Michelle O'Keeffe, Founder of travelaffiliate.ie descibes her day
AT THE moment I’m working a six-day week, because we’re in a fast-growth phase. We set up 16 months ago, to provide online marketing for the travel business, and things have just taken off.
Most mornings I log on from home at around 8am, to check mails, and then head into work. I travel from Swords, in north Co Dublin, to Docklands Innovation Park, just behind the Point . It takes around an hour, unless I’m really bold and go through the port tunnel, in which case it takes 11 minutes. Actually, it’s really hard not to use the tunnel, but it costs €12 a pop at rush hour, so I have to be disciplined and not use it.
There are loads of technology businesses in the Innovation Park, and it makes for a really supportive atmosphere. We also socialise quite a bit, which is nice.
If I’m not out on the road meeting clients, most of my office time is taken up with reporting and analysis.
The great thing about internet marketing is that everything is measurable. You can track exactly what is working. It means a lot of statistics and report-writing, which might seem boring, but that’s what the clients pay for.
We have a canteen here, so I’ll usually grab a sandwich and have lunch at my desk – or, if I’m going posh, head up to Ely in the IFSC.
After lunch I’ll usually have client meetings. At the moment we’re working on a campaign with Eircom and Queensland Tourism entitled Best Job in the World.
It’s a travel competition in which the winner gets to live on an island in the Great Barrier Reef for six months, feeding the fish and collecting the post, on a “salary” of 150,000 Australian dollars (€75,000).
Yesterday we were out filming a marketing video, interviewing some of our clients about campaigns we had completed for them.
Online marketing is still relatively new, so we’ll use it to explain to prospective clients exactly what we can do. Video is better than any PowerPoint presentation. Travel companies are cutting back their marketing budgets right now, because of the downturn, but online marketing is bucking that trend, which explains why we’re so busy.
I normally leave the office at about 7pm, but even when I get home I’m back on the laptop, finishing reports.
I realise there’s a bit of an imbalance in my life right now, in that it’s all work and no play, so I’ve signed up for tennis lessons, starting next month.
As things stand, even when I go to bed I find it hard to switch off. Actually, some of my best ideas come to me in the middle of the night, and I have to keep a notebook beside the bed to write them down or I forget them.
- In conversation with Sandra O'Connell