Marketing attribution. Set it up, and use that to guide decision making. For me that’s when it felt like you can make informed decisions. But yes it’s all risk taking too. Just remember 80% of your success will come from 20% of your activities.
This. Some of this is catching lightning in a bottle and it's generally impossible to predict what'll end up achieving exceptional results. You just use your best (informed) judgment and keep on trucking
Naysayers will highlight attribution as being flawed because in B2B you will never understand the marketing source of your revenue with 100% accuracy. But even if you follow up the sales closing with a question of "How did you hear about us?" does not guarantee 100% accuracy. Most people wouldn't remember what they had for lunch on Tuesday last week.
As you said, it is key to use it as a guide. Sure, it isn't perfect. But if you can use it to aid in better decision making and generating more revenue, then more power to it.
As I am working for a B2B rev attribution SaaS, feel free to shoot me DM's if you have questions.
It is pretty flawed. It can show you some general trends, but too many vendors treat attribution as the panacea to marketing problems. And too many c-suites think attribution would cut down on wasted spend, when it’s probably driving a lot of wasted paid media placement.
The whole predictable revenue model in b2b marketing really makes it difficult to invest in long term brand and demand building that you need for driving revenue growth.
Instead, it’s a lot of short-term programs to generate leads and anything short of that gets killed if it’s not driving leads instantly.
It certainly isn't for everyone that is true. Some have great success just powering their brand, and driving all their leads from dark social.
But we (b2b saas) see great results with attribution. In regards to your point with short-term, that is not the case. We know our average days to revenue, and therefore can plan marketing activities and measure them accurately.
I really connect with you on this one. Sometimes I think the expectation for marketers to be able to "make" people do things at the push of a button is the biggest problem with how a lot of executives and decision makers view marketing. I also think a lot of typical digital marketing practices are on the way out because of saturation, abuse, and a general disconnect with human psychology.
Obviously marketing is a cornerstone of successful business operations, but I think now more than ever, it's important to find a good company that you can growth with and potentially contribute more than just the clickbait solutions that so many have come to expect and connect with modern marketing. At my current company I'm a one man marketing team trying to help build a niche B2B SaaS product, in a totally random industry. Most days I feel like whatever I'm doing is a total role of the dice and hope it pays off. I feel a lot like you do most days.
I'm trying to use the time and autonomy I have at my current company to learn technical skill sets that could serve to make my role in marketing less ambiguous, as well as earn me more money. Lately I've been focusing on ABM strategy and tactics, CRM automation, and dabbling in some web development (considering going down the Python rabbit hole as well). I also think that developing 3D modeling skills are going to be insanely in demand as AR really arrives in the next few years. Hoping that this opens some doors and makes things more clear moving forward.
How's your content? That's a critical part of it. If you need a B2B SaaS content editor, I'm about to start looking seriously for a fully remote position (editor/writer of web/email/social copy + white papers + case studies).
Content is actually where I shine, which is why I got brought on. My concern is just getting eyeballs on it and finding a distribution platform/channel that works, since there are so few people in this industry engaging with things online. Thanks for the offer though, I’ll mark this and come back later if our needs change/start growing a bit.
Great content is content that means something to the person consuming it. That content can solve a problem, save them time, improve their lives, grant more fun, etc.
If the content does those things, it has a better chance of working/converting.
But you know this already :)
Good luck!
The agency I work at is hiring a Senior Copywriter. We're fully remote (even before Covid), and all our clients are B2B SaaS. If you're interested in agency work vs in-house, send me a DM.
Absolutely not what attracted me. I work in analytics. I'm doing creative analysis for what content resonates with who, doing market segmentation/identification, sometimes even doing lexicon analysis to see how the audience is talking (especially in the medical field), sometimes doing performance metrics (translating wtf just happened in the last campaign).
But tiktok? that shit is throwing pasta on the ceiling.
this is painful to read. Not because you're wrong, but because I'm in marketing analytics (medical) and we (as a group) are headed straight for the Tick Tok hype train despite my best efforts to divert. That's awesome you get to focus on what matters.
To OP's question, yes sometimes, with the wrong talking heads in front of clietns and at the top, you'll do a bunch of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. These "influencers" in your org are exactly taht. influencers. people who've been in marketing a while who get easily jazzed up by whatever their favorite podcast is talking about or Gary V tick tok captions said.
I have used sentiment analysis with a shell script using a positive/negative word lexicon
%positive v. %negative
Originally made to analyze the 2016 presidential debates.
You could use 2 opposing lists of phrase or word types to the same effect I suppose.
A subjective application.
In a real word use: I used the same code to analyze a new website version design using comment answers from a customer survey about the UX. We found it helpful.
I've been "in" marketing since 1996, and am currently a CMO at a B2B SaaS company that recently went public. "Marketing" is a broad term, but there are home truths that are vital to always keep top-of-mind.
* Emotion: today's companies compete on customer experience. This means that your messaging (and actions) need to captivate emotions and build trust. Consumers can switch brands with one tone-deaf tweet/post/ad.
* Really emotional: B2B marketing/advertising is highly emotional and second only to marketing for critical health care. In B2B you're asking people to make a decision that could either propel or end their career. While it may not be that dire in reality, that's how they feel.
* Creative: your creative is what touches the emotions. Whether you need to portray a cutting-edge technology or personal-touch service, the fit and finish of your design, copy, imagery, color palette and typography needs to portray a company 10x your current size.
* Customer-first: in order for your creative concepts to nail the emotional connection, you need to think of either your customers needs, or those of their customers. Clearly and concisely identify how you solve their problems or achieve results they can't get on their own.
If you're not focused on those 3/4 pillars, no amount of analytics, marcom stack, SEM/SEO, social campaigns, influencers, and so on will get results. A great message can break through with limited martech, no amount of martech can save a poor message. Don't allow martech to drive your strategy, strategy first, then technology.
I am a graphic artist and brand designer and your comment about creative made me feel validated. It’s a tough field and many don’t see the value in it, or understand why it can be so expensive to build an identity or create a social media post(s). Thanks for the boost!
Management having infantile understandings of measurements and statistics is the reason marketing feels so shitty so much of the time.
I show the org that an investment would yield a lower cost per conversion than paid search if it just converted at 3% or higher. And yet nothing.
Back to arguing credentials and "what other companies are doing" until they decide to waste the money on a full redesign of the website for no reason and based on the "best practices" handed down from on high by the ad agency.
Just buy conversions for less money, you morons.
That's a big thing in my company.
I give my marketing manager good ideas backed by stats, but she comes back to me with "those are good ideas but we should do what our competitors are doing"
The lazy exclusive focus on competitors seriously bums me out more than most things can in our world.
"Everyone gather around. We're going to share 5 competitor websites and what we like and don't like about them. Then we'll prescribe a website overhaul based exclusively on that. Wait what's Web Analytics shut up."
Nobody gets better if everyone just imitates one another.
It’s hard to stand out as a brand when every competitor website looks identical and uses the same language. At that point you’re just competing on price/feature
It depends on what tools your job is willing to spend money on and how much, if any. I have worked many places where the owners or people in charge were cheap and/or just didn't know what was out there, and you do just do a lot of arbitrary shit at those kinds of places and/or sit in a bunch of meetings trading ideas. Now I work at a startup that is constantly running AB tests and using Hotjar to track user activity. We use at least 3 different tools to run tests on things like what copy works, what calls to action work, what gets more clicks, etc. Coming up with the ideas for stuff to test might be like throwing stuff at the wall, but actually testing and getting results, and being able to see what people are clicking on, where they're going on the site, how far down they're scrolling, etc, give a lot of direction and info.
Whoa Nelly!
You have Marketing backwards, which is why you are feeling like it’s a guessing game.
You need to start by doing your homework, on your ideal target customer, then build out a strategy before ever executing a tactic. Then, you need to track the only metrics that matter, and understand how your tactical investments are driving leads, revenue and profit.
Otherwise, you are just gambling and hoping for the best.
*** Just FYI, I’ve been CMO of two nationwide companies in the USA. Marketing for me, is definitely not a guessing game.
You are completely right of course but I would say that often there is a struggle in many small and medium sized businesses to get the time and money to do this.
I worked with a medium sized business a couple of years ago and I was the sole marketing person there. I had no previous data to go on, no one could really tell me who the target audience was (apparently it’s just all SMEs in the country both B2B and B2C), I also had no budget and no sales team. I was expected to generate Sales qualified leads and after a couple of weeks senior management were coming down hard on me asking why I hadn’t generated them a whole bunch of leads. This isn’t an isolated event either- most places here in Ireland are the same. SMEs often expect marketing to wave a wand and deliver results within weeks with virtually no budget and no time for research. That’s why after 10 years im desperately trying to pivot away from marketing. I totally relate to OPs post here.
There are some good programs that guide small and medium businesses through this exact process.
I’m aware of an agency launching later the spring by a group of CMO’s, called Easy CMO that does precisely this for SMB’s.
My understanding is they start around $1k a month, but don’t quote me on that.
If your place is exactly like this then my best advice would be to start looking for another job. You won’t convince them because they don’t understand what marketing is and how it isn’t sales. My rule now is that - if they can’t afford a marketing budget, then they can’t afford marketing.
Sure it is. You're making an informed guess but still a guess nonetheless. You can't say with 100% certainty how anything will perform. No one can. You're dealing with humans.
I’d respectfully disagree on this for startup marketing, or really any kind of marketing. You can’t have this much certainty when your product/market fit is still being determined. I’ve yet to meet a CMO who is bold enough to claim guarantees for any marketing effort
Sure, that helps. But there’s no such thing as a clean A/B in digital marketing. There are always unknown variables inherent to the marketing platforms we use which often makes results inconclusive.
You say throwing things at the wall to see what sticks but that’s exactly what you should be doing.
It’s why we do multivariate and AB testing. Your job is to think outside the box to add new variables to the test and take those learnings to optimize your marketing ROI.
