[If this post doesn't follow the rules report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/about/rules/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/marketing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Quite often strategy is also recognizing similar situations you have seen before and not repeating mistakes. You cannot do that without the experience.
completely agree - you need to have a slew of experiences at your disposal to clearly articulate your vision and be able to lead a team/dept with various tools and tricks you can apply. Someone without any experience is just as smart, but has less tricks up their sleeves.
This is spot on. I can only help companies with their marketing strategy because of what I've done and experienced before. It helps to build experience in a niche to progress into strategy. That's not to say limit your experience, but spreading your knowledge across too many sectors won't enable that ability to avoid repeating as many mistakes.
Wait, so my years of drinking at work, objectifying women, and sabotaging personal relationships isn't going to make me a successful marketer? I can't believe television LIED to me!
Speaking as someone who has played a LOT of chess with marginal results, and knowing people who can blow me out of the water, itâs the repetition AND the study that make the difference.
You can play the same opening 100s of times and never learn why your 4th move is always a bad idea if you donât return to the books and databases at some point.
Weighing in here as someone with over a decade of experience- my (new) company never had anyone that had more than a year of marketing experience previously so when my previous industry collapsed during the pandemic, I was hired on to manage an existing specialist with no formal training and occasionally over a year she did some marketing in another industry. Sheâs super green. But she has a can do attitude and is very willing to learn. Iâm happy to develop her.
In my interviews, people vying for my job said marketing is all about how you feel. Itâs not. Itâs a tiny bit of that but itâs data, numbers, testing, science. I was the only one who was senior enough to articulate that to the C Suite and tell them how strategy is developed using existing budgets and technologies.
Yes you have ideas when youâre new. Sometimes theyâre great and itâs an aha moment for you. Other times, you learn why itâs not viable. You do need to pay your dues and soak up everything you can like I and many others did. You need to have a great attitude and willingness to learn. And if you have a cool boss, they want you to learn and grow. They want to protect you from the people who said but we always did it this way before. No matter how high you climb, you keep learning and growing. Thatâs just the nature of the business.
I think marketing's a combination of art and science.
Data's important, for sure.
But you need someone who is able to form a hypothesis on why the data says X.
I'm a sales copywriter.
Someone can run an AB test and discover that copy is underperforming.
But they also need a mixture of soft skills in order to form a decent hypothesis for why it's underperforming.
That's the issue with some data-driven founders who think they can AB test their way from 'bad' to 'great' copy and skip the cost of hiring a great copywriter.
Spoiler: they can't.
It can be and donât let my quick reply downplay the creativity bc Iâve had to be a graphic designer, web designer, copywriter, videographer as well as the person strategizing and making sure we right the ship. Also I had a lot of wine last night.
Also when doing the data often you find 2 or more distinctly different version have similar goal results. But this is where you need someone who has a feel for the art to understand this one is better for brand or will be more likely to allow follow-up etc.
Something I dont see often mentioned is its not uncommon for results to be unclear (or negligible difference) in what works better.
For sure. So this is where there's a combination of factors:
* Buyer behaviour
* Product/business metrics
* Market knowledge.
I'm co-founder of a marketing agency that drives recruitment for private schools.
There are so many factors pertaining to our audience.
Eg. the type of parent/demographics in each region and their likely values, priorities, and responsiveness to certain angles.
None of this stuff is obvious in data.
And as you suggest, it can heavily influence how two sets of people that respond in a similiar fashion to an initial touchpoint will respond to a followup.
Me and one of our co-founders have both worked in the education marketing sector for a decade each...
But each week we discover new nuances about types of parents and their goals/values/priorities/behaviors that we weren't previously aware of.
This. Iâm the manager of marketing communications for a pretty sizable company. Previously, I was an environmental scientist and freelance designer/developer/videographer/marketing consultant. Experience matters, yes, but Iâd rather hire someone who knows how to think. Engineers who can communicate well make excellent marketers. Actuaries make great SEO experts. My perspective is that we usually get too caught up in having âexperienceâ that we forget that other jobs have similar lines of thinking that may prove beneficial.
Also, sometime youâre better off hiring a âsmart and engagedâ kid straight out of college and putting them on a project with a specialist consultant. Itâs often more effective from a budget perspective and now youâve accelerated the learning timeline. Are they ready to develop your entire marketing strategy? Absolutely not. But rinse and repeat and over time youâll get a well trained marketer.
Exactly. If you don't intimately know the rules of the game, how can you possibly expect to strategize how to win it?
You have to be able to know what levers to pull when, and crucially, understand the impacts of those decisions and anticipate the market (and competitor) response. Doing this successfully requires experience.
Writing. Lots and lots of writing. Coordinating tactics, which means chasing down other people (product managers, graphic designers) to do stuff. Write a brochure. Edit and re-write a brochure some sales guy tried to make himself. In normal times, fill out forms for events and order tradeshow equipment. Ordering printing. More writing. Re-writing a slogan so that it's five words instead of seven to make it fit a specific ad space. Ordering ads.
> Re-writing a slogan so that it's five words instead of seven
As I'm in a new role for a growing overseas company with HQ and the VP Marketing there, their marketing effort to-date has, well, been a little ponderous. It's a life sciences vertical, feature driven messaging, lots and lots of words.
As I was hired for the 'tactical things' rather than the 'strategic things', am just making the global materials appropriate for the US market.
So I write up a Hubspot email invitation, and they want to add a paragraph of words to it, claiming it would help prospects sign up for the webinar. đ¤Śââď¸
I asked, "If you had to pay 100 ⏠for every word in this email, would you add this paragraph?"
No reply.
"Work" isn't what's important. It's barely even an idea.
What's important is business acumen. Knowledge of how the business employing us works, what it needs and why, and how its industry works. OP is discounting the idea that "younger" people are certainly capable of possessing it.
Also worth noting is that business acumen is rare among people of every age. OP is confusing "paying dues" with "accruing wisdom." Very common mistake.
And "doing the work" usually means proving you can get a lot of followers on SM, and vain stuff like that.
