Kateryna Bilokon
Chief Operating Officer

Could you please tell us how and when you decided to start your journey in online marketing?

— I could say that it was fate that decided it, not me 🙂 

My journey in online marketing began when my friend invited me to join her team as an SMM manager. This project was an all-Ukrainian media magazine. 

While working for this organization, my responsibilities expanded, so I didn’t immediately notice that I started performing marketing tasks. For example, finding new channels for sales and communication. That’s how I got into the world of internet marketing that we are used to. 

After that, I worked for 2 years as a marketer in a Ukrainian agency that is among the top 100 best design agencies in the world. 

Currently, I am the Chief Operating Officer at Solve Marketing 🙂

What projects have you worked with during your career?

— For 1.5 years, I worked with an all-Ukrainian online media magazine. When I started working on the project, the FB page had only 40 subscribers, and the site’s views barely reached 1,000 per day. Our team worked hard and we achieved great results.  

For example, we reached 3 million website views per month. That’s a great figure, isn’t it? This is the result for January, the month that is considered the least successful for the media in general. We were constantly developing, our advertising budgets were growing, and more and more advertisers were asking us to place their materials. 

After online media, I worked for almost a year in the team of a Ukrainian politician as an SMM and PR manager. 

After that, I joined a design agency as a marketer. I was actively involved in the company’s SMM promotion, as I had a lot of experience in this area; developing the agency’s product line, and searching for new lead generation channels.

What has been interesting in your work recently?

— I started my career at Solve Marketing as a Project Manager. At the time, I thought I already knew everything, but here I really improved my knowledge and skills. Because our agency has a selection of projects on different topics, with different promotion strategies and approaches, it really contributes to professional and personal development. 

At one time, I could work on a project for an educational agency and a case study of a SAAS product aimed at the European market. The goal is the same — lead generation, but the ways to achieve it are completely different.

My personal impression is that when I worked on one project, I started thinking linearly. And when you took on several projects at once, you somehow pumped up your thinking, assessed the situation more comprehensively, and saw ways to develop and solve problems where they seemed to be nonexistent. In my current position, this comes in handy.

What is your mission?

— My overall mission is to bring value through my work. To help the client meet all the needs of his business. And to make sure that the client’s product is known and useful to those people who need it. 

My mission as a COO is to clearly organize the team’s work for the overall success of our clients’ projects.

What are the pros and cons of the CCO profession in your opinion?

— The advantages are teamwork and continuous development. The agency employs a lot of experts, and you improve your knowledge by working side by side with them. This development is also due to working with projects in different industries. That is, to work with each project, you need to dive deeper into the industry as a whole, learn how the business works, study the product and its competitors, etc. 

Anxiety 😉 Today, this feature of worldview is considered a disadvantage. But for a COO, it is rather an advantage and a guarantee of quality work. After all, you constantly monitor the workflow at all stages. However, excessive anxiety can contribute to professional burnout and loss of desire to work in this position, which is a disadvantage.

What is the most difficult thing for you right now in your work as a COO?

— Sometimes Mercury retrograde happens in the work of a COO:)

That is, at some point, many problems arise simultaneously on all fronts, and everything goes wrong. That’s what the COO is for — to solve these difficulties and bring everything back to peace and productivity.

What qualities should a COO have? 

— The COO should have nerves of steel, a flexible outlook, be sincere in communication, and be open to new things and criticism. 

Because the COO’s work can be criticised by both the agency head and team members. Therefore, it is important to be able to:

• build personal boundaries;
• separate yourself as a person from yourself as a COO;
• be able to quickly switch between tasks;
• be prepared for unexpected challenges and tasks;
• be stress-resistant.

What were the biggest failures in your practice?

— Small overdue deadlines. In our work, this is a strange norm:)

What advice would you give to a newcomer who came to study with you?

— Be prepared for anything. Results, team, tasks… Everything will be different from what you expect. The main thing is not to be afraid of new things, because you need to be open to everything new when working on projects in an agency.

What marketing trends do you see? 

— People now trust people, not brands. The main idea is that people come first. Profit is great, but the benefit to people is more important. People are the greatest value.

What advice would you give as a marketer to entrepreneurs reading this interview?

— Free marketing is not marketing. C’est la vie. If you are not ready to invest in your project marketing, then you should not start it. 

If you are ready to develop your product, and invest resources in it, but don’t know what to do, then you need our team. We will become your outsourced marketing department and help you and your business! And my experience as a COO will help you quickly integrate your marketing department into your company’s processes.

Kateryna, thank you for the interview!