Traveling for personal growth, working for professional development
Zoë began her career at a sales agency, where she made significant strides in a short amount of time. Within six months, she earned four promotions and advanced to the role of sales manager. She worked full-time while studying, as the pandemic made it easier to balance the two. At the agency, she gained valuable experience in training and motivating others, all while maintaining consistently high sales performance.
In addition to her work, Zoë traveled extensively during her studies. She spent three months in Kenya volunteering for Doingoood, lived in Spain for six months for her internship, and graduated with a documentary filmed in the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil. She considers Kenya the beginning of her personal development, while she views the sales agency as the start of her professional growth.
During her studies, she completed a minor in Global Branding & Marketing Across Cultures, driven by her ambition to work for an international company. She is now working in the Dutch media landscape and has discovered how valuable it is to build a strong network in the Netherlands.
When she eventually joined nxt agency, she was immediately given significant responsibilities. She was soon tasked with mentoring an intern. The trust she was shown motivated her to work even harder and prove that she was worthy of that responsibility. According to Zoë, that is the major difference between a start-up and a large organization. At a corporate firm, her ideas would have to pass through several layers before reaching the execution stage, whereas at nxt agency, she was given the space to make an impact right away.
From execution to strategic marketing
At nxt agency, Zoë works on the strategic development of marketing and positioning. While her role was previously primarily operational, the focus is now on building a solid strategic foundation upon which nxt agency’s marketing and communication activities can continue to grow. To further strengthen this development, she is pursuing the NIMA B Business Marketing certification, which allows her to further professionalize the agency’s marketing strategy.
In this role, she ensures that all components of the marketing strategy are interconnected. She is working on a strategy where the PESO model, the marketing mix, and the positioning align seamlessly. Throughout this process, one principle remains central: nxt agency is not just an external PR firm, but a strategic partner that becomes part of the organization and works toward the same goal.
Her goal is to build a scalable marketing system where strategy and execution reinforce each other, and where nxt agency increasingly positions itself as a strategic PR partner for organizations looking to elevate their expertise into thought leadership.
Translating strategy into visible results
Beyond developing the strategic direction, Zoë translates it into concrete initiatives. She creates content, optimizes the website and search visibility, maps the customer journey, analyzes marketing performance, and allocates the marketing budget effectively. Additionally, she identifies opportunities for thought leadership, conducts PR scans, writes knowledge articles, and researches which events and initiatives contribute to the visibility and authority of nxt agency.
In addition to marketing for nxt, she works one day a week in the PR department. Her biggest success to date is the PR campaign for Ebike4Delivery, with which she achieved the highest PR value ever for nxt: a staggering €1,173,998.85.
Outside of her marketing and PR work, Zoë has a great passion for photography. She inherited this love from home and has been developing it since a young age. She is now increasingly applying her photographic eye for nxt agency clients. In the coming years, she aims to further strengthen the marketing culture within the agency and give visual language an even more prominent place in their service offerings.
Be sure to connect with Zoë on LinkedIn to follow her developments and insights.
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