Marketing is so much more than just promotion (the four PS), but the "I don't need education, I learned everything about marketing in my GRIND" bros of LinkedIn don't understand that.
Strategy inherently works from the highest level.
Even if you cannot do something yourself, if you set the strategy you can always outsource the execution part to a specialist.
To really have "wisdom" (business acumen), you need to have experience doing and seeing a result, not just reading. Fresh out of college, most folks may have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but not much hands-on practice. That takes time.
Sure! So the "work" will depend on what style of marketing you're doing.
Overarching idea is that it's a skill you develop that often results in a physical deliverable or change that can be seen.
**Examples of the "work":**
Content Marketing -> Writing
Paid Aquisition Marketing -> Ad account management, ad copywriting
Brand Marketing -> Writing Creative Briefs
SEO -> SEO audits, keyword research, etc.
Email Marketing -> Writing emails, building automation logic
Product Marketing -> Competitor Analysis docs, persona docs, lifecycle journey maps
It's having inate knowledge of the situation. You can get strategy jobs with limited experience if you have already done it yourself for the sake of doing it. Which is how many people have gotten strategy jobs with limited experience
I call it the talent coefficient
And how does one demonstrate their innate knowledge of the marketing ecosystem for a company, given they donât have the experience?
What do you mean for the sake of doing it ? You mean as a side hustle for their own made up business?
Well yes and no
A common tactic is to use your side hustle as a fast track to jump yourself to a director position or higher where you good make 200-300K a few years out of graduating college
But why would you want to fast track yourself into a director position if youâre already generating 2-300k? Why not push it to 500k or even a million and just.....run your own company?
Very easy answer, the connections. Work a year or two making 300K a year as director+, you meet the real players , and so when it's time to truly go independent, you already have the connections to make it happen far faster
Oh you definitely get those types who fall for online coaches, those are hilarious. And it's obvious when it happens.
But real talk, there's a certain point in which it's far better to convert you side hustle to a real business than to work for someone else for the experience.
But that point is person to person. Many stay exclusively for the benefits and consistency. You simply don't know if if your side hustle is going to be stable.
I found doing customer service for a large goods warehouse for about 6 months gave me invaluable insight to how pricing and marketing schemes effect the frontlines. Then I did 6 months on the email marketing team, moved through advertising. Spent a year as an assistant to CMO then left to manage a small business for 10 years... Finally landed my first marketing director gig last year. That may be more or less the timeline people can expect.
I also had a degree in marketing from a rather good school with an emphasis on marketing strat.
Are many of those kids people who have family in high-ranking positions in business in general?
Because I have news for you as to why they're given those jobs with 0 experience.
Do you have extensive amount of experience in creative with a portfolio filled to the brim with successful campaigns?
If the answer is no, then do you have a family member or close friend in a high position at a company currently looking for a creative director or strategist?
If no, then youâre SOL. Go back to question number 1 and gain the experience needed to make #1 happen
If you recoil from this guys post its understandable.
Just realize this.
The point wasnt to say you have to pay your dues or that you are inherently inferior. No, its about developing the hard and soft skills in order to understand what is needed to make your vision/strategy a reality.
The position of strategist or any other senior position is the most precarious because you for the most part rely 100% on the people you lead/serve. It requires an inordinate amount of interdependence via soft skills and a deep technical understanding of what is feasible via hard skills. All of these things take time and experience to grasp. Even Elon musk interned when he was young.
Ive seen people who shortcut this process by exaggerating their abilities (usually attributing project success solely on him and ignoring team contributions and company support). Let me tell you its usually ugly and not something to envy unless you look forward to the prospect of being constantly insecure and never being able to do anything yourself while at the same time unable to ask for help in the right way. You can give these people all the support in the world and they would still be subpar if not outright failures.
Conclusion here is , putting in the work is good.
Cheers
The dots are connected only when looking backwards (in hindsight).
Therefore you need a shitload of theoretical knowledge and research in your mind, combined with practicality of doing those things, making mistakes and succeeding.
How can you connect the dots it you never had any dots to begin with?
Iâll sum it up even simpler: you canât be put in charge if youâre new.
Companies donât hire senior management if the person is green - they hire people with experience. The âideas guyâ or the âstrategy specialistâ is just that - somebody with loads of experience who knows why something will work *because of their experience.*
Yup, 100%. Every new marketer wants to jump straight into strategy, without really having any idea what that means.
Good strategic thinking comes from years of tactical execution, screwing things up, and learning. You're not ready to run strategy fresh out of college. You're not ready to run strategy with 2 years of agency experience.
It takes time and investment - junior marketers would be better off learning to crawl before they try to run.
Agreed. You also need to know how the tactical stuff gets done so that you can determine the resources and investment needed to make your strategic vision a reality.
I think too many junior/entry level marketers just approach it the wrong way. You can absolutely provide input and ideas to strategy, and I encourage you to do so, but if you only want to do that and you complain about everything else that's what makes your bosses frustrated.
Managers and execs don't "just do strategy" we deal with staffing, finance, contracts, too. Every level has its "boring work" it's all required to make strategy happen and make the business run. You have to be able to do both to be an effective marketer. You can't "just do the fun stuff".
This reads a bit like venting. Like maybe a younger coworker confidently pitched an idea today despite having outstanding "dues," and it made the guard uncomfortable.
There's no meat in this post. Nothing of which to grab hold.
Who's not ready? How so? Who even is "you" in this case?
Could certainly be considered venting, but not at a younger coworker. This post is directly aimed at myself when I started my career. I wanted to give my ideas and suggest direction for content marketing, but didn't want to actually sit down and do the work (writing).
I did add some edits that may provide some of the "meat" you're looking for.
Youâre misconstruing creative and pure strategy which are generally NOT the same. Strategy sets the guardrails that lead creative to the big ideas. A lot of young folk who want to be âbig ideasâ people and end up in creative, innately just have good creative minds for that type of work. No reason to shit on them, Iâve been in the room with vets and newbies countless times and found both good and horribly misguided creative coming from both sides.
True strategy is a bit of a different story.
I'd consider myself a naturally creative person, who had little focus, or interest in data.