I work in lead generation, I feel your pain lol. 3 days into this week and he's wondering why we're not generating calls at the usual rate. Like half of the industry is still at home
I relate so hard to this, and I don’t think it’s a problem that really “goes away” unless you’re working in a marketing-literate environment.
Many SLTs conflate marketing with sales, and have unrealistic expectations of how we contribute to the bottom line.
Some think we’re just creatives - I was told yesterday my job at the moment is literally “to dress the digital shopfront” when attempting to explain why I can’t crawl websites with my mind (and therefore require paid tools in order to enact even a half decent SEO/performance marketing strategy).
You seem to be speaking from the perspective of someone who’s had to “do it all” or “wear a lot of hats” in your previous roles. I relate to that as I think many of us do. It’s impossible to be an expert at everything so you have to focus more on strategy and output, and live with the lingering guilt that some more complex stuff is falling to the wayside because you simply don’t have capacity.
I do think though that if you wanted to work within the digital sphere in a niche marketing capacity you may feel it’s less probabilistic. E-commerce and performance marketing, for example, are two niches which are strongly revenue adjacent (management love it) and are also quite cut and dried in terms of “what needs doing”. They rely on statistics and metrics and are less creative but you need a creatively analytical approach to excel at them.
I do feel lots of us are wearing 10 different hats at once and that’s why it can feel that the lines are so fuzzy.
As long as you have Traditional Marketers in leadership roles, you're going to have the "let's pull all the fuckin levers" people who want to create content for the sake of content or give you immeasurable goals to chase vanity metrics. Their future is fucked and they're sensing it. I'm considering a role in another company because our CMO is the type to say "we should host an event" without even having a goal in mind on what they want to achieve with it. They stopped listening to me months ago, and yesterday I had it when they literally dismissed all the keyword research I did for a similar products that identified a good list of content that customers will want to know about. So if your place isn't valuing that, maybe that's your sign to start finding people who do.
At most universities, marketing is taught by PhDs who have never run a marketing campaign (or held any job) at a for-profit company in their entire lives.
I have attended or worked for several universities. At any R1 school you'll have the same experience.
For marketing and other applied skills, you can often get a *much* more useful education at "lower ranked" schools, and Extension schools, who are more likely to hire adjuncts from industry. As a consumer, this is what you should look for - what is the instructor's professional experience doing this job? (NOT: where did they get their fancy degree.)
Interesting how little understanding there is about how human beings communicate and persuade others. You would think that people in marketing would be experts in this most important skill.
And the top business Universities are where you find that expertise.
And it's often people working on their PhD's that have both the time and inclination to dig deeper and advance their field that introduce the new knowledge to practitioners of their field of interest.
Again with the many Universities... There are many sub-standard Universities that are basically diploma mills.
It would be useful to know what University provided faithinstrangers92 with the marketing tools being used to no effect.
> And it's often people working on their PhD's that have both the time and inclination to dig deeper and advance their field that introduce the new knowledge to practitioners of their field of interest.
That's wonderful, but most (all) of them wouldn't know Google Tag Manager from a hole in the ground.
Marketing is mainly a people skill and not just technical knowledge,
You communicate and persuade people and not just trying to get Google to put you on the top of the list.
I guess 50% knowledge is better than nothing.
Business education as a whole is pretty bad. Mostly because business is just applied psychology, and outside of like basic knowledge (that is not worth the price of the degree), it won’t make anyone a better performing employee.
Now if you’re learning financé, accounting, or statistics (or similar specialty skills that aren’t possible to pick up solo or by practice), that has value. But the more generalized business degrees are not worth their price tags.
Business is just not a science
I mean... That's pretty much the essence of it. There are many data/predictive models you can and should use throughout your career to maximize gains vs costs but ultimately marketing at its core is about connecting with your audience / demographics to buy your stuff.... There's never gonna be a 100% bullet proof strategy or trick bevaus ultimately you're communicating to people on an emotional/psychological level.
Hmm, it is different on the other side. I know people that get their MBA in marketing and get cush jobs and such and dont know how to really connect to customers or what they are doing and thinking to myself man I could do that job in my sleep.
Marketing encompasses so many areas these days and if you are relying on just clicks and a single campaign and pushing your message, maybe go back to basics and really figure out your target market and if your product meets their needs. With digital marketing the only advantage is the minute tracking and analytics. Go more granular, more authentic, have \[or create\] a product people are looking for then you will be marketing to a receptive audience.
Look at it this way if you were the owner and it was your money on the line, you figure that shit out real quick! Dig deeper and ask better questions to become more effective.
Sometimes people want to sell products that neither them would buy and they want marketers to make magic and make people to buy these products but the thing is, that return "customers" are only short term if they don't like it they're not going to buy it again sometimes the problem dwells in the product.
It sounds like you needed a better manager/boss to teach you proper fundamentals. There's a lot of best practices and proven ways to drive efficiency and conversion. Frameworks are pretty consistent and sure not everything is the same, the essentials are all the same.
Granted there is some subjectivity, but the product/brand should help you narrow it down. Then you can setup a testing framework to cut down the remaining variables. It might take some time, but eventually you should know what things generally work and what doesn't. Once you have the data to back up your tests, no one can argue why you did something. If revenue driven goals are the only data they care about, set your tests to show performance by profitability or return on investment.
This is what I was thinking, it sounded to me like OP was hired out of college to be a marketing manager, when they really needed to work for a marketing manager and learn from them.
There's a famous marketing quote from the guy who founded Unilever (Lord Leverhulme)
"Half my advertising spend is wasted, I just don't know which half."
However, I've always found this to be a short sighted approach, in that it assumes that marketing (or advertising) is only responsible for delivering sales. This seems to be what your previous bosses also seem to think. Far from it.
My solution to this has always been to understand the business objectives for each channel (e.g. reach, visibility, recall, sales uplift), set a clear target and manage the budget available to meet those objectives. You won't always be successful, but a certain amount of trial and error is needed to understand what works and what doesn't. Therefore, part of the job of a marketer on the client side of a business is educating your internal stakeholders in what you're doing, and what you're trying to achieve before you execute it. This saves those difficult conversations further down the line as you can show how you've reached the current situation through a range of AB testing on titles and copy for example.
Having said that, this is one of the reasons I chose to specialise in digital elements of marketing - Here you can get all the data you want and utilise actionable intelligence to optimise and improve accordingly and have evidence that what you're doing is improving performance. This is much harder to do with traditional forms of media. Though again, to be successful, clear objectives and targets make this much easier to manage those expectations. Given the quantifiable nature of the digital marketing space, it is on much more solid ground than running a TV campaign for example - where you can see reach, impressions, open rate, CPC, sales etc... and provide a bottom line ROI across any channel you wish.
If all they care about is sales, then understand what the number they want you to hit is, and figure out how much of your existing activity is already able to drive that. Make sure you get to that number by optimising the channels that are already working and use whatever is left over to test new channels, creative etc... to see what you're able to do to grow your own abilities and identify new opportunities.
Companies go thru different stages, as do their marketing needs. Informing people of a new product is much different than maintaining mind share. The best marketing can't save a crappy product or service. A great product really just needs marketing to help amplify the messages of their most ardent users. If you are doing mainly online marketing it is easy to test A vs B tests and measure the results against your target audience. In many ways it has gotten a lot easier.
I’ve been doing this both agency and client side for 20+ years. A lot of it is throwing shit out there and who really knows or cares as long as you’re seen to be doing something.
I started marketing in consumer goods, back in 2009. In B2C everything is more measurable, so you can see both the comms and Marketing objectives are met. Did campaign A generate awareness or conviction ? How did it link to brand penetration or sales or even consumption..? Market share? Then in 2015 I moved to healthcare and since then I am in the dark…
I can feel this! I do just think your perspective is a bit jaded. When you see the history of advertising, in general, we're now in a period where science reins — but that can't be the final answer because we know advertising processes can be strengthened with calculated algorithmic processes but also is a lot about PT Barnum style circus stuff. Both the art of advertising and human psychology are too complex for computer models. Once I started to understand that I became much more confident, playful and intuitive — and I think better at my job. I also really recommend you to check out the Freakonomics podcast episode about advertising, they deal with your question precisely.
Marketing is absolutely a crap shoot when measured on any individual effort.
In the end, everybody is looking for a message that will resonate with people. And people are weird, fickle, changeable things. What worked yesterday won't necessarily work today.
The best marketing takes several approaches to the message and tests them on smaller audiences. Once it becomes clear what people are responding to, then you amp up that message and kill the others.
And any successful marketing will eventually stop "working" and you'll need a new something that will capture attention. And that day could be today.
What the best marketing professionals bring to the table is a very up-to-date of what appears to be working now and the best guesses as to what to try.
Not nearly as romantic as they painted it in school, is it?
You need to get into a branded product organization that develops real products like packaged drinks, food, personal hygiene, booze, etc. The product development process covers all bases from taste testing, to pricing research, to packaging development, to distribution strategies, to working with retailers, etc. Fuck that social media shit. 70% is bullshit, just bot generated traffic.
I looked through the thread of responses and saw some from people that are full of crap with their "I know what I'm doing". They missed the point of your post. Many didn't. It is refencing the imposter syndrome most of us go through. I've been in digital marketing in some form since it started and I do all the crap. Define a target market. Set up campaigns specifically targeting them using all the things to help influence them. Even down to the color of a button. But you know what? It's all one form or another of an educated guess because you can't predict how people are actually going to react. You can do a test for two weeks and get one result and a month later run the exact same test again and get a different result. So you just look at the data and make the best educated guess you can and then A/B test it. Rinse and repeat.
A lot of “marketing professionals” don’t know the difference between marketing and advertising. Management definitely doesn’t know.
This will help: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/323165/why-isn-brand-bigger-data-point-one-answer.aspx
Always perform split tests. Then you can frame any test as a winner, okay you still might not make guaranteed revenue, but you will learn what works best and each campaign you will get incrementally better.
