From SEO Consultant to Zoho Malaysia's Marketing Manager: The Transition

People only see the current title and assume it was a straight line. Regional Marketing Manager at a global SaaS company. Must have studied marketing at a renowned university and climbed the corporate ladder neatly.

The real growth is not a straight line.

The reality is that it started with a failed engineering student paying for repeat papers with income from link building. I shared parts of this story on Medium in 2016, when the wound was still fresh.

This blog post is the whole arc, with an ending that 2016 me could not yet see.

Let's get started with the timeline.

The Timeline

For those who want the roadmap before the story:

Late 2000s: Enrolled in a Diploma in Chemical Engineering at Segi University College (now Segi University). Discovered internet marketing around the same time and became self-taught in SEO, especially technical SEO and Link Building. Started selling link-building services on Fiverr and other online forums while studying.
Four years later (2012): Finished my diploma that should have taken two and a half years and sadly, failed my Engineering Mathematics twice along the way, despite scoring A1 in my Additional Math for SPM (guess I wasn't focusing).
First job (February 2012): Started as a Quality Control Officer at a Melbourne-based market research firm. I was one of the pioneer hires in its new Malaysia brand. Promoted in a few months. Constantly learning different aspects of digital marketing apart from SEO.
Side hustles: Built niche websites and monetized them through AdSense and affiliate offers. Sold my first site, an Android jailbreak blog ranking in the top spots for primary keywords for US$1,000.
Age 25: Resigned from my senior role offer to finish my BA (Hons) Business Studies degree through Cardiff Metropolitan University. Worked on freelance digital marketing projects while studying. Graduated at 27, in late 2016.
The agency years: First full-time digital marketing freelancing role at Exposureville, a Klang Valley-based digital marketing agency. Later worked as an IT & Digital Marketing manager for an e-waste company in Klang. Co-founded Magnes Marketing, a search marketing agency for startups and SMEs.
The consultant years: Built an SEO consulting practice under my own name. Specialized in technical SEO and Google Analytics. Worked on increasing inquiries for various B2B businesses. Named as one of Malaysia's Top SEO consultants in multiple blogs.
The Year 2021: Joined Zoho after seeing the job opportunity on LinkedIn. Started as a marketing consultant, now Regional Marketing Manager for Zoho Technologies Sdn Bhd in Malaysia.
Today: Twelve years in marketing across agency, consulting, and in-house. Still building projects on the side like Kerja Remote, Kerja AI, and Agencies—Asia under Techpartner Malaysia.

Now the parts that the timeline hides.

I wanted to be an Engineer.

I wanted chemical engineering badly.

My father, who spent more than fifteen years in engineering firms, suggested I start with a diploma to understand the fundamentals first. He was right in a way, and I was completely blind sided.

The first semester went well with a 3.67 GPA. Then semester three arrived, and I failed Engineering Mathematics 1. I re-sat and failed again. Despite scoring a distinction in Mathematics and Additional Mathematics at school, I was still failing the subject that should have been an easy pass.

The failure did not make sense to me, so I blamed everything except the obvious answer: THIS WAS NOT MY SUBJECT!

Then came another subject, Mass and Energy Balance, which I also failed.

A diploma meant for two and a half years took me four. I repeated papers in classes full of juniors. It was embarrassing, and the embarrassment was useful. It forced the first honest question of my career: if not this, then what?

The side hustle that paid for my failures

I always wondered whether, if I had focused more in class, I would not have failed. But that's not the case. The answer was already running quietly in the background; this is not for me.

Around 2007, I developed an interest in internet marketing, not because it was an easy way to become rich, but because of my curiosity and the ability to run countless experiments. And the best part was that it was new in Malaysia.

I read and learned everything, then I started selling link-building packages to websites that wanted to rank on Google. I'll be honest about what link-building actually meant back then.

Blackhat methods.

Tools like Xrumer and Scrapebox made me a few hundred ringgits to thousands a month. Sadly, every ringgit I earned went into paying for my repeat papers. I did not want my parents funding a mistake that was mine. I started being accountable for my mistakes even back then.

I do not recommend Blackhat SEO strategies, as Google has penalized sites applying them long ago. But that grubby first income taught me something the diploma never did.

I could make the Internet pay.

SEO hooked me for good, as I understand how search engine algorithms work and the practices for ranking websites high on search results pages.