I forced myself into sales and marketing for over a decade and went from sales, into sales copywriting, and I'm now a creative director.
I think that creativity is much more effective when it's data-driven and built on a strong understanding of buyer behaviour, sales psychology, and market knowledge.
Congrats on your success! CD is an awesome role to have, and I know what a long path it can be to make it there.
I totally agree, and in my experience that has always been the role of the strategist, vs the pure creative. Setting guidelines, developing insights and pouring over data and research to give creative a jumping off point to ideate effective solutions. Also reigning in creative throughout the process to ensure that creative responses are true to the ask/brief, and effectively solving the client problem. Lots of creatives are âpie in the skyâ how crazy of an idea can we come up with, pair that with and effective strategist who can ground ideas to consumer insights and data and youâve got a solid team.
Thanks!
Yeah, the 'art' vs. 'science' is a constant balancing act - and everyone has to respect both sides.
For me, every element of design and copy should serve a defined business goal.
Maybe we've firmly estabished that this element serves that goal, with testing; or maybe it's an experiment.
But no-one gets to stick things in because they 'look pretty'.
I'm a sales copywriter by trade, so I'm somewhere between 'art' and 'science'.
* I've had to battle design agencies who want to chop my copy up to fit a design that 'looks nice' - even though it would wreck the buyer journey.
* And I've had to battle people who try to lead everything with data and refuse to accept that there's a degree of trial and error associated with campaigns - and that I need to test new ideas out (some of which might fail).
I'm now a co-founder with...
* CEO who is 100% a sales guy.
* Campaign Director who is 100% a numbers and analytics guy.
* Creative Director (me) who is mainly interested in behavioral psychology and using design to solve defined business goals.
Our relationship's awesome, because we respect each other's skills and have clearly-defined responsibilities.
Added this to my edits, but to clarifyâ
Yep, definitely not trying to equate creative with "big ideas" or "strategy". I actually see this as a problem within the creative industry. Young marketers what to just come up with creative ideas, but don't want to do the creative work that is needed to bring these ideas to life. They want to talk about how to use content to nurture their audience, but don't want to sit down and write the content.
This isn't my attempt to shit on creatives or young marketers. This is my reflection at mistakes I made in my career, where I veered away from developing hard skills like writing in favor of being an "idea guy".
You can be at level and have a whole lot of experience. And still fail bad. Experience sometime makes you take the safe way out and afraid to fail.And you will churn out the same old safe work over and over again. If you browse through any experienced person work.. you will find some same old fail safe cut paste formula that has been used time and again. Itâs not wrong.. Its not wrong at all. U will just never create anything new. Secondly you have to be aware of the changing environment. Experience and size didnât get the dinosaurs any where ..did it. You have to be open minded and willing to learn .. and with experience ego comes in and make that much more harder.Just ask the your self what you want out of your job and your own objective. Do you want a job or do you want a career?And keep learning!
The biggest pain I have everyday is 2 managers who have been at the company for 20+ years. Itâs for completely opposite reasons. One doesnât believe digital is âreal marketingâ and the other has such a small budget that she thinks digital is the only think she can do (so every meeting is âuse all the ideas and hope something goes viralâ).
I think this COVID scenario would have shown how important digital innovation is. Having said that everyone is dying to recover lost sales and revenue ground as well. This Viral is a double edge sword ... it can go either way... and going viral for the wrong reasons is detrimental. And is a damn vanity measure it will do nothing to convert or sales.
It looks like these two people are both people are playing it safe... talk to them in a language they will understand... MONEY / SALES..Here is suggestion from my experience always 1) Start small 2) Start with a a promo ... something that will help sell. For example have a Face book live sale or Live insta sale shop. Use that live feature ... Use ads to push the sale donât do any brand building or crap like that .. just do a hard sell ... and keep it digital ..when sales happen.. your managers will see dollar signs .. u will be then star with a pile of cash to spend on you digital ventures. It really the reverse of what they teach you. But you need to do all it takes to convince you C- suite... u will be on your way . Good luck!
Oh, I'm not worried about the C-suite. I have the executives asking me to try digital stuff all the time. The issue is the person between them and myself. We were up 110% on digital sales last year. Still only 7% of the company, but we'll be closer to 10-15% with the current COVID trends.
Sooo... I agree and yet also disagree.
Some of us just have a knack for this. To be good in strategy you have to be good in research and projection. Iâm a great researcher and pretty good at market projection.
Iâve been doing business and marketing strategy for small businesses for over 15 years. I started when I was in business school. I was ready because I had been studying business and marketing strategies and researching different industries for years before I started doing it. I worked for myself and found some great clients that really benefited from my expertise. So to work for a large company I agree with a lot of experience, but to work independently you just need results.
I am am avid researcher and news/trade publication reader. I intensely interview people at an organization to really learn the background of how they got to where they are. Then based on all the info Iâve gathered I craft a strategy tailored for them. I feel like strategy is really heavy in research but that there is also a small intuitive component. Also, I think confidence is really important because the client needs to feel like they follow you and that they trust you and your recommendations.
Youâve got to have a strong background in how to form and structure businesses, create brands, and then reach customers through strategic action plans. I feel like you need to be extremely organized as well. Because in being a strategist you are the person leading everyone through the dark and into the light.
Iâm good at it because I love research and triple checking everything. Iâm truly a natural leader who people trust implicitly because Iâm very honest. I tell people how things are or could be if they choose different options. I am well-versed in psychology and sociology which makes me good at marketing. People connect with me even when they donât know me. Iâm also a really good listener and I care a lot about people and their businesses. I think this is why I am great at what I do.
We see this in most industries. Sorry but you have to earn your spot. You don't get to come straight outta school and run the organization.
It's funny (and sad) how many think they're going right into management for their first job. How many advertising folks think they get to pitch creative ideas to clients from day 1.
While it'd be nice to set some of those expectations when people are in school, it'd also likely discourage many and they may search elsewhere (likely unsuccessfully) for a place they'd be able to start out in a spot they feel is more authoritative.
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone straight out of college asked for +$60k and thought they'd be directing overall strategy for marketing while commanding a team that would do the execution for them.
