PARTNER TESTIMONIALS

Well, that’s it.

That’s the end of my partnership at Pearl Lemon Group.

I spent 4-5 months as a Marketing Executive / Digital Marketing partner and overall, it’s been a great experience – I’ve definitely learned a lot. 

I have only recently graduated and I definitely did pretty well for myself academically. However, having academic skills won’t take you all the way when it comes to the real world of work. There’s knowing how to write a good dissertation and then there’s applying your skills to real working problems. My time at Pearl Lemon Group has allowed me to work on real-world tasks in a way that my degree hasn’t.

I was first attracted to Pearl Lemon Group since I was interested in SEO and Digital Marketing. The UK had just gone into local lockdown and since Pearl Lemon is a remote agency, it seemed like a great fit! I applied via AngelList and after an initial trial week, I started my partnership.

It was very bizarre working remotely at first, but after a little bit of adjustment, I adapted and I can now definitely appreciate the flexibility that working remotely provides. As it happens, since finishing my degree and my partnership at Pearl Lemon Group, I have started a job as an SEO Consultant in a different remote agency.

I can definitely say that my partnership has provided me with skills that have helped me in my full-time role as an SEO Consultant. Of course, the “hard” marketing skills that I’ve learnt have been helpful, but the softer skills that I’ve learnt have been highlighted since I’ve started my new role. 

Here’s a summary of some of the key tasks that I was involved with at Pearl Lemon Group:

• Social Media Management (and creation of posts for social media)
• B2B Lead Generation campaigns
• Email Marketing campaigns
• Partnership calls
• Website testing and suggesting improvements to websites
• Using Google Analytics to reduce bounce rates on Pearl Lemon Group websites
• Directory listing
• SEO Keyword Research
• Competitor research
• Content Creation
• Suggesting improvements to on-page SEO 
• Finding new, more efficient software tools
• SWOT analysis of competitors
• Creating descriptions and timestamps for YouTube videos

However, there is a whole other list of skills that I developed that have been highlighted since starting my full-time role:

• Professional communication
• Crafting professional emails
• Public Speaking
• Adhering to deadlines
• Time management
• Communication specific to working remotely
• Task organisation (using software like Trello)
• Having full responsibility for tasks
• Having an understanding of how I can best tackle a task

Since the partnership allowed me to work on a very varied number of tasks, it definitely provided some clarity on which types of tasks I enjoyed and which ones I didn’t. This sort of information is valuable when deciding on which path to choose when deciding on roles for a future career. 

One of my tasks throughout my partnership was to find PPC (Pay Per Click) Marketing Agencies who would be willing to partner with Pearl Lemon Group. The way it would work was that if we had clients who were interested in PPC, we could refer them to the partner and they could refer clients who were interested in SEO to us. 

What was quite exciting was that it was my idea to find a PPC partner in the first place. I had done some competitor research on another SEO agency’s website and I found that they had partnered up with a PPC agency in the same way.

What I had to do was to create an email campaign using a program called Mailshake, to reach out to hundreds of different agencies to see if they wanted to get onto a call to discuss more. It got pretty intimidating when I had to actually follow through and call the agencies. However, I very quickly adapted. I enjoyed having the partnership calls and speaking to agency owners but it definitely made me realise that I would much prefer doing something else for a career than cold calling 9-5 every week.

Nearing the end of graduation, I honestly had no clue what job I wanted to launch into. My mind seemed to change every other week haha. At one stage, I considered software sales as a career and THANK GOD I didn’t go into it. I think I was attracted to the high earning potential, to be honest. However, having the experience of those partnership calls allowed me to realise that a career in sales wasn’t for me. I see that as extremely valuable. 

As well as helping me realise what I didn’t enjoy, it made me realise what I did enjoy. The SEO tasks that I worked on throughout my time at Pearl Lemon Group were definitely the most exciting. One of my tasks was to create an SEO focussed content plan for Plant Sumo, a vegan meal prep business that Deepak has recently started. I had to use SEO tools like Ahrefs to research what the best topics to write a blog on would be. 

Of course, since I’ve now started a full-time job as an SEO Consultant, understanding that I enjoyed SEO tasks were very valuable in helping me choose which jobs to apply for. My point in saying all this is that I definitely valued being able to try lots of different types of tasks during my partnership at Pearl Lemon Group. During a Pearl Lemon Group Partnership, if you ever want to try something new, you can ask to help out with a different type of task.

Every week, we would have to write a weekly blog post. I really enjoyed doing this each week as it acted as a way of journaling as well as writing up what I had accomplished in the week. I would stick on some calming jazz music, have a cup of tea next to me and I would start writing as the sun shone through my window. 

What is particularly good about having to write about your tasks for the week is that it acts as something that you can show to employers to demonstrate the types of tasks that you have completed. When writing my CV, I could look back at the partnership blogs that I wrote to remind me of what types of tasks I worked on. 

On another note, I definitely appreciated the structure in my life that the Pearl Lemon Group partnership gave me. Since I had spent the last 3 years living the student lifestyle, my sleep cycle was terrible. Thanks to my partnership, I was forced to wake up each day at a reasonable time and get my tasks done for the day. My sleep cycle has never been better! 

Deepak (the founder of Pearl Lemon Group) has some interesting habits in terms of waking up early. He aims to wake up at 4.30 am each morning. I found this inspiring and his habits, as well as the hardworking habits of the team, have definitely rubbed off on me. I’m not waking up as early as 4.30 am yet, but I’m waking up early enough to go on a walk in the morning to watch the sunrise.

I loved working with a team of remote people from around the World. During my time at Pearl Lemon Group, I worked with people from:

• The United Kingdom
• The United States of America
• India 
• Greece
• Spain 
• Poland
• Egypt
• Probably some other countries (but I’ve forgotten haha)

I found this exciting since I was working on tasks with people from completely different countries and cultures to my own. I enjoyed the connections that I made with people and luckily, I can stay in contact with people over Linkedin.

What’s more, the flexibility of being able to work wherever you want to when working remotely is insane. I’m in a long (ish) distance relationship and having the flexibility to travel and then work at my girlfriend’s house is definitely a plus. In fact, I loved working remotely so much that I’ve ended up in a remote job. If it wasn’t for completing this partnership, I might have been working in another role entirely.

Each week, we had team calls which was an opportunity to discuss what tasks we had completed throughout the week. It was also a chance to speak to the people in the team. I think that this is extremely important when working in a remote team. The calls were informal and we often had icebreakers to the start of the call each week. This helped to get to know the people in the team better. The team that I worked with were hardworking, vibrant individuals and I enjoyed working alongside them. 

Overall, my partnership has been a fantastic experience and has acted as a launchpad to get into my current role as an SEO Consultant. I have loved my time at Pearl Lemon Group and will definitely value the skills that I’ve learnt for years to come. If you’re looking for a great remote partnership with the flexibility to work around your studies/other priorities, definitely consider a partnership with Pearl Lemon Group. You won’t regret it.

That’s all for now.