What it takes to be a professional marketer

The Marketing learning curve 

I have many professional friends: Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, Psychiatrists, Investment bankers, and University Professors. They don't experience this same phenomenon regularly that I and, anecdotally, almost all of my seasoned marketing colleagues do.

We are all too familiar with the trend of average people suddenly becoming medical experts, which seemed to crescendo during the COVID-19 pandemic. I call them 'Dr Googles'. Some 'Dr Googles' will tell you with great authority and powerful gravitas that you should never get vaccinated due to all the 'hidden risks'. 

However, my marketing colleagues often endure unfair criticism from those who know little about marketing. This may be because much marketing is on social media, and since most people are active on social media, marketing seems effortless and easy.

I work in Business-to-Business with many salespeople. They are one group in the organizations I've worked for who sometimes think they are marketing 'experts'. Now, I get it. Part of my job is fun. It's one of the reasons I do it. My job must seem like 'a cakewalk' to the average person, especially salespeople. But I have completed an enormous amount of training to get where I am today. 

Not only did I spend two years working hard to get my MBA. But over the last fifteen years, I have committed myself to continual learning: Three-month intensive Courses in Digital marketing (with four-hour exams at the end).

I regularly take certificates in anything from Google Analytics, Ad management, and Tagging to HubSpot CRM and marketing automation management; to Html 5, CSS3 & Java, to Demandbase Account Based Marketing platform administration. 

At last count, I have nineteen such certifications running up to 2023. I have also spent many hours discussing optimizing campaigns or ads with Google and Linkedin, Zoominfo & Salesforce and many other platform account managers over the last ten years.

I've attended conferences at companies like Adobe or Linkedin on a range of pertinent topics, from marketing strategy to changes in privacy legislation to digital developments. I have put countless hours and massive effort into developing my craft. 

In addition, I studied finance, and I worked for over two years as a financial analyst (Bryant Park Capital, Bank of America, MFS Investments), which means that I'm adept at conveying marketing information to financial experts in a way that they understand: this is an essential additional skill you need when working with (predominantly venture capital or Private equity-backed) startups. 

But perhaps most importantly I have many years experience working with fast growing technology companies, with senior management, heads of sales, sales engineers and customer success teams. I know what works. And what doesn't.

I have a decent brain and an outstanding overall standard of education, which, along with my experience, has enabled me to develop vital powerful critical thinking skills. I can weigh up, analyze, and synthesize ideas to apply my knowledge to make difficult judgment calls. 

That's why I've been trusted to manage Marketing & Ad budgets of over half a million pounds a year ($600K). During my career, I've also purchased and rolled out a £100,000 ($120,000) CRM & Marketing Automation platform.

Yet someone who has worked as a salesperson for a few years, or another marketer with even less experience than that -  will, from time to time, think they know how to do my job better (and will of course tell me that!).

And I do understand. To a casual observer, all I do in my job is flick a few switches, send a couple of emails, set up some ads, read a report or two, and hey, job done. It must look so easy!

Sales is an incredibly stressful and demanding job. I know because I worked in sales for five years at the start of my career. 

I have an enormous amount of respect for good salespeople. I've worked with many top-class salespeople over the last twenty-five years. Here are a few examples of great salespeople I've worked with over the years:

> The South African who closed our first million pound-a-year deal with Barclays Bank while I worked in Cyber security. 

> Or the New Jersey Italian American who closed a whole host of million-dollar-a-year recurring contracts in marketing software with Citigroup, Toyota, Crate and Barrel, Uber Eats, and many others. He was also a brilliant strategist and highly detailed (great with updating the CRM).

> A very young English lady, who had left school at eighteen, who managed to close countless high-value deals for a document management software company I worked at. She was kind and down to earth, with none of the aggressive egos you can sometimes see in salespeople. She now runs a sales team and is still only in her mid-twenties.

> A British Sales Director who is a great individual salesperson and a wonderful manager (often brilliant salespeople struggle when they move to sales management). To top it all off, he has an in-depth knowledge of CRM technology with a thoughtful and methodical approach. 