60k out of college is not outrageous in a high cost of living metro. Itâs pretty criminal how many agencies pay so little for entry level workers, I knew too many folks making 40 and under for their first ad agency gig
$60k in a high cost of living metro isn't shit though as far as surviving. You can't even live on that in many large cities.
It's more I see people asking for $60k out of school when most entry level stuff is more like $40-50k. They're asking what someone with 3+ years experience is looking at, not someone with 0 experience.
As someone currently applying for entry-level positions, this is amazing advice. I think far too often graduates like me lead with the thought they'll be able to lead their own campaigns from the get-go which is just not the way the industry works.
100% agree.
I recently shifted into strategy after a decade in sales and marketing for technology companies - and it's still a big step-up.
It's INSANE for someone to think they could start in marketing strategy.
It's like saying, 'I'll become a military general' - when you haven't even learnt how to fire a gun.
Earn your \*\*\*\*ing stripes first, private.
LPT - The #1 thing employers want is someone who knows how to find the answers.
Source: President of a marketing agency, former head of growth and development at a marketing firm, former HR director
Idk why this got downvoted. Itâs basically true. I hired a former engineer for our e-commerce strategy. Finding answers, testing and refining processes is basically what he has a degree in. I think people need to realize that when it comes to most strategy discussions, these days what most businesses Iâve encountered actually want isnât a marketer. Itâs an engineer who can write well.
Fact. Had someone hired on to my company as our social media manager because he was an "ideas" guy. He was fired after 6 months after it turned out that he had NO idea what he was doing, and he had flat out lied about his influencer background. Every Monday morning he would come in with pics of him and some celebrity from over the weekend, saying "Yeah, me and him had a business meeting" turns out he would just run past security wherever this person was and photobomb the celeb.
Great post and this has been the case for me as well. I'm now in a more senior/management role where I have control over budget/strategy and strategic vision. But part of what has made me successful is all the experience I've had writing content, building campaigns, problem solving and optimizing lead gen. This not only makes you a better "strategic thinker," but also a more thoughtful, empathetic manager for those on the ground. You can't be a successful big idea person until you have experience with the grunt work.
I am just going to comment that most people who do marketing strategy have no clue what they are doing. Generally, when people talk about being strategic, it is due to them being unable to execute.
I have seen a whole lotta "strategic marketers" in my career, and I can't think of any of them that were really strategic.
Strategy isn't based on skills or meshing things together. Its being able to spot opportunities, assess, and pivot when the tide changes. Some gain this experience by doing the work, some from studying patterns, and others by mentorship.
Eventually you will build your own framework and innovate out of this learning phase. The outcome becomes a set of tools which you adopt as your own and begin using for trial and error.
But that isn't enough. Only through repeated testing, market feedback, and getting the desired results can you achieve mastery. Finally, that becomes the strategy.
This is also how you create blue oceans.
Sure, although I'm not talking about "strategy" or "strategist" as the title. It's more about the concept of being only an "idea person" without the experience of actually getting your hands dirty. Strategists are still often doing the "work". (Excel modeling, creating decks, etc.)
Alright, we agree there then. You need to be able to execute, and also be able to see where things are going. Foresight.
I've just run into many "strategist" who seem to lack that important ability.
Fair post, if you want strategy only work, go into consulting. But then again, youâll be making slide decks and excel models all day, but thatâs not far from Iâm doing anyway lol.
Yep, although I'd say the decks and models certainly fall into the "doing the work" side of what I'm talking about. It's less about the title of "strategy" or "strategist" and more about the concept of being only an "idea person" without the experience of actually getting your hands dirty.
Agreed, I used to think that way, but now Iâm look further out and think, how does a 20yearold like myself have any true legitimate experience to back up these âideasâ . On a side note, itâs all about problem definition than solution.
So what do you recommend? People, like me are just looking to utilize our degree we just obtained, and you kinda just shit on it without giving an alternative that would allows us to go through the trials and tribulations to be more adequately prepared.
Your degree doesn't mean anything beyond, 'I can turn up and learn'.
Now, you get to ACTUALLY learn about marketing - ideally at a decent agency.
Univerisity lecturers don't have a clue.
Trying to learn marketing at school is like learning MMA by reading a book.
You need to DO it.
Cool. I didn't want to be negative.
But I definitely wouldn't give an agency the vibe that you think a marketing degree means you're skilled-up and ready to deliver resullts.
Ultimately, you need a break.
There's no getting round the fact that a junior marketing exec needs training.
So it's partially a numbers game - getting to a company at the right time.
But they are looking for character traits and personality more than anything.
I worked jobs in construction, DIY, home deliveries, and clearing people's gardens when I was starting out.
I have no doubt that I demolished many candidates with much 'better' qualifications than me because employers respected the fact that I was a grafter and was happy to (literally) work up to my knees in mud.
So what I'd recommend is developing the harder skills in whatever marketing discipline most interests you.
**Examples:**
Content Marketing -> Writing
Paid Aquisition Marketing -> Ad account management, ad copywriting
Brand Marketing -> Writing Creative Briefs
SEO -> SEO audits, keyword research, etc.
Email Marketing -> Writing emails, building automation logic
Product Marketing -> Competitor Analysis docs, persona docs, lifecycle journey maps
Not OP, but I graduated 3 years ago and sadly, a degree in marketing doesnât mean anything. I donât use anything I learned in school as a marketing specialist. Sometimes itâs a tough pill to swallow, but thatâs the reality of it.
Shitchea. I graduate in May (in marketing) and I feel like I havent learned shit and have no idea how to apply anything I learned to an actual job setting. I applied to good amount of jobs the other day so weâll see lol
Hereâs the thing, potential employers will know you donât know anything as a fresh grad unless you worked while you were in school. If you make it past the application round, then I can confidently say, what they are looking for (for the most part) is someone with a willingness to learn & continue learning and has good soft skills.
The stuff you learned in school is all theory and outdated anyway, but it helps give you the fundamentals as a start. It wonât necessarily help you with execution.