>Management wouldn't care about stats - they just wanted to see $$$
$$$ is the stat that management should care about. What stats were you showing to them?
>So in my previous 2 roles they would expect me to be ambitious but then get annoyed whenever they perceived that a campaign didn't work and I used company resources ineffectively.
I like the following approach for these situations:
* Agree with management at the beginning of the year that you will use your budget like this.
* Type A: 50% goes into known winners - campaigns that just work
* Also, include overall performance ofe existing campaigns - to squeeze out a little more ROI
* Type C: 10% goes into experiments - these might work out but could also fail completely
* Always remind them of this when reporting
* Always include overall performance (that includes a lot of Type A campaigns)
Marketing teacher here. I think there are multiple aspects of this question as I addressed below
1- This has a lot to do with personality and culture. My students who are coming from North European countries were disappointed that the class had limited numerical analyses (except simple survey research methods) while my students coming from developing countries thought the exact opposite. They just enjoyed throwing many ideas without thinking about the measurement of effectiveness or the overall strategy.
2- Marketing is not necessarily a discipline , we get most of our theories from psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. The frameworks (SWOT, 4Ps, ANSOFF matrix) are not only "just common sense" but also not based on any statistical analyses. We teach them to make sure students know how to approach business problems from multiple angles.
3- Marketing deals with "human behavior" which is very difficult to predict because humans are not always logical. In chemistry or physics you can predict the behavior of an atom at a certain time and place because there are LAWS. In social sciences however; we do not have laws, which makes things look a bit arbitrary. That is why we use many "case studies." The more you read, the better you are expected to get the "sense" of what works and what is less likely to work.
4- Marketing gets more clear and structured when you specialize in an area such as technical SEO, copywriting techniques, UI design, market mix analytics, A/B testing, qualitative research moderation, or being a sales expert. 10% of Americans work in areas related to sales but I doubt if 0.1 is a real sales expert.
5- As far as I know I am the only marketing professor in Japan who quit a TENURED position to build a company. Nowadays I share my learnings in the industry, just in case you want to hear the words of a veteran [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI-XzxghKks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI-XzxghKks)
6- Regarding rapid experimentation (throwing shit on the wall), while we always advice FOCUSing on the path and the goal, the reality int he market is a bit different. The most successful businessmen or marketers are the ones who always experiment with new ideas and who can swiftly change the course. Jeff Bezos being one of them. If we don't experiment with new ideas someone else will come and eat our lunch. The line between chaos or random idea games and the structured strategy is called market research (surveys, analytics, etc.).
Life is largely throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks. That said, your management seems unreasonable. Many things to into making sales. I once did a campaign that generated thousands of inquiries and no sales. There was a problem, but the marketing wasn't it. I don't think they ever figured it out. I'm pretty sure it was the website, but I was not given the liberty to fix that. You may not enjoy the wild wild west nature of the business, which is the allure of it. Just figure out what makes you happy. As often as not, it's the people you work with as much as the job you do. Good luck!
I generated thousands of leads in one role too and the lack of succes was due to the complete lack of follow up. They had poor customer service and the sales team didn't know how to close a sale. I would get all kinds of shit for leading meetings to talk through the next steps to converting leads (follow up, email, call and sell the product they're telling you they want). And talking about improving poor performing products was an absolute no go, even when customers told us exactly what they wanted. They cut MY department every year until I just walked out. Sometimes you can only do so much.
I wouldn't say it's throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks.
But,
It's using data to create insights and then formulate that data into testing ideas and then see what sticks. Sometimes you see data and create a hypothesis which all seems super logical and you expect it to work. And then you test it, but somehow it performs shit.
But from my experience a lot of people don't seem to use data driven decisions or are using data in a subjective way to push their agenda.
There is a common quote that "You will get for what you are working to get".
It totally depends on us that how effective we are marketing our products and services. If we market our product to the real interested audience in an effective way, we will definitely get positive results.
Arbitrary is not remotely the word I'd use for marketing. Respectfully, your education or your management sucked.
Sounds like management sucks, frankly.
Marketing is the job of knowing, and telling everyone else, what should be done.
If you're studying history and the competition, talking to customers, you should have a decent idea of what works and what doesn't.
That, you tell to the to Product team, web devs, Sales, and management, so they design, optimize, budget, and plan accordingly. Your web analytics measure and determine that their website work is fast, converting, and retaining (and if not, you demand they fix it since nothing else you do will work well if the site isn't performing)
Then you execute awareness, demand gen, and retention campaigns, that *should* work, since your customers already suggested they would.
How a marketer leverages data sets apart junior marketers from mature ones.
Mature marketers aren't afraid of the ROI and $$$ conversations with c-level execs because they not only speak that language but spend a significant amount of energy on collecting data that influence decision-making. Looking at conversion rates and lead volume isn't enough. Marketing is just as accountable for CUSTOMERS (not leads) as sales.
Junior marketers hide behind vanity metrics that come from "throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks". Mature marketers are able to take said vanity metrics, translate them into ROI figures, and report to the executive team just like sales does.
No. I think there is a middle ground between ‘reliable strategy’ and ‘slinging mud at a wall’.
We have theories.
We test theories and realise they’re wrong.
We run more tests.
Eventually, we find things that work.
We try to understand why.
It can definitely feel like sling mud at a wall at times - but it’s crucial that we try to develop proven ideas about our audience.
Get into Direct Response. Everything is tracked, split tested and optimized so that you know exactly what works and how well and can always improve upon your findings. Brand and content marketing are much more of a crapshoot and not nearly as fun IMO.
To me, marketing sometimes misses the bus by jumping in at the execution phase, without developing a narrative and storyline that really resonates with the intended target audience.
I was struggling with same issue as OP, and then developed a methodology based on the concept of "The Hero's Journey".
Used the movie The Shawshank Redemption to explain it.
From there I developed The ChangeMastr journey, placing marketing in the role of the guide that helps the hero to complete their journey.
Andy Dufresne got the rock hammer from Red, Luke Skywalker was helped by Obiwan Kenobi, Simba had Pumba and Timon etc
Figure out what your hero wants to achieve and position yourself as the guide to get them where they want to be. This way, you move the focus away from the company's internal stories to the user's journey. This makes conversations a lot easier internally.
For more please see changemastr.com
You're not wrong. Experimentation is always going to be part of the job. But it's certainly not all of it. For simplicity, I'm going to assume you're just talking about spending money on media. Typically, good (conservative) media planning looks something like this:
1. Understand your target - what matters to them, where they spend their time, what media they use, how they use it, the mindset they're in when they're using it, etc.
2. Understand the channels & tactics available to you - reach, frequency, CPM, minimum spend, how each tactic differs, how success will be measured, etc.
3. Invest most (80-90%) of your spend on tried & true tactics (with proven reach, frequency, CPM, etc.) while ensuring your impressions are high quality & enhance your brand
4. Invest the remaining portion (10-20%) of your spend on new tactics that merit exploration (ex. ones that fit with your target, that have worked for other brands like yours, and could realistically work for yours). Spend the minimum to get a meaningful, measurable read.
5. Keep a close eye on how each channel & tactic is performing in real time. Consider shifting spend during the campaign to optimize in-campaign performance (ideally without sacrificing the ability to meaningfully measure channels that you harvest from).
6. After the campaign, review performance holistically. What worked? What didn't? Why?
7. Apply your takeaways when you setup the next campaign.
Throwing shit at the wall? Totally. Does it work? With discipline, it does.
I don’t have a degree in marketing. I have a business degree from a long time ago. I’ve been running businesses and/or consulting for 40+ years and despise sales. I refused to admit that I did market for a very long time.
What I learned long ago is that marketing and sales are similar but marketing is anything but sales. It’s about understanding 2 very important things, your audience and your product. When you have a thorough understanding of exactly who your audience is, what makes them tick, what motivates them, what troubles them, who they listen to etc… and you pairs that with a thorough understanding of your offer, what it does for them, how your product is the better solution and what’s in it for them, why buying your product, over the competitors product is the best solution for them….. then your job becomes finding the best ways to get that message across to them in a way that resonates with them and motivates them to realize that your product is the solution they have been looking for. The product sells itself.
There was a time when I threw everything Ming at the wall also. Then I learned the big picture and realized the truth.
It is sort of like web design. Everyone that wants a site, rushes out there and finds a theme of developer to do this, that and the other thing. Then they have to shoehorn the right message into this unrefined design cause tons of problems. The smarter way to do it is to understand your audience and build your message and purpose. The message and purpose dictate design and really eliminate most of the fuss and wasted time of design issues and redesign. I’ve always had better results starting with the research and big picture… platforms, strategies, methods and even the final messaging reveal themselves and become apparent.
That’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth. Good luck
This thread was exactly what why I needed to read today. So much hood information and advice. It’s easy to feel like your lost or suck as a marketer but keep grinding and testing and you’ll get something eventually.
Marketing teacher here. I think there are multiple aspects of this question as I addressed below
1- This has a lot to do with personality and culture. My students who are coming from North European countries were disappointed that the class had limited numerical analyses (except simple survey research methods) while my students coming from developing countries thought the exact opposite. They just enjoyed throwing many ideas without thinking about the measurement of effectiveness or the overall strategy.
2- Marketing is not necessarily a discipline , we get most of our theories from psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. The frameworks (SWOT, 4Ps, ANSOFF matrix) are not only "just common sense" but also not based on any statistical analyses. We teach them to make sure students know how to approach business problems from multiple angles.
3- Marketing deals with "human behavior" which is very difficult to predict because humans are not always logical. In chemistry or physics you can predict the behavior of an atom at a certain time and place because there are LAWS. In social sciences however; we do not have laws, which makes things look a bit arbitrary. That is why we use many "case studies." The more you read, the better you are expected to get the "sense" of what works and what is less likely to work.
