Marketing is going through a major shift globally. We are seeing, for the first time in decades, the great unbundling of TV, thanks to Netflix and relentless pursuit of TV ad dollars by major social media networks. The slow death of advertising as we know it. The rapid rise of digital advertising and so on.
The Bangladesh market is no different. Over the past several years, from almost oblivion, digital marketing has gained significant prominence and become a mainstream phenomenon. An increasing number of brands are now investing in digital.
The internet offers new opportunities and challenges for marketers. These challenges arise from both changing consumer behavior as well as complexities and ever-changing nature of the world of digital marketing.
In many ways, marketing playbook has been rewritten. Today, consumers and businesses alike buy products and services differently. In fact, the consumption habits of digital are breaking boundaries and influencing the expectation from and consumption habit of traditional mediums.
As a result, the skills and tools you need to reach today’s consumers are continuously evolving. This new reality calls for a deeper understanding of the changing reality of marketing and is where the importance of understanding digital as a channel and digital marketing as a discipline comes in. The good thing is that the Bangladesh market is slowly waking up to this realization.
In recent years, the demand for digital marketing skills has gone up in recent years. Every organization is hiring digital marketing experts. Similarly, a growing number of companies are investing in upskilling their people in digital skills. To meet the demand, there is an apparent growth in the number of organizations offering skills training in digital marketing. This is where GEEKY Training comes in.
GEEKY Training, a knowledge-leadership initiative of GEEKY Social, the Dhaka-based 360-degree digital marketing agency, is one of the leading organizations offering digital marketing training and education services in Bangladesh. Started as a small offshoot of Geeky Social, the training institute brings in a host of exciting features that make it an outlier in the digital marketing training space. We will explore that in a moment. First, a look back to how Geeky Training came into being.
While the demand for skilled digital marketing professionals continues to grow, the supply remains a challenge. “There is a huge gap between the supply and demand of skilled digital marketers in Bangladesh,” says Mahadi Hasan Sagor, Co-founder and Managing Director of Geeky Social and Lead Trainer of Geek Training. Industry insiders agree. Many industry leaders we interviewed over the years suggest that finding the right talents for these new-age skills has become a difficult challenge for them. This has become a costly limitation for most companies.
The problem is being exacerbated by a lack of proper training institutions that offer effective solutions to this challenge for companies.
Mr. Sagor says this was one of the inspirations for starting Geeky Training. “We see many of our clients struggle with finding the right talents to run their digital marketing operations. It negatively affects their business as well as affect our collaboration with them.” That eventually motivated Geek team to open up small training operations, which has grown into pretty much an independent operation in the past few years.
Over the years Geeky Social has gathered a tremendous amount of knowledge and understanding about digital marketing in Bangladesh. GEEKY Social has helped many companies market their products and services using digital channels. Since there is a lack of training providers on digital marketing, the company says it has seen an opening and Geeky Training is a response to fulfill that gap in the market.
“The purpose of GEEKY Training is not making money for Geeky,” says Mr. Sagor. “The inspiration rather came from our commitment to building a generation of skilled digital marketing professionals in Bangladesh.” This commitment to a long-term vision helped Geeky to chart a different path for the training institute that now claims to offer excellent quality training with a superior value proposition.
Geeky Training claims that it understands digital because it has been doing it as their bread and butter at Geeky Social for many years now. Geeky Training, to some extent, is rather a translation of all the knowledge it has acquired and opening it up to more people. The company says this practical knowledge put it into a different league in the digital marketing training space.
Geeky Training has brought in a host of interesting features into their training services. The major difference between Geeky Training and other training service providers is in the fact that Geeky Training comes from an organization that has been providing digital marketing services since 2014. As a sister concern of GEEKY Social, Geeky Training brings in practical experience and lessons that it has accumulated from its digital marketing practices for various clients over the years.
As we mentioned earlier, digital marketing is a complex world. The nature of the medium is different. There is a sound amount of technicalities involved with the medium. It is an ever-changing space. New tools and techniques are coming into play every day. Moreover, success in digital marketing space demands a certain type of mindset which is markedly different from what we already know about marketing and communication. How people use these platforms is different. The skills one needs to drive results in digital is different.
Geeky Training claims that it understands digital because it has been doing it as their bread and butter at Geeky Social for many years now. Geeky Training, to some extent, is rather a translation of all the knowledge it has acquired and opening it up to more people. The company says this practical knowledge put it into a different league in the digital marketing training space. Mr. Sagor goes on to explain a list of reasons Geeky Training is different. Here are some of them:
As a digital marketing services agency, Geeky has learned hands-on about digital marketing. It has gathered knowledge about what works and what does not in digital over the years. The company also learned the struggles of many of its clients due to a short supply of skilled digital marketing professionals. This is a challenge Geeky Social aims to address through providing training.
There are many training providers in the market, says Mr. Sagor. But this purpose-driven approach puts Geeky Training into an entirely different category.
Geek Social is an official local training partner of Facebook in Bangladesh. The curriculum it uses for its digital marketing training program is developed at Facebook. Geeky has incorporated materials particularly pertinent to the Bangladesh market. The high-quality curriculum ensures effective training.
Geeky takes pride in the fact that all the trainers who take courses are themselves, practitioners. “All of our trainers are digital marketing professionals,” says Mr. Sagor. “They are dealing with digital marketing skills and trends on a daily basis.” Trainers bring that knowledge into the classroom. It means the training programs that Geeky offers are practical in nature. You learn theories and tactics but you also learn the applications of different theories.
The advantage of learning from practitioners is that you learn practical things that you could apply in your company. At the same time, it is a validation that the knowledge you are gathering through the training is being tested before and it works.
Trainees often bring their laptops in the classroom and learn through solving real problems. Classes are designed with case studies that learners apply in the classroom. “We offer hands-on lessons to our participants,” says Mr. Sagor. Apart from offering a thorough theoretical understanding of digital marketing, everything else is taught practically”.
Trainers bring in case studies and the problems they are solving at their organizations. Trainees apply those lessons in practice in the classroom. Most of the times, lessons plans are designed around practical problem solving and applying class lessons into practice.
Unlike many training programs, Geeky Training offers a three-month post-training mentorship. “Digital marketing is complex,” says Mr. Sagor. It would be ambitious to expect that someone would learn all of it doing a short course on digital marketing.
We understand that many of our students would need support even after the completion of the training program. That’s why we have added a mentorship component to it where our students could avail mentorship on digital marketing within three months of completion of the training.”
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Geeky Training is a sister concern of Geek Social Limited. The company has big plans for the concern. “We see a growing need for upskilling people with digital skills,” says Mr. Sagor. “Our ambition with Geeky Training is to turn it into an independent training institute that would work in the area of digital skill development in Bangladesh.”
The demand for new-age skills like digital marketing is growing rapidly. However, the overall education landscape in the country remains unprepared for this shift in the job market. Hence, growing unmet demand for skills professionals in these areas.
Geeky Training aims to address these challenges by designing and offering effective training courses on new-age digital skills to young graduates and professionals in Bangladesh. Done right, the opportunity for making a difference is huge for Geek Training in this space.
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Looking to improve your digital marketing skills? Learn more about Geeky Training here.
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Disclosure: This is a branded content developed in collaboration with Geeky Social Limited.