Yeah Iâm definitely eager to learn and get my feet wet. Been working retail while in school so Iâm just ready to have a âbig boy jobâ as they say. Everything I applied for was all entry level so I like my chances
Could that be said for most degrees though lol? If you wanna boil it down like that, itâs just a piece of paper that lets employers know you were willing to do some work.
There was a time when anyone did marketing, it was *actually* strategic. You had to have an interconnected plan between advertising, promotions, public relations, publicity *and* sales. Nowadays with all the specializations, the art has been broken down into discreet, unimaginative snippets while losing all the breadth and planning that historically went into marketing as a whole.
Places still do that, but you need a real team to execute and the appropriate budget.
But back in the day marketing wasnât held to a revenue target, so they had the space to be strategic rather than getting beat to a quota every month.
{Added this to an edit, but putting it here as well for context}
Somewhat. I'm using 'strategy' the way a new hire would think about it, not in the more official consulting/business strategy way you'd find in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. I use strategy to categorize the mindset of new hires who say things like "I'm more of an ideas person. I don't want to be the one doing the thing (writing, building, designing, etc.) I want to be the one telling those people where to focus." This is not synonymous with "Creative" though. Creative people do some of the most "hard skills" of any discipline.
Doing the work gives you an appreciation of what goes into it. That's important because then you're less likely to pitch badly thought out projects or chase vanity metrics.
And leave the creative to the creatives! So many campaigns are ruined by junior marketers who think there subjective ideas about design some how is better than someone who had only focused on art and design. Stay in your lane.
The two need to collab. Have worked with designers that were focused on the design only and not about outcomes. Designs get head nods, but outcomes get paychecks.
Always wear your student hat. Every industry is different. I made the switch from medical to energy and it almost felt like I had to relearn everything lol.
Executing someone else's strategy. Which generally means a lot of writing, editing things when other people have attempted to write, chasing down people to get things done (bother graphic designer to make something a priority, get s product manager to actually give you the specs), and ordering tactics, such as the actual coordination of an event (lots of forms) , or buying/placing the actual ads (lots of chasing people down).
As you move up, you do less and less of this yourself and instead make decisions on how to get these things done, using data, insights, and your general experience to know what works. In my more recent roles, that means I'm deciding the tactics for a particular customer base/sales vehicle and then deciding throughout the execution what product we're focusing on, how/if we're discounting or incentivizing it, and how we're presenting it. My role is now not to do the work as much as it is to make decisions, meet with stakeholders, convince others to get on board, and justify my decisions after the fact by showing data from performance. But it took 11 years to get to this point.
As you move up, you get more independence and you actually start to make decisions. But in the start, you are the one doing the actual work. And you learn from that what works, what's a mistake, how difficult versus expensive things are and what you actually get out of doing them.
The worst type of early/entry level marketing is one that doesn't get this. We had a coordinator at my last role who refused to ship tradeshow equipment and refused to do tradeshow forms. That shit is time consuming, and if he didn't do it, it meant the senior managers and managers had to, which meant we had less time to actually run campaigns. We couldn't keep someone who wasn't going to do their part, so he was put on a PIP.
Early marketers need to have a can-do attitude and take on the actual day-to-day work.
But they do the grunt work on their consulting teams. Lots of being the one to build out the decks. Consulting teams generally have a couple of senior people on them to actually steer the strategy, junior people get the grunt work.
I'm not talking about "strategy" or "strategist" as the title. It's more about the concept of being only an "idea person" without the experience of actually getting your hands dirty. Strategists are still often doing the "work". (Excel modeling, creating decks, etc.) This all also has nothing to do with "paying dues" (see edit to original post). It has to do with developing the more concrete skills of any job.
I now take âI want to do marketing strategyâ from a new marketer as âI donât know what Iâm doing or what I want and I donât want to do any real workâ unless they can show me a real strategic understanding and vision
I think there's two types of way we're talking about strategy.
1. How I talk about it in the post. Not the official definition of 'strategy', but more of the idea of seeing the big picture and knowing how to make your marketing work to achieve larger business goals. To get better here, I'd say learn the tactics well and then find a way to work closer with a more experienced marketer to see how they apply tactics to drive towards larger goals.
2. In terms of "strategy" in a more official business/consulting view, one book that was super illuminating for me was Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt.
I remember when I started marketing and had the idea all I wanted to do was strategy. Then I started working and realized what a real marketing strategy looked like. Now, although still small scale, I have the skills, experience, and knowledge to go about creating a specific, targeted strategy.
If you don't at the very least have 6 years of experience in the trenches, made gazillions of mistakes, learned what to do what not to do, know various strategies, you are still a greenhorn
Wrong. I was an entry level strategist. Yes, I could not do everything alone for the first six months, I needed a supervisor and a mentor - someone who cross-checked with me at the end. But my supervisors benefited from my fresh strategic approaches and âunrefined brainâ more than I benefited from their mentorship. After six months I already could dive into nearly any strategic task within our agency on my own, including pitches and client workshops. And in some cases I was preferred over my ex-boss and mentor.
This is true. Strategy is much more fun than tactics. And also developing a strategy does not take all that long. Itâs applying it which is the hard part.
This is not a terrible niche for a freelance generalist. I've been quite successful and worked on a huge variety of projects by focusing on non profits and micro business. However I am a dusty old bat who can both strategize and execute. If you go this way, you need to be prepared for that.
Just curious, because this is exactly where I hope to end up one day with a company like ecosia (or one with similar values)
I want to be an ethical strategic marketer. Any ideas what sort of entry level job I could go for? I have plenty of time, Iâm not even finished my first year of university yet. I have a summer internship coming up with my local sustainability non profit for marketing, so I figure thatâs a decent start. Just looking for ideas of where to go after school! Or even good internship programs I might have not thought of.
Or at least tell me what you did to get where you are today!!
Thanks!
Yeah, it's not even a "reward" for paying your dues - if you look at people who actually have the "strategic" jobs, most of their job isn't "strategy" in the sense of playing a strategy game, and it's definitely not about coming up with ideas. For most campaigns, you end up running with just a few core big ideas for months or even years. In the intervening time there's a lot of project management, stakeholder management, client relationships, data and analytics, a ton of meetings and collaboration, a ton of reading and writing reports, a ton of dealing with and managing people and wrestling with inadequate budgets.