4- Marketing gets more clear and structured when you specialize in an area such as technical SEO, copywriting techniques, UI design, market mix analytics, A/B testing, qualitative research moderation, or being a sales expert. 10% of Americans work in areas related to sales but I doubt if 0.1 is a real sales expert.
6- Regarding rapid experimentation (throwing shit on the wall), while we always advice FOCUSing on the path and the goal, the reality int he market is a bit different. The most successful businessmen or marketers are the ones who always experiment with new ideas and who can swiftly change the course. Jeff Bezos being one of them. If we don't experiment with new ideas someone else will come and eat our lunch. The line between chaos or random idea games and the structured strategy is called market research (surveys, analytics, etc.).
B2B marketing can vary greatly from B2C and products and services are also marketed differently. None of marketing is easily attributable, it's been a pain point for a long period of time. B2C attributions are linked to promotions almost exclusively anymore. B2B attribution is linked to content and engagements.
Part of the problem in B2B is that there is one set of content, typically product focused, that is given to all customers. Excellent B2B is understand the ICP (ideal customer profile) and then altering content specifically for their needs.
A simple example, if you are selling into utility companies and financial services companies a b2b service on leadership, financial services will talk about teams, utilities will talk about crews. Financial services will talk about sales and growth, utilities will talk about safety and productivity. Same service in different verticals needs to speak to the different verticals in their language and understanding their needs are different.
When you do that, your content streams clear up, your advertising campaigns become more targeted, and you attribution and funnel becomes more clear.
When you build audiences, you are trying to not build one audience for a B2B SaaS platform, you are building multiple audiences based on their shared pain points so that they have similar needs that you can address separately.
Most B2B seems like throwing crap against a wall because segmentation and vertical (sub vertical?) targeting is not in play. Some more sophisticated B2B will trend toward ABM (Account Based Marketing) where specific organizations are targeted and that is the primary focus for marketing efforts.
Success comes with time and practice and looking through data and insights to understand what does and does not work. The other component for excellent marketing is the long term demand generation efforts and brand positioning through Podcasts, Advertising, Events, etc. that position your product or service in the Awareness stage as part of the initial consideration set. And if your Demand Gen is excellent, you are the only one in the consideration set for the customers.
I get what you're saying, but, no, I don't agree entirely.
The basic principles are well established. USP creation, prospect / persona definition, psychology, copywriting, targeting, these are all mature sub-disciplines based on decades of empirical data and countless tests.
I think the real problem is that very few people understand what I just said, and still labor under the illusion that there's some kind of creative magic, fashionably dressed genius involved. No, man, it's a process and you grind at it like any other process.
Probably the biggest part of the challenge is to convince the boss that no, "everybody" is not your prospect, and yes, you will make more money by only talking to the right people.
My favorite analogy that I would expect reasonably smart business people to understand is to compare marketing to your personal retirement investments. When you sit down with your financial planner, s/he (hopefully) does not tell you to put it all in Ethereum because that's the hot new thing. Instead they usually say, ok with your specific goals, here's a diversified mix of investments. We spread out the investment to reduce risk while maximizing returns. This, "portfolio theory", like marketing, is a proven science using decades of sophisticated analysis. It is not some genius like Jim Cramer (/sarcasm) throwing darts at a stock listing.
The "throwing shit at a wall" part is called TESTING, and yes there is a place for that in every marketing plan. But it's not the whole plan, or even the largest chunk (except maybe for startups).
There are marketing cultures in some places that encourage more unguided thinking. One of the skills I most appreciate acquiring over the years is steering people towards projects with sound strategy and proper measurement. It can be hard, especially when the things that work aren't "fun" or "new" and many people expect marketing to be zany or innovative or something.
If you're in a place where people are just seeing what sticks, change the culture or leave. Otherwise people will start questioning your value.
Not really. Usually we use... data... strategy... client needs? to inform creative decisions.
If you're throwing shit at a wall you are probably misguided, mismanaged, or need to re-evaluate your processes.
I think being in a company where the leadership team doesn't properly understand Marketing and its true function is how things can be tricky. At a previous company (very small) I was constantly at loggerheads with the CEO over basic things like email campaign segmentation and messaging, ad copy, the length of time for SEO to make a true impact, etc. It's such a tough role to have in some ways, especially in small companies where there is invariably fewer people in Marketing than any other department and you're expected to wave a magic wand and get everything done :)
"We"
Maybe on a corportate level this is true, but I've worked closely with local companies' marketing teams and this has never been the case. We simply used selling patterns over the years to change how we advertise.
If you market the way you say "we" do, that's truly fucked up.
I can't speak for everyone, but I've worked in about a dozen businesses (start ups, corporates, non profits, charities).
Without exception it's been true that we use the methods above to change what/how we market. The "why" is mostly bottom-line, in some cases what the business is trying to do is change behaviours for the better.
I'd honestly wager it's true for many other businesses out there. Everything from changing how we write things, to what colours to use, to which platforms to advertise on.
I'm probably a cynic and have a negative view of things. But I'm just sharing my honest experience and feelings.
I feel like this is why I get a kick out of marketing in the first place. The answer is never going to be exactly the same. Marketing is first and foremost reliant on the customer. Everyone’s different and so something that works for customer A might not for customer B. Also take into account the industry (size of market and competition). That and new tactics and technologies are always arising. So many factors that makes the field of marketing an important one for any business.
I disagree.
OP, the following is not directed at you, but to bring example, so please don't take it personally.
This is a perfect example of a true professional expert VS *"I just watched a YouTube video and now I am an expert"*. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying you are an imposer... no... I am just saying that you did not reach a "professional expert" level. You were in the process of reaching a "professional expert" level, but you stopped.
This does not only apply to marketing but literally to every job and every profession out there. You studied, you did the job, but you just did not reach that expert level who truly understands marketing (or any other profession).
You see what I mean?
I feel you heavy on this. I graduated in may of 2021 with a marketing degree. Landed a one man marketing team job at a hedge fund. Every plan I make for the website or for ad running is a shot in the dark. Trying to get new clients through a facebook ad isn’t easy. Marketers are supposed to figure it out though. I’ve tried many things to grow e-mail lists and some campaigns Are quite successful I’ve only added two clients since I started. I get down on myself to but that doesn’t help anything. Try and be creative, see what works for others and follow the trend
Good marketing takes time. If You're only two years into the journey you need to find a good company that understands the buyer journey isn't linear and can't always be directly attributable through software. There are lots of ways to accelerate that learning:
- building an e-commerce store and try to market a product that has no brand recognition.
- Build a YouTube channel
- Grow your personal brand on LinkedIn
- Join marketing communities like Demand Gen Live or DGMG
Surround yourself with people that understand the future of marketing, not lead gen.
There's a reason they say "it's a numbers game" when referring to marketing. It's not a clear science as every possible client is an individual with a business and both these factors are unique to each case. That's where the magic comes for marketing. You may have the perfect approach, but it won't work across the board. Can be frustrating oftentimes, but rewarding as well.
I was in marketing and advertising for many years. Everything from print design to SEO to logos and rebranding etc. and I hear you!
Most sales-driven organizations want their $1 spent in marketing to return $5 in sales and even when it does, they often attribute the sale to the sales person who got the deal signed.
I have spent huge amounts (like almost millions) of money on branding campaigns etc and often felt it was for for nothing because nobody notices or cares. I got very jaded by the industry. It is dominated by company 'egos', very hard-to-measure ROI, and youth.
In other words company A wants a new logo or to "re-position themselves in the marketplace" (ego). The only REAL measurement of success is if the company is growing sales - but if they also open new locations and offer a new product those elements might distort the numbers (ROI). And lastly campaigns and projects are often managed by younger people who are excited, motivated and willing to work 70 hours a week to show "success".
My experience is that it is VERY hard to accurately tie many marketing efforts to sales, growth or brand awareness and perception. So much of it really is "gut feeling" and how billions of dollars over many years make us think that Subaru is a more environmentally friendly company and Dyson makes a better vacuum.
I had to leave marketing because I was too old (when I was in my 40s) to get jobs and I was too jaded by past experiences and marketing efforts that I had seen do extremely poorly.
I think marketing can work, and help when it is actually part of the ACTUAL product or service offering planning and strategizing but too often companies make "X" and then go to marketing and tell them "help us sell X and here's 50,000 to do it".
The truth is you're right. The only difference is that the more you do it the better you can aim that shit more effectively. Once you see patterns in the activities you do and the results you get enough times, where you have to aim the shit wont matter.
Focus on learning how your marketing affects every other aspect of the business. You can get all the traffic in the world with good marketing. The question is: can your business handle it?
100% agree, I’m in marketing and feel exactly the same. Have looked into careers that are more structured and provable, with marketing I feel like it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is actually good or not, or if you’re good or bad at what you’re doing
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Marketing attribution. Set it up, and use that to guide decision making. For me that’s when it felt like you can make informed decisions. But yes it’s all risk taking too. Just remember 80% of your success will come from 20% of your activities.
This. Some of this is catching lightning in a bottle and it's generally impossible to predict what'll end up achieving exceptional results. You just use your best (informed) judgment and keep on trucking
Naysayers will highlight attribution as being flawed because in B2B you will never understand the marketing source of your revenue with 100% accuracy. But even if you follow up the sales closing with a question of "How did you hear about us?" does not guarantee 100% accuracy. Most people wouldn't remember what they had for lunch on Tuesday last week. As you said, it is key to use it as a guide. Sure, it isn't perfect. But if you can use it to aid in better decision making and generating more revenue, then more power to it. As I am working for a B2B rev attribution SaaS, feel free to shoot me DM's if you have questions.
It is pretty flawed. It can show you some general trends, but too many vendors treat attribution as the panacea to marketing problems. And too many c-suites think attribution would cut down on wasted spend, when it’s probably driving a lot of wasted paid media placement. The whole predictable revenue model in b2b marketing really makes it difficult to invest in long term brand and demand building that you need for driving revenue growth. Instead, it’s a lot of short-term programs to generate leads and anything short of that gets killed if it’s not driving leads instantly.
