikey:

Amazing, and this very much brings us to a close, so I can’t thank you enough for joining us. Hopefully there have been some good takeaways there for everyone who’s watching. Thank you very much Chloe.

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