Marketing as a career

Lidy’s career began after she completed her studies in Business Management at Nyenrode, one of the most prestigious business universities in the Netherlands. Her started as an executive for an interactive marketing agency NR6, where she developed a deep love for the rapidly expanding industry of Digital Marketing.

As she progressed in her career, Lidy became more specialised, honing her skills as a search engine advertising specialist at Netsociety, which later merged with iProspect and is part of the global Dentsu Aegis network. In 2012, she moved to Sydney to continue her career in search marketing at Starcom, where she worked with high-profile clients such as Samsung and Optus. She later worked for local agencies like Bohemia and Deepend, handling both global and local clients across various industries.

Through her diverse experiences, Lidy gained valuable knowledge and expertise in all aspects of Digital Marketing, including social media marketing, display advertising, affiliate marketing, and strategy. These experiences have shaped her into the experienced and all-round Digital Marketer that she is today.

From work to passion: How she found fulfilment in education

In her previous roles, Lidy Romijnders found herself occasionally providing training and presentations to clients and colleagues but enjoying this part of her role the most. She discovered a passion for educating others and seeing them achieve their goals through sharing her knowledge and experience. Recognising the lack of emphasis on training in the marketing industry, she decided to leave her role at Bohemia agency to pursue her passion. She has since worked at various educational institutes such as General Assembly and the Australian College of Business Intelligence before becoming a casual academic at UNSW School of Marketing. Here, she honed her skills as a tutor and lecturer for multiple courses, including Digital Marketing at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. As her training roles are part-time, Lidy can easily combine them with her digital marketing consultancy, allowing her to stay current with the rapidly changing digital marketing world and bring her recent experience into the classroom.

Bridging the big gap

Having worked on both the educational and professional side of Digital Marketing, Lidy noticed a big gap between the two. She observed that what students learn as part of their degree is only a fraction of what is required in a Digital Marketing role. Universities often focus on theory and frameworks with limited room for real-world application, resulting in a mismatch between academia and industry.

Lidy’s experience working at Digital Marketing agencies and for businesses directly demonstrated that training and personal development opportunities are often limited, and there is a lack of focus and support from management. Even when a need for training has been addressed, managers are often time-poor, lack motivation, and/or don’t have the skills to provide effective training.

Recognising these issues, Lidy was driven to start facilitating on-the-job Digital Marketing training, where she can use her experience as a Digital Marketer and educator to boost people’s Digital Marketing careers and help businesses grow by training motivated and aspiring Digital Marketers. This drive led to the birth of Lente Learning.