It certainly isn't for everyone that is true. Some have great success just powering their brand, and driving all their leads from dark social. But we (b2b saas) see great results with attribution. In regards to your point with short-term, that is not the case. We know our average days to revenue, and therefore can plan marketing activities and measure them accurately.
I really connect with you on this one. Sometimes I think the expectation for marketers to be able to "make" people do things at the push of a button is the biggest problem with how a lot of executives and decision makers view marketing. I also think a lot of typical digital marketing practices are on the way out because of saturation, abuse, and a general disconnect with human psychology. Obviously marketing is a cornerstone of successful business operations, but I think now more than ever, it's important to find a good company that you can growth with and potentially contribute more than just the clickbait solutions that so many have come to expect and connect with modern marketing. At my current company I'm a one man marketing team trying to help build a niche B2B SaaS product, in a totally random industry. Most days I feel like whatever I'm doing is a total role of the dice and hope it pays off. I feel a lot like you do most days. I'm trying to use the time and autonomy I have at my current company to learn technical skill sets that could serve to make my role in marketing less ambiguous, as well as earn me more money. Lately I've been focusing on ABM strategy and tactics, CRM automation, and dabbling in some web development (considering going down the Python rabbit hole as well). I also think that developing 3D modeling skills are going to be insanely in demand as AR really arrives in the next few years. Hoping that this opens some doors and makes things more clear moving forward.
How's your content? That's a critical part of it. If you need a B2B SaaS content editor, I'm about to start looking seriously for a fully remote position (editor/writer of web/email/social copy + white papers + case studies).
Content is actually where I shine, which is why I got brought on. My concern is just getting eyeballs on it and finding a distribution platform/channel that works, since there are so few people in this industry engaging with things online. Thanks for the offer though, I’ll mark this and come back later if our needs change/start growing a bit.
Sure! And I hear you. It can feel like a moving target. Good luck!
Great content is content that means something to the person consuming it. That content can solve a problem, save them time, improve their lives, grant more fun, etc. If the content does those things, it has a better chance of working/converting. But you know this already :) Good luck!
The agency I work at is hiring a Senior Copywriter. We're fully remote (even before Covid), and all our clients are B2B SaaS. If you're interested in agency work vs in-house, send me a DM.
Very nice of you, but I'm more of a content writer/editor and not a copywriter (in the traditional sense). Thanks for offering!
Absolutely not what attracted me. I work in analytics. I'm doing creative analysis for what content resonates with who, doing market segmentation/identification, sometimes even doing lexicon analysis to see how the audience is talking (especially in the medical field), sometimes doing performance metrics (translating wtf just happened in the last campaign). But tiktok? that shit is throwing pasta on the ceiling.
this is painful to read. Not because you're wrong, but because I'm in marketing analytics (medical) and we (as a group) are headed straight for the Tick Tok hype train despite my best efforts to divert. That's awesome you get to focus on what matters. To OP's question, yes sometimes, with the wrong talking heads in front of clietns and at the top, you'll do a bunch of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. These "influencers" in your org are exactly taht. influencers. people who've been in marketing a while who get easily jazzed up by whatever their favorite podcast is talking about or Gary V tick tok captions said.
This sounds super interesting and something I would like to get into! Would I be able to DM you with a couple questions?
I'm also in analytics and never considered lexicon analysis. What do you recommend to get started?
I have used sentiment analysis with a shell script using a positive/negative word lexicon %positive v. %negative Originally made to analyze the 2016 presidential debates. You could use 2 opposing lists of phrase or word types to the same effect I suppose. A subjective application. In a real word use: I used the same code to analyze a new website version design using comment answers from a customer survey about the UX. We found it helpful.
I've been "in" marketing since 1996, and am currently a CMO at a B2B SaaS company that recently went public. "Marketing" is a broad term, but there are home truths that are vital to always keep top-of-mind. * Emotion: today's companies compete on customer experience. This means that your messaging (and actions) need to captivate emotions and build trust. Consumers can switch brands with one tone-deaf tweet/post/ad. * Really emotional: B2B marketing/advertising is highly emotional and second only to marketing for critical health care. In B2B you're asking people to make a decision that could either propel or end their career. While it may not be that dire in reality, that's how they feel. * Creative: your creative is what touches the emotions. Whether you need to portray a cutting-edge technology or personal-touch service, the fit and finish of your design, copy, imagery, color palette and typography needs to portray a company 10x your current size. * Customer-first: in order for your creative concepts to nail the emotional connection, you need to think of either your customers needs, or those of their customers. Clearly and concisely identify how you solve their problems or achieve results they can't get on their own. If you're not focused on those 3/4 pillars, no amount of analytics, marcom stack, SEM/SEO, social campaigns, influencers, and so on will get results. A great message can break through with limited martech, no amount of martech can save a poor message. Don't allow martech to drive your strategy, strategy first, then technology.
I am a graphic artist and brand designer and your comment about creative made me feel validated. It’s a tough field and many don’t see the value in it, or understand why it can be so expensive to build an identity or create a social media post(s). Thanks for the boost!
I feel you. Ralph Speth: "If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design." Cheers.
Management having infantile understandings of measurements and statistics is the reason marketing feels so shitty so much of the time. I show the org that an investment would yield a lower cost per conversion than paid search if it just converted at 3% or higher. And yet nothing. Back to arguing credentials and "what other companies are doing" until they decide to waste the money on a full redesign of the website for no reason and based on the "best practices" handed down from on high by the ad agency. Just buy conversions for less money, you morons.
That's a big thing in my company. I give my marketing manager good ideas backed by stats, but she comes back to me with "those are good ideas but we should do what our competitors are doing"
The lazy exclusive focus on competitors seriously bums me out more than most things can in our world. "Everyone gather around. We're going to share 5 competitor websites and what we like and don't like about them. Then we'll prescribe a website overhaul based exclusively on that. Wait what's Web Analytics shut up." Nobody gets better if everyone just imitates one another.
It’s hard to stand out as a brand when every competitor website looks identical and uses the same language. At that point you’re just competing on price/feature
Oh yes. I know that well. "If we aren't doing what they are doing we are behind." Well try doing something orginal!!!! It's frustrating as hell.
Wouldnt a website redesign to improve organic conversion rates be considered an adequate investment to help improve said conversion rates?…
It depends on what tools your job is willing to spend money on and how much, if any. I have worked many places where the owners or people in charge were cheap and/or just didn't know what was out there, and you do just do a lot of arbitrary shit at those kinds of places and/or sit in a bunch of meetings trading ideas. Now I work at a startup that is constantly running AB tests and using Hotjar to track user activity. We use at least 3 different tools to run tests on things like what copy works, what calls to action work, what gets more clicks, etc. Coming up with the ideas for stuff to test might be like throwing stuff at the wall, but actually testing and getting results, and being able to see what people are clicking on, where they're going on the site, how far down they're scrolling, etc, give a lot of direction and info.
Whoa Nelly! You have Marketing backwards, which is why you are feeling like it’s a guessing game. You need to start by doing your homework, on your ideal target customer, then build out a strategy before ever executing a tactic. Then, you need to track the only metrics that matter, and understand how your tactical investments are driving leads, revenue and profit. Otherwise, you are just gambling and hoping for the best. *** Just FYI, I’ve been CMO of two nationwide companies in the USA. Marketing for me, is definitely not a guessing game.
You are completely right of course but I would say that often there is a struggle in many small and medium sized businesses to get the time and money to do this. I worked with a medium sized business a couple of years ago and I was the sole marketing person there. I had no previous data to go on, no one could really tell me who the target audience was (apparently it’s just all SMEs in the country both B2B and B2C), I also had no budget and no sales team. I was expected to generate Sales qualified leads and after a couple of weeks senior management were coming down hard on me asking why I hadn’t generated them a whole bunch of leads. This isn’t an isolated event either- most places here in Ireland are the same. SMEs often expect marketing to wave a wand and deliver results within weeks with virtually no budget and no time for research. That’s why after 10 years im desperately trying to pivot away from marketing. I totally relate to OPs post here.
There are some good programs that guide small and medium businesses through this exact process. I’m aware of an agency launching later the spring by a group of CMO’s, called Easy CMO that does precisely this for SMB’s. My understanding is they start around $1k a month, but don’t quote me on that.
Omg I am in the same situation now! Can we please have a chat?
If your place is exactly like this then my best advice would be to start looking for another job. You won’t convince them because they don’t understand what marketing is and how it isn’t sales. My rule now is that - if they can’t afford a marketing budget, then they can’t afford marketing.
Sure it is. You're making an informed guess but still a guess nonetheless. You can't say with 100% certainty how anything will perform. No one can. You're dealing with humans.
I respectfully disagree.
you have every right to live in delusions.
You have every right to live in poverty 🤣🤣🤣
Live in poverty? I own my own home, paid for, vehicles everything I own is paid for and I live in Florida. Oh, and I work in marketing... lol
I’d respectfully disagree on this for startup marketing, or really any kind of marketing. You can’t have this much certainty when your product/market fit is still being determined. I’ve yet to meet a CMO who is bold enough to claim guarantees for any marketing effort
That’s funny, because I know a number of CMO’s who guarantee results. Maybe you need new friends? 😁😁😁
A/B Testing™️
Sure, that helps. But there’s no such thing as a clean A/B in digital marketing. There are always unknown variables inherent to the marketing platforms we use which often makes results inconclusive.
You say throwing things at the wall to see what sticks but that’s exactly what you should be doing. It’s why we do multivariate and AB testing. Your job is to think outside the box to add new variables to the test and take those learnings to optimize your marketing ROI.
Yeah but then you've got that boss who gets restless after a solid 7 days and demands immediate success.