> The Portuguese Sales Engineer who flew from Lisbon to Sydney three times in a year to meet with Telstra, the biggest Australian Telco company. He was pivotal in securing a $5 million annual recurring CPQ software deal, which also incurred $500,000 in switching costs. Soon after, he was hired as a Senior Director at Salesforce - a well-deserved upward move.

I particularly value salespeople, or anyone (including investors), who are curious about marketing. I've worked with some top-flight salespeople who have been actively interested in projects I worked on—but not in a harshly critical way. On the contrary, They sit in on meetings to try to understand the strategy, the technology, and the ideas.

 I couldn't do this job if I didn't value the massive contribution to building a business that salespeople and sales-related roles make.

But when a salesperson is staring at a significant deficit in their quarterly sales target (which can be intimidatingly large and often dramatically increased), it's tempting to think, this is marketing's fault. If only sales were running things, it'd all work amazingly.

Nevertheless, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In the past, when I saw sales take over marketing, it usually ended badly. Here are a few examples of such disasters:

• There are many very fast gut-feel decisions, such as the decision to have a drinks party after an event made only two weeks before. The marketing team spends all its valuable resources putting together an event doomed to fail.

• Suddenly, pacifying egos or simply driving leads becomes the goal of campaigns instead of the prospect's user experience (the quality of the white paper, case study video, or webinar). 

> Rather than having an industry expert talk at an event (typically the favorite choice of attendees), we have a C-level employee at the company (usually the least favorite attendee choice).                                               

• When Sales took over a company blog, every other story was about a deal the sales team had closed (Lots of likes - mostly internal, few clicks, little engagement, and no leads).

• Salespeople with little knowledge begin to weigh in on Marketing automation. They disrupt campaigns that have been performing well. A few months later, all the metrics are alarming— email opens, clicks, engagement, and leads from email are down, unsubscribes and spam complaints are up. 

• All the marketing campaigns start to gravitate towards large face-to-face events. Salespeople usually like events because they are highly visible, a good chance for salespeople to get out and network, and their value is easy to understand. At the same time, Field marketing stops being measured effectively for the same reasons, so it has no idea of the event's ROI.

• Management start to stress out the marketing team. They waste contractors' time on often pointless and/or unfocused meetings. They ask for projects that they then cancel or change halfway through. Over time, the marketing team's morale suffers, and tensions mount.

In the words of a world-class Professor of Marketing who teaches in my MBA programme: 

"Marketing has become a fiendishly complex business, with a myriad of media channels to consider, and a slew of direct and indirect drivers of market behaviour that have to be taken into account."

The Politics of Performing

'All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players',

This week, my father surprised me by suggesting we go to the LSE, where I was a student, to see Professor Richard Sennett of Columbia University's talk on his latest book 'The Great Fear: The Politics of Performing.' 

I didn't take notes, and my insights here are more my impression of the topic and then some of my further discussions with other friends, particularly Damien Seaman, whom I've worked closely with over the last seven years, on content strategy.

Why is it that demagogues like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have such incredible success when often their arguments are weak or even irrelevant? How can poor people in the Midwest genuinely believe that a multi-billionaire who's lived a life of privilege cares about them? Joe Biden or Hilary Clinton, who are both closer to them in terms of life experience (middle class or even lower middle class), doesn't connect with them similarly? What is going on here?

Professor Sennett is uniquely qualified to understand the politics of performance since he is a Julliard-trained cellist who, due to a hand injury, had to abandon his career and retrained via degrees and a PhD at Harvard to become a sociology professor. 

Talking about our Prime Minster Boris Johnson, who won a landslide election in 2019, he said that he was certain that Boris had perfected his persona, with the unkempt hair, and slightly clownish appearance. Every time Boris speaks, it is a highly staged 'performance'. 

He contrasted this to Rishi Sunak, who, whilst seemingly far more competent, organised and business-like, comes across like a man with a 'tin ear'. And he will undoubtedly preside over a landslide, in the other direction, against him (though you probably can't blame that all on Rishi Sunak).