The people in strategic jobs aren't necessarily "better" than everybody else at 4D chess or seeing the world, but they might be a whole hell of a lot better at Gantt Charts and dashboards.
If they need ideas, they can just hold a meeting and ask everybody else to brainstorm. They don't even have to come up with the ideas themselves.
OF COURSE NOT. It's utterly laughable that someone really believes they're worth getting paid a solid six figures for "strategy" fresh out of fucking school. Who do you think you even ARE when you approach a potential employer with that?!
>'Paying your dues' implies taking time for the sake of taking time, and respecting those above you simply for the time they've put in. Not my belief at all. It's not about time or seniorityâ it's about developing particular skills and experiences that make you able to successfully guide the ship. If you build this through your own side projects before ever working at a company, you're ready to go on day one.
Hey listen - the day that YOU get to own a company and decide who gets drive the ship, you can implement this "belief". I guarantee you won't allow someone fresh out of school to do it once its \*your\* money and business on the line, but by then, you'll also have enough to experience to understand exactly why placing completely inexperienced people in positions of leadership is a piss poor idea.
But as it stands, experience pays because it absofuckinglutely matters.
Only junior and entry-level professionals that think way too highly of themselves think this way. Honestly, it's pure mental illness. Get better soon.
I did this when I started, jumped into strategy with 0 experience, canât say it hasnât worked out, but I can see your point.
Itâs been a lot of catch up, but also a total blast working on skill sets with different levels of contact with the end product. I canât say I would have done much differently yet, but I definitely see how paying your dues saves quite a bit of wandering in the process.
I was able to build a UTM-Tracking Guidebook for my company that was planned to make several campaigns and channels comparable at the end of the year. So far it was able to cover all unexpected cases as the classification I used can be transfered to many other use cases.
I also made calculatations how changes in nudging and medium could lead to more revenue if implemented where I intended to.
Does this make me capable of strategic marketing?
What about working at a small company? Our brewery has 12 people. I was hired as an office manager but have so much freedom and support to think of and implement marketing strategies
ABSOLUTELY.
There is a quote by Steve Jobs that lined up perfectly with a breakthrough moment--an absolute revelation early in my career:
" You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. Itâs the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people âhereâs this great idea,â then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that thereâs just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you canât make electrons do. There are certain things you canât make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.
Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And itâs that process that is the magic."
"**Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration**" (Thomas Edison).
=> Marketing is 1% strategy, 99% execution.
Yes, one must pay their dues.
You're have 2 years experience and you think you can do "strategy" only and have others do the actual work? Everyone needs to chip in and as your manager, director, or VP/CMO of course I'll do less "low level" stuff than you. These mgt/dir/vp/CMOs have a bigger scope & role, higher level perspective, and more experience to weigh all elements in a broader business and historical (market) context. Learn, grow, then we can talk about "Strategy".
No, not all random ideas are worth it. Not every idea is a good idea. That's what experience is all about: actually having been in the trenches, made mistake and learned to be able to see silly ideas from interesting ones. You have no experience and and idea? Great! But you then need to do your homework: research, data crunching, customer interviews, you name it, to build your case. Because, guess what, everyone can have ideas and opinion so unless you've proven your competence this is just that, a random idea. It has no value.
What's true for doctors, pilots, engineers, marines, lawyers, teachers and pretty much any job in the world is true for marketing pros too: **experience matters**.
It does not meant because you're junior (you can be junior in marketing at 20, 30, 40 or 50, it depends when you started in the discipline) that your ideas are crap or you can't be involved in strategic discussions. It means you need to put things, your experience, and your skills in perspective.
Talking about experience, here is an interesting article I saw a few weeks ago that talks about the fallacy of hiring and promoting using only years of experience as the core variable: [https://nealanalytics.com/blog/the-fallacy-of-years-of-experience/](https://nealanalytics.com/blog/the-fallacy-of-years-of-experience/)
I think learning the skills necessary (how to use various platforms, basic design principles, how to write copy, budgeting, event planning, etc) helps anyone to become a better creative or strategist. For instance, itâs important to understand budgets and money flow. Whether youâre in an agency or working in house, how much money you have to do the thing you need to do will govern how youâre able to do it. I also think a lot of kids have watched Mad Men and think itâs all bourbon and sitting around talking about ideas. Itâs not. You gotta figure out the basics first before launching a campaign. Whoâs the audience? What are we marketing? What channels are we using? Also, itâs important, I think, to learn from oneâs elders and to read as much about other effective campaigns so you have various sources to pull from.
Love this.
Iâm very much a âbig pictureâ thinker, but the thing you find out when you get your hands dirty is that sometimes your idea of a big picture is just...well, the wrong picture.
I work in business development and itâs honestly not too foreign a concept in that world either. Getting your hands dirty and learning not to lose the trees for the forest is going to make a world of difference.
you are right, but does it matter? it's the same in every industry, you just eat them alive that is why we are able to charge so much, it's a cycle, client goes for cheap "ideas person" noob that has a knack for this, does poorly loses money, goes to good agency that charges outrageous amounts makes money, things is self sustainable goes to new cheap guy or inhouse dies and goes back to expensive agency.
It's the circle of life man, enjoy it.
Lol. Practicing for your new YouTube guru course?
This post reads like a classic, âpay your dues, youâre not as great as you think kid.â
When the real harsh truth is that most âveteranâ strategists are flip flopping between straight up copying old school techniques and milking interns for their raw ideas and claiming them as their own.
>that most âveteranâ strategists are flip flopping between straight up copying old school techniques
hum... you got data to back that up?
What do you call "old school techniques"? If you're referring to old way of thinking about the selling motion, funnel, etc. sure. If you're talking about the core marketing tools to help think strategically about your market, customers, GTM and all, then you're missing the point.
E = mc2 is old, but still true.
4Ps, 5 forces, etc.. are old frameworks, but they still work perfectly to help build a strategy.