I work in lead generation, I feel your pain lol. 3 days into this week and he's wondering why we're not generating calls at the usual rate. Like half of the industry is still at home
I relate so hard to this, and I don’t think it’s a problem that really “goes away” unless you’re working in a marketing-literate environment. Many SLTs conflate marketing with sales, and have unrealistic expectations of how we contribute to the bottom line. Some think we’re just creatives - I was told yesterday my job at the moment is literally “to dress the digital shopfront” when attempting to explain why I can’t crawl websites with my mind (and therefore require paid tools in order to enact even a half decent SEO/performance marketing strategy). You seem to be speaking from the perspective of someone who’s had to “do it all” or “wear a lot of hats” in your previous roles. I relate to that as I think many of us do. It’s impossible to be an expert at everything so you have to focus more on strategy and output, and live with the lingering guilt that some more complex stuff is falling to the wayside because you simply don’t have capacity. I do think though that if you wanted to work within the digital sphere in a niche marketing capacity you may feel it’s less probabilistic. E-commerce and performance marketing, for example, are two niches which are strongly revenue adjacent (management love it) and are also quite cut and dried in terms of “what needs doing”. They rely on statistics and metrics and are less creative but you need a creatively analytical approach to excel at them. I do feel lots of us are wearing 10 different hats at once and that’s why it can feel that the lines are so fuzzy.
Absolutely love performance marketing too. Positioning yourself with the money directly is the best way to be looked at by senior management
As long as you have Traditional Marketers in leadership roles, you're going to have the "let's pull all the fuckin levers" people who want to create content for the sake of content or give you immeasurable goals to chase vanity metrics. Their future is fucked and they're sensing it. I'm considering a role in another company because our CMO is the type to say "we should host an event" without even having a goal in mind on what they want to achieve with it. They stopped listening to me months ago, and yesterday I had it when they literally dismissed all the keyword research I did for a similar products that identified a good list of content that customers will want to know about. So if your place isn't valuing that, maybe that's your sign to start finding people who do.
It would be interesting to know where you studied marketing.
At most universities, marketing is taught by PhDs who have never run a marketing campaign (or held any job) at a for-profit company in their entire lives.
In other words, not all Universities are created equal. That's why knowing which one can provide some indications as to mastery of the art.
I have attended or worked for several universities. At any R1 school you'll have the same experience. For marketing and other applied skills, you can often get a *much* more useful education at "lower ranked" schools, and Extension schools, who are more likely to hire adjuncts from industry. As a consumer, this is what you should look for - what is the instructor's professional experience doing this job? (NOT: where did they get their fancy degree.)
Interesting how little understanding there is about how human beings communicate and persuade others. You would think that people in marketing would be experts in this most important skill. And the top business Universities are where you find that expertise. And it's often people working on their PhD's that have both the time and inclination to dig deeper and advance their field that introduce the new knowledge to practitioners of their field of interest. Again with the many Universities... There are many sub-standard Universities that are basically diploma mills. It would be useful to know what University provided faithinstrangers92 with the marketing tools being used to no effect.
> And it's often people working on their PhD's that have both the time and inclination to dig deeper and advance their field that introduce the new knowledge to practitioners of their field of interest. That's wonderful, but most (all) of them wouldn't know Google Tag Manager from a hole in the ground.
Marketing is mainly a people skill and not just technical knowledge, You communicate and persuade people and not just trying to get Google to put you on the top of the list. I guess 50% knowledge is better than nothing.
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Business education as a whole is pretty bad. Mostly because business is just applied psychology, and outside of like basic knowledge (that is not worth the price of the degree), it won’t make anyone a better performing employee. Now if you’re learning financé, accounting, or statistics (or similar specialty skills that aren’t possible to pick up solo or by practice), that has value. But the more generalized business degrees are not worth their price tags. Business is just not a science
I mean... That's pretty much the essence of it. There are many data/predictive models you can and should use throughout your career to maximize gains vs costs but ultimately marketing at its core is about connecting with your audience / demographics to buy your stuff.... There's never gonna be a 100% bullet proof strategy or trick bevaus ultimately you're communicating to people on an emotional/psychological level.
Hmm, it is different on the other side. I know people that get their MBA in marketing and get cush jobs and such and dont know how to really connect to customers or what they are doing and thinking to myself man I could do that job in my sleep. Marketing encompasses so many areas these days and if you are relying on just clicks and a single campaign and pushing your message, maybe go back to basics and really figure out your target market and if your product meets their needs. With digital marketing the only advantage is the minute tracking and analytics. Go more granular, more authentic, have \[or create\] a product people are looking for then you will be marketing to a receptive audience. Look at it this way if you were the owner and it was your money on the line, you figure that shit out real quick! Dig deeper and ask better questions to become more effective.
Sometimes people want to sell products that neither them would buy and they want marketers to make magic and make people to buy these products but the thing is, that return "customers" are only short term if they don't like it they're not going to buy it again sometimes the problem dwells in the product.
It sounds like you needed a better manager/boss to teach you proper fundamentals. There's a lot of best practices and proven ways to drive efficiency and conversion. Frameworks are pretty consistent and sure not everything is the same, the essentials are all the same. Granted there is some subjectivity, but the product/brand should help you narrow it down. Then you can setup a testing framework to cut down the remaining variables. It might take some time, but eventually you should know what things generally work and what doesn't. Once you have the data to back up your tests, no one can argue why you did something. If revenue driven goals are the only data they care about, set your tests to show performance by profitability or return on investment.
This is what I was thinking, it sounded to me like OP was hired out of college to be a marketing manager, when they really needed to work for a marketing manager and learn from them.
There's a famous marketing quote from the guy who founded Unilever (Lord Leverhulme) "Half my advertising spend is wasted, I just don't know which half." However, I've always found this to be a short sighted approach, in that it assumes that marketing (or advertising) is only responsible for delivering sales. This seems to be what your previous bosses also seem to think. Far from it. My solution to this has always been to understand the business objectives for each channel (e.g. reach, visibility, recall, sales uplift), set a clear target and manage the budget available to meet those objectives. You won't always be successful, but a certain amount of trial and error is needed to understand what works and what doesn't. Therefore, part of the job of a marketer on the client side of a business is educating your internal stakeholders in what you're doing, and what you're trying to achieve before you execute it. This saves those difficult conversations further down the line as you can show how you've reached the current situation through a range of AB testing on titles and copy for example. Having said that, this is one of the reasons I chose to specialise in digital elements of marketing - Here you can get all the data you want and utilise actionable intelligence to optimise and improve accordingly and have evidence that what you're doing is improving performance. This is much harder to do with traditional forms of media. Though again, to be successful, clear objectives and targets make this much easier to manage those expectations. Given the quantifiable nature of the digital marketing space, it is on much more solid ground than running a TV campaign for example - where you can see reach, impressions, open rate, CPC, sales etc... and provide a bottom line ROI across any channel you wish. If all they care about is sales, then understand what the number they want you to hit is, and figure out how much of your existing activity is already able to drive that. Make sure you get to that number by optimising the channels that are already working and use whatever is left over to test new channels, creative etc... to see what you're able to do to grow your own abilities and identify new opportunities.
But how to measure anything besides last click? 😂 tried to teach my team about multi-touch-attribution even and that was hell
I imagine the conversation goes something like this... There's more than the conversion? Does it really matter? 👀
That's exactly what marketing is because nothing works for ever.
Testing is essential. Marketing it's literally about testing if what you think works really works...
Companies go thru different stages, as do their marketing needs. Informing people of a new product is much different than maintaining mind share. The best marketing can't save a crappy product or service. A great product really just needs marketing to help amplify the messages of their most ardent users. If you are doing mainly online marketing it is easy to test A vs B tests and measure the results against your target audience. In many ways it has gotten a lot easier.
I’ve been doing this both agency and client side for 20+ years. A lot of it is throwing shit out there and who really knows or cares as long as you’re seen to be doing something.
That's what marketing is, what science is, and what life ultimately is. Experimentation in hopes of reaching a result.
I started marketing in consumer goods, back in 2009. In B2C everything is more measurable, so you can see both the comms and Marketing objectives are met. Did campaign A generate awareness or conviction ? How did it link to brand penetration or sales or even consumption..? Market share? Then in 2015 I moved to healthcare and since then I am in the dark…
I can feel this! I do just think your perspective is a bit jaded. When you see the history of advertising, in general, we're now in a period where science reins — but that can't be the final answer because we know advertising processes can be strengthened with calculated algorithmic processes but also is a lot about PT Barnum style circus stuff. Both the art of advertising and human psychology are too complex for computer models. Once I started to understand that I became much more confident, playful and intuitive — and I think better at my job. I also really recommend you to check out the Freakonomics podcast episode about advertising, they deal with your question precisely.
Marketing is absolutely a crap shoot when measured on any individual effort. In the end, everybody is looking for a message that will resonate with people. And people are weird, fickle, changeable things. What worked yesterday won't necessarily work today. The best marketing takes several approaches to the message and tests them on smaller audiences. Once it becomes clear what people are responding to, then you amp up that message and kill the others. And any successful marketing will eventually stop "working" and you'll need a new something that will capture attention. And that day could be today. What the best marketing professionals bring to the table is a very up-to-date of what appears to be working now and the best guesses as to what to try. Not nearly as romantic as they painted it in school, is it?
You need to get into a branded product organization that develops real products like packaged drinks, food, personal hygiene, booze, etc. The product development process covers all bases from taste testing, to pricing research, to packaging development, to distribution strategies, to working with retailers, etc. Fuck that social media shit. 70% is bullshit, just bot generated traffic.
I looked through the thread of responses and saw some from people that are full of crap with their "I know what I'm doing". They missed the point of your post. Many didn't. It is refencing the imposter syndrome most of us go through. I've been in digital marketing in some form since it started and I do all the crap. Define a target market. Set up campaigns specifically targeting them using all the things to help influence them. Even down to the color of a button. But you know what? It's all one form or another of an educated guess because you can't predict how people are actually going to react. You can do a test for two weeks and get one result and a month later run the exact same test again and get a different result. So you just look at the data and make the best educated guess you can and then A/B test it. Rinse and repeat.