The first job, and the website I sold too cheap

After completing the diploma, I still applied for engineering jobs.

None came.

What came was a phone interview with a Melbourne-based marketing research company opening a Malaysian branch. I joined as a Quality Control Officer, was grateful to have a good manager, and was confirmed as a permanent employee within two months.

I got bored within a year.

The work was repetitive, and I was not learning anything new. So, I started learning after hours.

SEO and Content Marketing every night.

I started building niche sites and monetized them with AdSense and affiliate offers. One of my very first sites, an Android jailbreak blog, ranked for multiple primary search queries on Google and was sold for US$1,000.

Selling my first website felt incredible for a week.

Then the regret arrived. I realized that the site had more potential, and worse, I had not documented a single strategy I used to rank it on search engines. I was unable to replicate the strategies I've used before in developing new sites. And this mistake permanently changed how I work.

Today I've documented everything I've worked on for the last twelve years.

The degree that I did not want

The company offered me a senior position.

At the same time, my parents were pushing me to get a degree. In the Malaysian Indian community, a man without a degree gets a label, and trust me, it's not a kind one. And imagine me being an indian guy from Klang (stereotyped for gangsterism and criminal activities).

I did argue with my parents that education is not the only thing that makes people successful. As usual, I lost the argument, and I am glad I did. I resigned from my full-time job, continued working part-time at the same company, and enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Business Studies at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

I was 25.

Friends of my age started their Postgraduate courses (Master's).

Took a partial study loan to cover the fees, because I refused to take my parents' "money" again.

Throughout the degree years, apart from the part-time job, I freelanced on SEO and Google Analytics projects. By the time I graduated at 27, I knew exactly what I wanted, and I made a decision that shaped everything that followed.

I could have started my own agency at that time. But I kept reminding myself of this one thing: Experience is more valuable than money. I know some may disagree with me, but this is something I hold strong to this day.

I wanted to gain experience in how real agencies ran digital marketing in Malaysia before selling my own version.

The consultant years: One Client At A Time

My first digital marketing role came through Exposureville, a Klang Valley digital agency serving small and medium businesses. That was deliberate.

I did not fancy big agencies or companies with huge marketing budgets. SMEs with small budgets that are looking to grow interest me more.

When an SME's SEO campaign works, you see it in the owner's voice. I'm talking about owners who understand SEO and its results. I've handled business owners who dictate and micromanage as well.

The agency and consulting years helped me improve skills the classroom never touched. While working on my freelance digital marketing projects, I joined an e-waste management company as an IT & Marketing Manager.

As I was working full-time, I was unable to work with multiple clients and focused only on two main clients. Then COVID struck; the e-waste company I was working for took a huge hit, and they decided to reduce my salary. That was the time I decided to work on my own search agency.

Two kinds of results came out from two years of running a search agency.

Client proof: The B2B business I worked on saw its inquiries increase by almost 5X to 6X. Clients who stayed for more than 2 years remain clients today.
Personal proof: I kept building niche sites, ranking them, monetizing them, and selling them at 20X to 30X monthly profit. Close to 10 sites over the years. My own properties were my lab experiments.

I had my own rules with the digital marketing practices that I applied for my clients. A retainer of RM3,000/month; all the deliverables were transparent. And I worked only with those who understood SEO and had the patience and sufficient investment capacity over the next 9-12 months. And I also had the habit of being honest and genuine about SEO services sold in Malaysia, as it was merely snake oil with no results.

Strong words from a small consultant. But my defense was always the same: how my own sites ranked.

The recognition that I've received says it all.

And it came from people I never paid or pitched. I'm ranked one of the top SEO consultants in Malaysia on the following sites:

And the best part is, I'm not actively writing or offering SEO consultation now. Yet I'm still ranked among the top SEO experts in Malaysia, even in 2026. I also like that some of the blog posts describe me as sales-focused and result-driven.

What's the point of ranking and generating traffic to your site if you're unable to convert them to paying customers?

The transition: why in-house, why Zoho?

So why would a remote-loving SEO consultant take a full-time job?

The honest answer echoes the decision that I made at 27. There was always a limitation on what being a consultant and an SEO strategist could teach me. My nature is to explore new things and technologies, experiment with new strategies, and see what results they yield.