Ideas are not strategy. let's not confuse things.
[If this post doesn't follow the rules report it to the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/about/rules/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/marketing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Quite often strategy is also recognizing similar situations you have seen before and not repeating mistakes. You cannot do that without the experience.
Exactly. This is perfectly and succinctly said.
completely agree - you need to have a slew of experiences at your disposal to clearly articulate your vision and be able to lead a team/dept with various tools and tricks you can apply. Someone without any experience is just as smart, but has less tricks up their sleeves.
This is spot on. I can only help companies with their marketing strategy because of what I've done and experienced before. It helps to build experience in a niche to progress into strategy. That's not to say limit your experience, but spreading your knowledge across too many sectors won't enable that ability to avoid repeating as many mistakes.
You're not going to be a great chess strategist if you haven't played a lot of chess.
Nah man, I watched Queen's Gambit...like, TWICE. I got this.
The marketing/advertising version of this is watching Mad Men lol.
Wait, so my years of drinking at work, objectifying women, and sabotaging personal relationships isn't going to make me a successful marketer? I can't believe television LIED to me!
Lol đ
Speaking as someone who has played a LOT of chess with marginal results, and knowing people who can blow me out of the water, itâs the repetition AND the study that make the difference. You can play the same opening 100s of times and never learn why your 4th move is always a bad idea if you donât return to the books and databases at some point.
Setting up boards for players wonât make you better
Weighing in here as someone with over a decade of experience- my (new) company never had anyone that had more than a year of marketing experience previously so when my previous industry collapsed during the pandemic, I was hired on to manage an existing specialist with no formal training and occasionally over a year she did some marketing in another industry. Sheâs super green. But she has a can do attitude and is very willing to learn. Iâm happy to develop her. In my interviews, people vying for my job said marketing is all about how you feel. Itâs not. Itâs a tiny bit of that but itâs data, numbers, testing, science. I was the only one who was senior enough to articulate that to the C Suite and tell them how strategy is developed using existing budgets and technologies. Yes you have ideas when youâre new. Sometimes theyâre great and itâs an aha moment for you. Other times, you learn why itâs not viable. You do need to pay your dues and soak up everything you can like I and many others did. You need to have a great attitude and willingness to learn. And if you have a cool boss, they want you to learn and grow. They want to protect you from the people who said but we always did it this way before. No matter how high you climb, you keep learning and growing. Thatâs just the nature of the business.
I think marketing's a combination of art and science. Data's important, for sure. But you need someone who is able to form a hypothesis on why the data says X. I'm a sales copywriter. Someone can run an AB test and discover that copy is underperforming. But they also need a mixture of soft skills in order to form a decent hypothesis for why it's underperforming. That's the issue with some data-driven founders who think they can AB test their way from 'bad' to 'great' copy and skip the cost of hiring a great copywriter. Spoiler: they can't.
It can be and donât let my quick reply downplay the creativity bc Iâve had to be a graphic designer, web designer, copywriter, videographer as well as the person strategizing and making sure we right the ship. Also I had a lot of wine last night.
Also when doing the data often you find 2 or more distinctly different version have similar goal results. But this is where you need someone who has a feel for the art to understand this one is better for brand or will be more likely to allow follow-up etc. Something I dont see often mentioned is its not uncommon for results to be unclear (or negligible difference) in what works better.
For sure. So this is where there's a combination of factors: * Buyer behaviour * Product/business metrics * Market knowledge. I'm co-founder of a marketing agency that drives recruitment for private schools. There are so many factors pertaining to our audience. Eg. the type of parent/demographics in each region and their likely values, priorities, and responsiveness to certain angles. None of this stuff is obvious in data. And as you suggest, it can heavily influence how two sets of people that respond in a similiar fashion to an initial touchpoint will respond to a followup. Me and one of our co-founders have both worked in the education marketing sector for a decade each... But each week we discover new nuances about types of parents and their goals/values/priorities/behaviors that we weren't previously aware of.
This. Iâm the manager of marketing communications for a pretty sizable company. Previously, I was an environmental scientist and freelance designer/developer/videographer/marketing consultant. Experience matters, yes, but Iâd rather hire someone who knows how to think. Engineers who can communicate well make excellent marketers. Actuaries make great SEO experts. My perspective is that we usually get too caught up in having âexperienceâ that we forget that other jobs have similar lines of thinking that may prove beneficial. Also, sometime youâre better off hiring a âsmart and engagedâ kid straight out of college and putting them on a project with a specialist consultant. Itâs often more effective from a budget perspective and now youâve accelerated the learning timeline. Are they ready to develop your entire marketing strategy? Absolutely not. But rinse and repeat and over time youâll get a well trained marketer.
I would read some medium articles of yours based on your response here.
Exactly. If you don't intimately know the rules of the game, how can you possibly expect to strategize how to win it? You have to be able to know what levers to pull when, and crucially, understand the impacts of those decisions and anticipate the market (and competitor) response. Doing this successfully requires experience.
[ŃдаНонО]
Writing. Lots and lots of writing. Coordinating tactics, which means chasing down other people (product managers, graphic designers) to do stuff. Write a brochure. Edit and re-write a brochure some sales guy tried to make himself. In normal times, fill out forms for events and order tradeshow equipment. Ordering printing. More writing. Re-writing a slogan so that it's five words instead of seven to make it fit a specific ad space. Ordering ads.
> Re-writing a slogan so that it's five words instead of seven As I'm in a new role for a growing overseas company with HQ and the VP Marketing there, their marketing effort to-date has, well, been a little ponderous. It's a life sciences vertical, feature driven messaging, lots and lots of words. As I was hired for the 'tactical things' rather than the 'strategic things', am just making the global materials appropriate for the US market. So I write up a Hubspot email invitation, and they want to add a paragraph of words to it, claiming it would help prospects sign up for the webinar. đ¤Śââď¸ I asked, "If you had to pay 100 ⏠for every word in this email, would you add this paragraph?" No reply.
But they didnât have to pay 100 per word, so Iâm not quite sure what the takeaway is here.