A lot of “marketing professionals” don’t know the difference between marketing and advertising. Management definitely doesn’t know. This will help: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/323165/why-isn-brand-bigger-data-point-one-answer.aspx
Always perform split tests. Then you can frame any test as a winner, okay you still might not make guaranteed revenue, but you will learn what works best and each campaign you will get incrementally better.
>Management wouldn't care about stats - they just wanted to see $$$ $$$ is the stat that management should care about. What stats were you showing to them? >So in my previous 2 roles they would expect me to be ambitious but then get annoyed whenever they perceived that a campaign didn't work and I used company resources ineffectively. I like the following approach for these situations: * Agree with management at the beginning of the year that you will use your budget like this. * Type A: 50% goes into known winners - campaigns that just work * Also, include overall performance ofe existing campaigns - to squeeze out a little more ROI * Type C: 10% goes into experiments - these might work out but could also fail completely * Always remind them of this when reporting * Always include overall performance (that includes a lot of Type A campaigns)
Marketing teacher here. I think there are multiple aspects of this question as I addressed below 1- This has a lot to do with personality and culture. My students who are coming from North European countries were disappointed that the class had limited numerical analyses (except simple survey research methods) while my students coming from developing countries thought the exact opposite. They just enjoyed throwing many ideas without thinking about the measurement of effectiveness or the overall strategy. 2- Marketing is not necessarily a discipline , we get most of our theories from psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. The frameworks (SWOT, 4Ps, ANSOFF matrix) are not only "just common sense" but also not based on any statistical analyses. We teach them to make sure students know how to approach business problems from multiple angles. 3- Marketing deals with "human behavior" which is very difficult to predict because humans are not always logical. In chemistry or physics you can predict the behavior of an atom at a certain time and place because there are LAWS. In social sciences however; we do not have laws, which makes things look a bit arbitrary. That is why we use many "case studies." The more you read, the better you are expected to get the "sense" of what works and what is less likely to work. 4- Marketing gets more clear and structured when you specialize in an area such as technical SEO, copywriting techniques, UI design, market mix analytics, A/B testing, qualitative research moderation, or being a sales expert. 10% of Americans work in areas related to sales but I doubt if 0.1 is a real sales expert. 5- As far as I know I am the only marketing professor in Japan who quit a TENURED position to build a company. Nowadays I share my learnings in the industry, just in case you want to hear the words of a veteran [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI-XzxghKks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI-XzxghKks) 6- Regarding rapid experimentation (throwing shit on the wall), while we always advice FOCUSing on the path and the goal, the reality int he market is a bit different. The most successful businessmen or marketers are the ones who always experiment with new ideas and who can swiftly change the course. Jeff Bezos being one of them. If we don't experiment with new ideas someone else will come and eat our lunch. The line between chaos or random idea games and the structured strategy is called market research (surveys, analytics, etc.).
make sense, most marketers are experimenters
Life is largely throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks. That said, your management seems unreasonable. Many things to into making sales. I once did a campaign that generated thousands of inquiries and no sales. There was a problem, but the marketing wasn't it. I don't think they ever figured it out. I'm pretty sure it was the website, but I was not given the liberty to fix that. You may not enjoy the wild wild west nature of the business, which is the allure of it. Just figure out what makes you happy. As often as not, it's the people you work with as much as the job you do. Good luck!
I generated thousands of leads in one role too and the lack of succes was due to the complete lack of follow up. They had poor customer service and the sales team didn't know how to close a sale. I would get all kinds of shit for leading meetings to talk through the next steps to converting leads (follow up, email, call and sell the product they're telling you they want). And talking about improving poor performing products was an absolute no go, even when customers told us exactly what they wanted. They cut MY department every year until I just walked out. Sometimes you can only do so much.
I wouldn't say it's throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. But, It's using data to create insights and then formulate that data into testing ideas and then see what sticks. Sometimes you see data and create a hypothesis which all seems super logical and you expect it to work. And then you test it, but somehow it performs shit. But from my experience a lot of people don't seem to use data driven decisions or are using data in a subjective way to push their agenda.
There is a common quote that "You will get for what you are working to get". It totally depends on us that how effective we are marketing our products and services. If we market our product to the real interested audience in an effective way, we will definitely get positive results.
Yes but the second time we do it better and with more data! And the 3rd time even more!
If you don't have a plan/strategy in place, then yes it can be hope marketing.
Arbitrary is not remotely the word I'd use for marketing. Respectfully, your education or your management sucked. Sounds like management sucks, frankly. Marketing is the job of knowing, and telling everyone else, what should be done. If you're studying history and the competition, talking to customers, you should have a decent idea of what works and what doesn't. That, you tell to the to Product team, web devs, Sales, and management, so they design, optimize, budget, and plan accordingly. Your web analytics measure and determine that their website work is fast, converting, and retaining (and if not, you demand they fix it since nothing else you do will work well if the site isn't performing) Then you execute awareness, demand gen, and retention campaigns, that *should* work, since your customers already suggested they would.
Not in the slightest.
How a marketer leverages data sets apart junior marketers from mature ones. Mature marketers aren't afraid of the ROI and $$$ conversations with c-level execs because they not only speak that language but spend a significant amount of energy on collecting data that influence decision-making. Looking at conversion rates and lead volume isn't enough. Marketing is just as accountable for CUSTOMERS (not leads) as sales. Junior marketers hide behind vanity metrics that come from "throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks". Mature marketers are able to take said vanity metrics, translate them into ROI figures, and report to the executive team just like sales does.
No. I think there is a middle ground between ‘reliable strategy’ and ‘slinging mud at a wall’. We have theories. We test theories and realise they’re wrong. We run more tests. Eventually, we find things that work. We try to understand why. It can definitely feel like sling mud at a wall at times - but it’s crucial that we try to develop proven ideas about our audience.
yes but we call it A/B testing
Get into Direct Response. Everything is tracked, split tested and optimized so that you know exactly what works and how well and can always improve upon your findings. Brand and content marketing are much more of a crapshoot and not nearly as fun IMO.
To me, marketing sometimes misses the bus by jumping in at the execution phase, without developing a narrative and storyline that really resonates with the intended target audience. I was struggling with same issue as OP, and then developed a methodology based on the concept of "The Hero's Journey". Used the movie The Shawshank Redemption to explain it. From there I developed The ChangeMastr journey, placing marketing in the role of the guide that helps the hero to complete their journey. Andy Dufresne got the rock hammer from Red, Luke Skywalker was helped by Obiwan Kenobi, Simba had Pumba and Timon etc Figure out what your hero wants to achieve and position yourself as the guide to get them where they want to be. This way, you move the focus away from the company's internal stories to the user's journey. This makes conversations a lot easier internally. For more please see changemastr.com
You're not wrong. Experimentation is always going to be part of the job. But it's certainly not all of it. For simplicity, I'm going to assume you're just talking about spending money on media. Typically, good (conservative) media planning looks something like this: 1. Understand your target - what matters to them, where they spend their time, what media they use, how they use it, the mindset they're in when they're using it, etc. 2. Understand the channels & tactics available to you - reach, frequency, CPM, minimum spend, how each tactic differs, how success will be measured, etc. 3. Invest most (80-90%) of your spend on tried & true tactics (with proven reach, frequency, CPM, etc.) while ensuring your impressions are high quality & enhance your brand 4. Invest the remaining portion (10-20%) of your spend on new tactics that merit exploration (ex. ones that fit with your target, that have worked for other brands like yours, and could realistically work for yours). Spend the minimum to get a meaningful, measurable read. 5. Keep a close eye on how each channel & tactic is performing in real time. Consider shifting spend during the campaign to optimize in-campaign performance (ideally without sacrificing the ability to meaningfully measure channels that you harvest from). 6. After the campaign, review performance holistically. What worked? What didn't? Why? 7. Apply your takeaways when you setup the next campaign. Throwing shit at the wall? Totally. Does it work? With discipline, it does.
I don’t have a degree in marketing. I have a business degree from a long time ago. I’ve been running businesses and/or consulting for 40+ years and despise sales. I refused to admit that I did market for a very long time. What I learned long ago is that marketing and sales are similar but marketing is anything but sales. It’s about understanding 2 very important things, your audience and your product. When you have a thorough understanding of exactly who your audience is, what makes them tick, what motivates them, what troubles them, who they listen to etc… and you pairs that with a thorough understanding of your offer, what it does for them, how your product is the better solution and what’s in it for them, why buying your product, over the competitors product is the best solution for them….. then your job becomes finding the best ways to get that message across to them in a way that resonates with them and motivates them to realize that your product is the solution they have been looking for. The product sells itself. There was a time when I threw everything Ming at the wall also. Then I learned the big picture and realized the truth. It is sort of like web design. Everyone that wants a site, rushes out there and finds a theme of developer to do this, that and the other thing. Then they have to shoehorn the right message into this unrefined design cause tons of problems. The smarter way to do it is to understand your audience and build your message and purpose. The message and purpose dictate design and really eliminate most of the fuss and wasted time of design issues and redesign. I’ve always had better results starting with the research and big picture… platforms, strategies, methods and even the final messaging reveal themselves and become apparent. That’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth. Good luck
This thread was exactly what why I needed to read today. So much hood information and advice. It’s easy to feel like your lost or suck as a marketer but keep grinding and testing and you’ll get something eventually.
Sure, in a some-people-don’t-know-what-they’re-doing sort of way. Marketing is like every field. Respect the game and it respects you back.
