When marketing fails me (or is it me who fails marketing?)

My life’s journey has come to a crossroad now. It started about two and a half month ago when I was made redundant due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I was the head of marketing at a hospitality company. When all travels stopped, everything in hospitality stopped.

A number of hospitality companies made a similar change i.e. removing the marketing function. Companies in other industries did the same. Many of them appointed a sales function to look after both sales and marketing. Granted, some companies also let their salesforce go too.

I understand and accept that the virus crisis is a life-changing event for many people. But I couldn’t stop thinking and asking myself if it’s a mistake to work in marketing. I would then like to share my thoughts for young people if they are considering to have a career in marketing. A disclaimer, this is just a view from one person who is disappointed in a marketing career.

When marketing fails you

I had been through 3 crises in my marketing career. I survived the first two. I noticed though that every time companies had to cut costs, they would cut or reduce their marketing capacities first. Some leaders looked at marketing as a function that delayed sales. The quick solution? Let’s go with a direct sales model (and dropped marketing out).

When it happened to me during this pandemic, I notice the following:

• There are a lot (I mean a lot) of marketers out there who were let go. It’s an ocean of marketing professionals. It’s very tough to find a marketing job considering the massive number.
• It’s a basic demand vs supply rule. There is a large number of marketing supply with smaller demand, so the price (salary) drops.
• And, there are tons of marketing agencies out there. Many struggles too. So, you have to compete with them too.
• Many leaders don’t truly understand what marketing is. Many don’t understand that marketing is about creating demand and building brands. Many don’t have time to do brand marketing. They want quick results and believe it’s better for sales to do it.
• Because it’s difficult to understand what marketing is about, many companies have a very specific requirement — buying ads. Many leaders have this concept in their heads that they only want to buy Facebook ads. It’s the coolest and hottest thing in the past few years. The bad news for marketing professionals is ad buying could be best done by marketing agencies. Therefore, companies don’t need you.
• When the crisis hits, many marketing professionals who lost their jobs started small marketing agencies. It’s so easy to start a one or two-person marketing agency. There is no barrier to entry into this agency gig.

Types of marketing

What does the above observation tell me? It tells me that there are two types of marketing, namely Marketing Generalists and Marketing Specialists.

Marketing Generalists

If you work in a marketing department in a corporate environment, you are likely a marketing generalist. Generally speaking, you can break marketing into different areas such as brand marketing, communications, social media marketing, email marketing, website marketing, etc. Many companies use the term “Digital Marketing” to sum them all up. If you have digital marketing in your title, you are a generalist.

There is nothing wrong to be a marketing generalist. It only means you have to work on everything but you are not an expert in anything. Your enemy is your time at work. Because your responsibilities cover all aspects of marketing, you don’t have the time to get down into a specific area to be an expert in it. I did try to assign one of my team to focus solely on social media marketing. I ended up asking her to help with website and email marketing due to workloads.

Marketing Specialists

Then, there are specialists. These people focus solely on one area of marketing such as social media marketing, email marketing, marketing communications. As a specialist, you learn to be an expert in one specific area which could be good if the area you are an expert is in demand.

As an example, it’s argued that Facebook is the best advertising platform in today’s marketing world. It is because you can pretty much accurately target any customer segments that fit with your campaign. It’s also easier to use than Google Adwords platform. A lot of marketing people jump into this trend and want to be a social media marketing expert. However, how long is it going to last? There will always be new trends and new technologies. You might invest five years of your life to be a Facebook ad buying expert. Then, Apple, for example, introduces a new ad blocker software as a part of its iOS updates.

The marketing dilemma

There are pros and cons to be either marketing generalists or marketing specialists. The problem is it’s so easy to enter into the marketing world. You may argue that there are also good (and great) marketers out there. I agree. The issue is there are a larger number of leaders who have no idea what marketing is. Those leaders don’t understand the difference between sales and marketing. It’s super hard to present yourself as a great marketer to those leaders.

Then, you have to compete with so many marketing agencies. They tend to position themselves as an expert in specific areas. I can tell you from my experience that some of them are also hopeless. Again there is no barrier for entry to be a marketing agency.

My final thoughts

I am not saying that there is no future in marketing. There are leaders who appreciate the role of marketing out there. You just need to find them (which is a challenge in itself).

But if you are considering to work in marketing, I would like to encourage you to ask yourself why you are interested in this area. You also need to be confident that you will be able to stand out in the ocean of marketers. Finally, the factor that frustrates me the most is the leaders who don’t understand marketing. They could ruin your career.

There are other professionals that you may want to look into before jumping into marketing. Don’t be attracted to the fancy nature of the social media aspect. Marketing is much bigger than that. Choose your future carefully.