As an SEO strategist, I've learned to optimize the search channel, drive search traffic, and produce analytics reports to justify the SEO-related tasks being completed.

That's just one layer of the complete sales funnel.

I wanted to learn what happens three layers down the funnel.

Where marketing meets sales, new product launches, product updates, and partner ecosystems, and I witnessed how a global brand actually works across the APAC region.

Zoho is the other side of that glass. I came across the opportunity at the least expected time. Around November 2021, I was not actively looking for jobs, but I often checked job portals to see what kind of roles were being actively hired for.

Then I came across Zoho's job posting looking for a Marketing Consultant for the Malaysian market.

Let me take you back for a moment.

I've been following Zoho since 2016 when I explored their Zoho Mail. It was still early, and they were slowly growing. And I've always looked up to Sridhar Vembu, founder of Zoho, as a visionary in the tech world for his ability to offer tech solutions to organizations at affordable prices.

So I applied for the Marketing Consultant role and officially started in December 2021. Since we did not have an office in Malaysia at that time, I continued working remotely as an independent contractor for the first two and a half years.

And now I'm the Regional Marketing Manager for Zoho in Malaysia. We also launched our office in Subang Jaya, Malaysia, in January 2026.

The organization also fits something I had believed since my Exposireville days: Zoho's entire model is centered on giving small and medium businesses the best software solutions at prices they can afford.

I had spent years helping Malaysian SMEs grow with search marketing initiatives.

This was the same mission with a much bigger lever.

What consulting did not teach me, Zoho did

The transition taught more than I expected. These were the biggest shifts:

Ranking is a channel. Revenue is a system. As a consultant, my job ended where the lead nurturing began. In-house, a lead that sales cannot close is my problem too. I started thinking in pipelines, not positions.
Regional is a different ball game. Consulting for a Klang-based accounting firm and marketing SaaS products across a region is not the same job. The language, partners, events, localization, and internal alignment across teams from different countries matter. None of them matters in an SEO audit.
The long-term sport. Small and Medium businesses need results in months due to limited cash flow, and they need to get the most from their marketing investment. But a global company plays the long-term game. Watching both taught me when each speed is right, and most Malaysian businesses I meet are playing too short-term and often see marketing investment as an expense.
The right mentor. When we work for a global company, if you're lucky, there will be a mentor who keeps motivating you and guides you to success. And I was lucky enough to meet my sifu, Khoo, Regional Marketing Manager for Zoho APAC. Apart from work, he has taught me a lot about life too. If I were still a consultant or doing something on my own, I might not have met someone who could identify my strengths and weaknesses.
The consultant instinct never left. I still audit and evaluate everything I work on. But the only difference now is that I know what happens after the implementation is applied. Fully aware of what needs to be done next, step-by-step, the right way.

What I would tell the version of me who failed Engineering Maths

There are five things.

And the first three come from what I wrote in 2016, because they still matter in 2026:

Listen to your parents earlier. I know many motivational speakers and successful people tell you not to listen to your parents and take accountability for your actions. I partially agree with that statement, but there are instances when parents' instincts work better than your own. For me, they saw the engineering mistake before I did, and the degree they pushed me to pursue opened doors I was too proud to see.
Document everything. The US$1,000 site could have been a five-figure sale. Undocumented wins are losses on a delay.
Experience beats money early on. The agency and consulting years were my real degree. The paid one just got me in the right room.
Failure is data about direction. Failing engineering maths twice was not the end of a career. It was the start of something greater. The side hustle I ran to pay for those failures became something that kept me hustling hard.
Build your own things throughout. The niche sites, the blogs, the projects. They are my real-life proof of my knowledge and skills. Something that's not dead even after drastic technology advancements. The fundamentals will stay.

My career was never a straight line.

I believe that success never happens through a linear growth line. There are always ups and downs.

There are wins. There are failures too.

And both teach you something new. It's all about the experience that we go through.

From serving as an SEO consultant for SMEs to running regional marketing initiatives for a global SaaS company in Malaysia, the journey hasn't been easy. It was a consistent learning process.

Even I'm learning something new today while writing this blog post.

If you're somewhere on the line right now, failing the wrong course or bored in the wrong job, the side things you do after hours are probably telling you something.

Mine did.

Don't have anything to do on the side. Consider your options and learn something new.

Never be idle!

Trust the process and never give up.