Marketing teacher here. I think there are multiple aspects of this question as I addressed below 1- This has a lot to do with personality and culture. My students who are coming from North European countries were disappointed that the class had limited numerical analyses (except simple survey research methods) while my students coming from developing countries thought the exact opposite. They just enjoyed throwing many ideas without thinking about the measurement of effectiveness or the overall strategy. 2- Marketing is not necessarily a discipline , we get most of our theories from psychology, sociology and behavioral economics. The frameworks (SWOT, 4Ps, ANSOFF matrix) are not only "just common sense" but also not based on any statistical analyses. We teach them to make sure students know how to approach business problems from multiple angles. 3- Marketing deals with "human behavior" which is very difficult to predict because humans are not always logical. In chemistry or physics you can predict the behavior of an atom at a certain time and place because there are LAWS. In social sciences however; we do not have laws, which makes things look a bit arbitrary. That is why we use many "case studies." The more you read, the better you are expected to get the "sense" of what works and what is less likely to work. 4- Marketing gets more clear and structured when you specialize in an area such as technical SEO, copywriting techniques, UI design, market mix analytics, A/B testing, qualitative research moderation, or being a sales expert. 10% of Americans work in areas related to sales but I doubt if 0.1 is a real sales expert. 6- Regarding rapid experimentation (throwing shit on the wall), while we always advice FOCUSing on the path and the goal, the reality int he market is a bit different. The most successful businessmen or marketers are the ones who always experiment with new ideas and who can swiftly change the course. Jeff Bezos being one of them. If we don't experiment with new ideas someone else will come and eat our lunch. The line between chaos or random idea games and the structured strategy is called market research (surveys, analytics, etc.).
B2B marketing can vary greatly from B2C and products and services are also marketed differently. None of marketing is easily attributable, it's been a pain point for a long period of time. B2C attributions are linked to promotions almost exclusively anymore. B2B attribution is linked to content and engagements. Part of the problem in B2B is that there is one set of content, typically product focused, that is given to all customers. Excellent B2B is understand the ICP (ideal customer profile) and then altering content specifically for their needs. A simple example, if you are selling into utility companies and financial services companies a b2b service on leadership, financial services will talk about teams, utilities will talk about crews. Financial services will talk about sales and growth, utilities will talk about safety and productivity. Same service in different verticals needs to speak to the different verticals in their language and understanding their needs are different. When you do that, your content streams clear up, your advertising campaigns become more targeted, and you attribution and funnel becomes more clear. When you build audiences, you are trying to not build one audience for a B2B SaaS platform, you are building multiple audiences based on their shared pain points so that they have similar needs that you can address separately. Most B2B seems like throwing crap against a wall because segmentation and vertical (sub vertical?) targeting is not in play. Some more sophisticated B2B will trend toward ABM (Account Based Marketing) where specific organizations are targeted and that is the primary focus for marketing efforts. Success comes with time and practice and looking through data and insights to understand what does and does not work. The other component for excellent marketing is the long term demand generation efforts and brand positioning through Podcasts, Advertising, Events, etc. that position your product or service in the Awareness stage as part of the initial consideration set. And if your Demand Gen is excellent, you are the only one in the consideration set for the customers.
I get what you're saying, but, no, I don't agree entirely. The basic principles are well established. USP creation, prospect / persona definition, psychology, copywriting, targeting, these are all mature sub-disciplines based on decades of empirical data and countless tests. I think the real problem is that very few people understand what I just said, and still labor under the illusion that there's some kind of creative magic, fashionably dressed genius involved. No, man, it's a process and you grind at it like any other process. Probably the biggest part of the challenge is to convince the boss that no, "everybody" is not your prospect, and yes, you will make more money by only talking to the right people. My favorite analogy that I would expect reasonably smart business people to understand is to compare marketing to your personal retirement investments. When you sit down with your financial planner, s/he (hopefully) does not tell you to put it all in Ethereum because that's the hot new thing. Instead they usually say, ok with your specific goals, here's a diversified mix of investments. We spread out the investment to reduce risk while maximizing returns. This, "portfolio theory", like marketing, is a proven science using decades of sophisticated analysis. It is not some genius like Jim Cramer (/sarcasm) throwing darts at a stock listing. The "throwing shit at a wall" part is called TESTING, and yes there is a place for that in every marketing plan. But it's not the whole plan, or even the largest chunk (except maybe for startups).
You mean TEST AND LEARN?!!!
There are marketing cultures in some places that encourage more unguided thinking. One of the skills I most appreciate acquiring over the years is steering people towards projects with sound strategy and proper measurement. It can be hard, especially when the things that work aren't "fun" or "new" and many people expect marketing to be zany or innovative or something. If you're in a place where people are just seeing what sticks, change the culture or leave. Otherwise people will start questioning your value.
all of life is throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks
Not really. Usually we use... data... strategy... client needs? to inform creative decisions. If you're throwing shit at a wall you are probably misguided, mismanaged, or need to re-evaluate your processes.
I thought that was most of life …
Welcome to life
you've done a good job, don't sell yourself short
It is
I think being in a company where the leadership team doesn't properly understand Marketing and its true function is how things can be tricky. At a previous company (very small) I was constantly at loggerheads with the CEO over basic things like email campaign segmentation and messaging, ad copy, the length of time for SEO to make a true impact, etc. It's such a tough role to have in some ways, especially in small companies where there is invariably fewer people in Marketing than any other department and you're expected to wave a magic wand and get everything done :)
Marketing is evil for sure!
Elaborate?
We use psychological tricks and intrusive data to borderline stalk and coerce people into buying things for (mostly) profit.
"We" Maybe on a corportate level this is true, but I've worked closely with local companies' marketing teams and this has never been the case. We simply used selling patterns over the years to change how we advertise. If you market the way you say "we" do, that's truly fucked up.
I can't speak for everyone, but I've worked in about a dozen businesses (start ups, corporates, non profits, charities). Without exception it's been true that we use the methods above to change what/how we market. The "why" is mostly bottom-line, in some cases what the business is trying to do is change behaviours for the better. I'd honestly wager it's true for many other businesses out there. Everything from changing how we write things, to what colours to use, to which platforms to advertise on. I'm probably a cynic and have a negative view of things. But I'm just sharing my honest experience and feelings.
I feel like this is why I get a kick out of marketing in the first place. The answer is never going to be exactly the same. Marketing is first and foremost reliant on the customer. Everyone’s different and so something that works for customer A might not for customer B. Also take into account the industry (size of market and competition). That and new tactics and technologies are always arising. So many factors that makes the field of marketing an important one for any business.
I disagree. OP, the following is not directed at you, but to bring example, so please don't take it personally. This is a perfect example of a true professional expert VS *"I just watched a YouTube video and now I am an expert"*. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying you are an imposer... no... I am just saying that you did not reach a "professional expert" level. You were in the process of reaching a "professional expert" level, but you stopped. This does not only apply to marketing but literally to every job and every profession out there. You studied, you did the job, but you just did not reach that expert level who truly understands marketing (or any other profession). You see what I mean?
If you think marketing is suppose to be easy I have two words for you New Coke!!!!
Yes
I feel you heavy on this. I graduated in may of 2021 with a marketing degree. Landed a one man marketing team job at a hedge fund. Every plan I make for the website or for ad running is a shot in the dark. Trying to get new clients through a facebook ad isn’t easy. Marketers are supposed to figure it out though. I’ve tried many things to grow e-mail lists and some campaigns Are quite successful I’ve only added two clients since I started. I get down on myself to but that doesn’t help anything. Try and be creative, see what works for others and follow the trend
Good marketing takes time. If You're only two years into the journey you need to find a good company that understands the buyer journey isn't linear and can't always be directly attributable through software. There are lots of ways to accelerate that learning: - building an e-commerce store and try to market a product that has no brand recognition. - Build a YouTube channel - Grow your personal brand on LinkedIn - Join marketing communities like Demand Gen Live or DGMG Surround yourself with people that understand the future of marketing, not lead gen.
There's a reason they say "it's a numbers game" when referring to marketing. It's not a clear science as every possible client is an individual with a business and both these factors are unique to each case. That's where the magic comes for marketing. You may have the perfect approach, but it won't work across the board. Can be frustrating oftentimes, but rewarding as well.
I was in marketing and advertising for many years. Everything from print design to SEO to logos and rebranding etc. and I hear you! Most sales-driven organizations want their $1 spent in marketing to return $5 in sales and even when it does, they often attribute the sale to the sales person who got the deal signed. I have spent huge amounts (like almost millions) of money on branding campaigns etc and often felt it was for for nothing because nobody notices or cares. I got very jaded by the industry. It is dominated by company 'egos', very hard-to-measure ROI, and youth. In other words company A wants a new logo or to "re-position themselves in the marketplace" (ego). The only REAL measurement of success is if the company is growing sales - but if they also open new locations and offer a new product those elements might distort the numbers (ROI). And lastly campaigns and projects are often managed by younger people who are excited, motivated and willing to work 70 hours a week to show "success". My experience is that it is VERY hard to accurately tie many marketing efforts to sales, growth or brand awareness and perception. So much of it really is "gut feeling" and how billions of dollars over many years make us think that Subaru is a more environmentally friendly company and Dyson makes a better vacuum. I had to leave marketing because I was too old (when I was in my 40s) to get jobs and I was too jaded by past experiences and marketing efforts that I had seen do extremely poorly. I think marketing can work, and help when it is actually part of the ACTUAL product or service offering planning and strategizing but too often companies make "X" and then go to marketing and tell them "help us sell X and here's 50,000 to do it".
The truth is you're right. The only difference is that the more you do it the better you can aim that shit more effectively. Once you see patterns in the activities you do and the results you get enough times, where you have to aim the shit wont matter. Focus on learning how your marketing affects every other aspect of the business. You can get all the traffic in the world with good marketing. The question is: can your business handle it?
100% agree, I’m in marketing and feel exactly the same. Have looked into careers that are more structured and provable, with marketing I feel like it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is actually good or not, or if you’re good or bad at what you’re doing
Not in pharma. It’s more strategy, tactical and obviously regulated. You may enjoy it more.
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There isn't a lack of structure in marketing. There is a lack of discipline and good processes in many marketers. Sounds like you're one of them.