Women in Digital Marketing - Linking up Great Minds

Lee-Ann is back with another podcast. This time, featuring two lovely ladies from LinkUnite, an exclusive invite-only women’s retreat and digital marketing forum that sounds like the perfect combination of a girls’ night of breaking the glass ceiling. “Dedicated to lifting up female founders in the digital industry.”Founder and CEO, Amanda Farris and President and COO Sara Malo will be joining Lee-Ann to talk about empowering women in the digital marketing industry. Amanda has worked in tech, real estate, finance, architecture, and design industries and is now sharing her skills in marketing and global communications with the wider world. Sara has been in the marketing industry for 22 years, a topic she regularly talks about in her blog as well as on respected podcasts. With such a women-centred podcast, we’re asking, how can women excel in the affiliate marketing industry? Are there any ways that women can help each other excel in the affiliate industry? And why would more women in affiliate marketing be beneficial to the industry as a whole?What can women do to help each other in the affiliate marketing industry?Well, if we’re to take LinkUnite as an example, that concept came about with a simple question between two women, Amanda and Sara: are there any events that cater to women in affiliate marketing?Amanda said of her career history, and contribution to women in the industry, “I have basically just meandered my way into really driving home the female initiatives in our industry and uplifting the women in the digital marketing space.”And that starts with simply having the courage to speak up and team up. LinkUnite started as a partnership, and so can a lot of other endeavours. We definitely have a side effect of women in the workplace trying to prove themselves coming to the conclusion that they have to do it alone. Not true. And this podcast gets into the need for partnerships across the genders. Sara says: “Our events that we have that right now, like our event in December, it's women only, but our biggest partners are actually, uh, men.”Amanda adds: “The one-day events that we want to do next year, we want those to be co-ed. We want there to be collaboration, you know, any way that they want to participate and be involved.”Partnerships and teamwork are definitely the key to driving inclusivity, and women aren’t the only ones that can support each other – but events like LinkUnite certainly go a long way to promoting the comradery in the industry. How can women excel in the affiliate marketing industry?If we were to take gender stereotypes and run with them, women have a lot of strength in the affiliate marketing management industry. It takes almost a parent’s touch. You have to have the assertiveness of the nuclear family father to ask for what you want, but the mother’s ability to nurture a relationship and compromise where you need to. This is clear in Amanda, who tells aspiring affiliate managers: “You don't have to have the education, all the certifications or anything to really hop in. You just have to have creativity and a hard work ethic and you can really get anywhere you want to go. And I think that the story sharing aspect is shared experiences is the quickest way for people to learn, grow, and evolve.” How can more women in affiliate marketing management help the industry as a whole?In asking about the industry as a whole, Lee-Ann said: “I deal with affiliate account managers in our training course that are burnt out, they don’t know how to progress, they don’t know where their careers are going, they feel like they’ve landed a job that is constantly asking more and more of them, but they have new ideas to.”And Amanda had a great insight, saying: “We want to bring in that next generation, that next group of people, and set them up foSend me a text with your questions