A Day in the Life of Millie Powell, Head of Marketing

By Millie Powell, Head of Marketing

If you've ever wondered what actually happens behind our social posts, brochures, and the ever-growing to-do list marked "website updates", I thought I'd let you in. No two weeks look quite the same in my job, so here's a flavour of a typical one, plus a few things you might not know about me outside of work. Fair warning: it involves a Golden Retriever and rather a lot of horses.

My week, in a nutshell

A typical week starts with me joining the recruitment and business development meetings, making sure our marketing activity lines up with what's actually happening across the organisation, and spotting where marketing can lend a hand with what's coming up.

On the recruitment side, that might mean creating social media job ads, designing recruitment graphics, or sharing vacancies in local community groups to help attract the right candidates. On the business development side, I support new services and projects with marketing activity. Most recently, that meant our new service opening in Bolton, where I organised and coordinated a video content day. That footage will help market the new service and raise awareness of it across nearby local authorities.

Alongside all that, I keep the Wellgate website up to date, publish news stories, and manage our social media channels so we're regularly showing what's happening across the organisation. Ash and I now work together on the newsletter too, since so much of what we do overlaps anyway, and it's been genuinely good fun having someone to bounce ideas off over the last few months.

Looking ahead, I'll be introducing more of a LinkedIn strategy over the coming months. The idea is to get colleagues across the organisation, from support workers through to management, more active on LinkedIn. It's a great way to support your own career while also raising the profile of Wellgate and the work everyone here does. More on that soon.

The best bit of the job…

Hands down, the best part of my job is getting out to visit our services. Every manager and team I meet impresses me, and the people we support are always so welcoming. Seeing the relationships between colleagues and the people we support firsthand never gets old.

I also get to hear all the brilliant stories from across Wellgate: community activities, volunteering, birthdays, festive celebrations, everyday achievements, you name it. Being the one who gets to share those stories on our website, Facebook and Instagram, so everyone can see the difference our teams are making, is a genuine privilege. If you don't already follow us, give us a look. It's a lovely way to see what's going on across all our services.

What people get wrong about marketing

People sometimes see marketing as the nice-to-have bit of the business, the fluff and frills sitting alongside the work that actually matters. Honestly, what our colleagues do every day is far more important than anything I could ever post on social media. They're the ones making a real difference to people's lives. My job is just to make sure those stories don't go unnoticed.

For an organisation like Wellgate, marketing is about more than promoting the business. It's about talking to families, attracting the right people to join our teams, and building a sense of community across the organisation. A well-kept website and active social channels give people a real look at what life at Wellgate is like, whether they're thinking about applying for a job or looking for care for someone they love. They can see the values we live by in the stories, photos and achievements we share.

It's also a way of keeping families connected. Not everyone can visit every day, so sharing updates, celebrations and everyday moments from across our services gives families a glimpse into the experience and care their loved one is getting. In the end, marketing here isn't about making things look good. It's about telling the stories that matter and shining a light on the work our colleagues do every single day.

Working with business development

The business development side of things is Ana, Caley and their Service Managers, who've all been doing an incredible job filling vacancies lately. My part is making sure their brochures are exactly how they want them and kept up to date. Most recently, that meant finishing a video for Sarah's new service, Horizon House, which you can watch here: [insert link].

Life outside Wellgate

Outside of work, life's pretty busy at the moment. I live up in the Yorkshire Dales, which I love. I spent a few years in London and still enjoy coming down for our Ops meetings, but I've well and truly worked out that city life isn't for me.

I live with my fiancé, Tom, and we're getting married on 31 July. Not long to go now, so if my replies get a little frantic between now and then, that's why. We've also got a Golden Retriever called Squash, who some of you in our northern services have already met. She's a gentle giant who loves coming along on service visits, where she's always more than happy to accept plenty of fuss from the people we support and our colleagues.

One of my biggest passions is horses. Before moving to London, I spent several months working on a horseback safari in Africa, honestly one of the best experiences of my life, and one I still can't quite believe I got to have. I'm hoping to get back out there in the next few years to relive a few of those adventures.