Professor Sennett mentioned Donald Trump's appeal many times as well. What did he think the results of the US election would be? Would 'Sleepy Joe' prevail? Or would Trump's bluster, seeming youthfulness (only compared to Biden, since they are close in age, Donald 77 to Joe's 81), and greater energy tip the polls in his favour? I would also have liked to ask Professor Sennett what practical applications of his ideas could President Biden apply to ensure his win. 

This lecture led to a varied and funny discussion with my father, Sir Kenneth Parker, at the Delaunay, where we had dinner afterwards. Coincidentally, Professor Sennett and his entourage were at the same restaurant! 

Dad mentioned a book he had just read, written by one of Donald Trump's advisors, about some of Trump's more radical/crazy ideas. One absolute corker was to build a trench across the US border with Mexico and fill it with alligators! But then again, I mentioned that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, had just been interviewed about Trump, and Dimon highlighted all Trump's successes:

1. Growing the Economy
2. Possibly now being right about the Covid virus coming out of the Chinese Wuhan virus laboratory.
3. Certainly, being correct about Germany putting itself in strategic danger with its over-reliance on Russian gas.

I hope this doesn't make it sound like I'm a Trump fan? Because I am not. But I do believe that we are losing nuance in our debates. It's too easy to dismiss Trump as an idiot. Hilary Clinton did that and learnt the hard way.

The following day, I had lunch with my friend and colleague Damien Seaman in Chinatown in Soho. We discussed this topic again. We were in complete agreement about the performance aspect of life. 

We have been working together for some time on projects in the Human Resources Sector. So much of HR is performance. How your colleagues perceive you to some extent, certainly how you present yourself to senior management. Even how you settle disputes. And certainly, how any employee interactions are recorded officially often ends up as highly performative. After all, these 'performances' could profoundly affect your career and financial wellbeing! 

Human resources departments of companies are on a mission to 'level up' the differences of race, sexuality and sex right now.  I am fully behind these efforts, which are long past due. However, many argue that inequality has become an even more serious problem in the last 40 years. Inequality has been rising precipitously in the developed world. Perhaps levelling up financial inequality is a bigger challenge?

The Economist Thomas Piketty writes in his book 'Capital' that we are heading back in the direction of the early 19th century - where capital will become everything, and there will be almost no chance for a person to rise above their circumstances through hard work (unless the government takes serious measures to stop it). Can you see why corporations may be far less keen on tackling this topic than some others?

Right now, the 'mot du jour' is 'authenticity': Everyone wants to achieve this. Damien and I laughed at how even 'authenticity' has become a performance. How people even try to one-up each other on how authentic they are. This scenario is the opposite of true authenticity. When someone says one person is 'fake' whilst they are 'real', is it simply that they are a better performer?

Professor Sennett said that The word 'person', is derived from the Latin word 'persona' ("mask used by actor; role, part, character"). Isn't it interesting that we are now continually asked not to refer to men or women but to a 'person'? 

I didn't get to ask Professor Sennett my question, since so many people were asking questions during a relatively short Q&A. The question that stood out for me during the Q&A was from an LSE graduate student. He wondered if the trend of social media, and video, alongside people shortening attention spans, condemned us to be ruled by these demagogues, who master style over content. 

Professor Sennett answered that yes this was disturbing. He referenced how the UK had made one of its most significant policy changes in history, based on just such performance. Indeed the mastermind of Brexit, was Dominic Cummings, an expert at leveraging social media and digital advertising. 

Finally, another one of Professor Sennett's stories resonated with me. When Niccolo Machiavelli was writing 'The Prince', his career was over. He had been imprisoned earlier, was almost penniless and was living in a Tuscan Farmhouse far from Florence. But each night, he would don the robes he had worn as a respected and prestigious advisor to kings and dukes, to write; 

'When evening has come, I put on my regal and courtly garments, and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly. There, I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me.'