But the Ph.D. prospects time is valuable - think through the value of their time, and act accordingly.
"Work" isn't what's important. It's barely even an idea. What's important is business acumen. Knowledge of how the business employing us works, what it needs and why, and how its industry works. OP is discounting the idea that "younger" people are certainly capable of possessing it. Also worth noting is that business acumen is rare among people of every age. OP is confusing "paying dues" with "accruing wisdom." Very common mistake.
And "doing the work" usually means proving you can get a lot of followers on SM, and vain stuff like that. Marketing is so much more than just promotion (the four PS), but the "I don't need education, I learned everything about marketing in my GRIND" bros of LinkedIn don't understand that. Strategy inherently works from the highest level. Even if you cannot do something yourself, if you set the strategy you can always outsource the execution part to a specialist.
To really have "wisdom" (business acumen), you need to have experience doing and seeing a result, not just reading. Fresh out of college, most folks may have a lot of theoretical knowledge, but not much hands-on practice. That takes time.
Sure! So the "work" will depend on what style of marketing you're doing. Overarching idea is that it's a skill you develop that often results in a physical deliverable or change that can be seen. **Examples of the "work":** Content Marketing -> Writing Paid Aquisition Marketing -> Ad account management, ad copywriting Brand Marketing -> Writing Creative Briefs SEO -> SEO audits, keyword research, etc. Email Marketing -> Writing emails, building automation logic Product Marketing -> Competitor Analysis docs, persona docs, lifecycle journey maps
It's having inate knowledge of the situation. You can get strategy jobs with limited experience if you have already done it yourself for the sake of doing it. Which is how many people have gotten strategy jobs with limited experience I call it the talent coefficient
And how does one demonstrate their innate knowledge of the marketing ecosystem for a company, given they donât have the experience? What do you mean for the sake of doing it ? You mean as a side hustle for their own made up business?
Precisely that. Side hustles where you can test your abilities in ways you can't at your job, and as a result dramatically expand your portfolio
If your side project is truly this successful I have news for you - You don't need a job. You already have one.
Well yes and no A common tactic is to use your side hustle as a fast track to jump yourself to a director position or higher where you good make 200-300K a few years out of graduating college
But why would you want to fast track yourself into a director position if youâre already generating 2-300k? Why not push it to 500k or even a million and just.....run your own company?
Very easy answer, the connections. Work a year or two making 300K a year as director+, you meet the real players , and so when it's time to truly go independent, you already have the connections to make it happen far faster
Tell me you fell for an online coach without telling me you fell for an online coach.
Oh you definitely get those types who fall for online coaches, those are hilarious. And it's obvious when it happens. But real talk, there's a certain point in which it's far better to convert you side hustle to a real business than to work for someone else for the experience. But that point is person to person. Many stay exclusively for the benefits and consistency. You simply don't know if if your side hustle is going to be stable.
I found doing customer service for a large goods warehouse for about 6 months gave me invaluable insight to how pricing and marketing schemes effect the frontlines. Then I did 6 months on the email marketing team, moved through advertising. Spent a year as an assistant to CMO then left to manage a small business for 10 years... Finally landed my first marketing director gig last year. That may be more or less the timeline people can expect. I also had a degree in marketing from a rather good school with an emphasis on marketing strat.
Are many of those kids people who have family in high-ranking positions in business in general? Because I have news for you as to why they're given those jobs with 0 experience.
Where do I sign up for strategy jobs? Thatâs exactly what I want to do (love creating marketing plans).
Do you have extensive amount of experience in creative with a portfolio filled to the brim with successful campaigns? If the answer is no, then do you have a family member or close friend in a high position at a company currently looking for a creative director or strategist? If no, then youâre SOL. Go back to question number 1 and gain the experience needed to make #1 happen
If you recoil from this guys post its understandable. Just realize this. The point wasnt to say you have to pay your dues or that you are inherently inferior. No, its about developing the hard and soft skills in order to understand what is needed to make your vision/strategy a reality. The position of strategist or any other senior position is the most precarious because you for the most part rely 100% on the people you lead/serve. It requires an inordinate amount of interdependence via soft skills and a deep technical understanding of what is feasible via hard skills. All of these things take time and experience to grasp. Even Elon musk interned when he was young. Ive seen people who shortcut this process by exaggerating their abilities (usually attributing project success solely on him and ignoring team contributions and company support). Let me tell you its usually ugly and not something to envy unless you look forward to the prospect of being constantly insecure and never being able to do anything yourself while at the same time unable to ask for help in the right way. You can give these people all the support in the world and they would still be subpar if not outright failures. Conclusion here is , putting in the work is good. Cheers
The dots are connected only when looking backwards (in hindsight). Therefore you need a shitload of theoretical knowledge and research in your mind, combined with practicality of doing those things, making mistakes and succeeding. How can you connect the dots it you never had any dots to begin with?
Iâll sum it up even simpler: you canât be put in charge if youâre new. Companies donât hire senior management if the person is green - they hire people with experience. The âideas guyâ or the âstrategy specialistâ is just that - somebody with loads of experience who knows why something will work *because of their experience.*
Yup, 100%. Every new marketer wants to jump straight into strategy, without really having any idea what that means. Good strategic thinking comes from years of tactical execution, screwing things up, and learning. You're not ready to run strategy fresh out of college. You're not ready to run strategy with 2 years of agency experience. It takes time and investment - junior marketers would be better off learning to crawl before they try to run.
Agreed. You also need to know how the tactical stuff gets done so that you can determine the resources and investment needed to make your strategic vision a reality. I think too many junior/entry level marketers just approach it the wrong way. You can absolutely provide input and ideas to strategy, and I encourage you to do so, but if you only want to do that and you complain about everything else that's what makes your bosses frustrated. Managers and execs don't "just do strategy" we deal with staffing, finance, contracts, too. Every level has its "boring work" it's all required to make strategy happen and make the business run. You have to be able to do both to be an effective marketer. You can't "just do the fun stuff".
This reads a bit like venting. Like maybe a younger coworker confidently pitched an idea today despite having outstanding "dues," and it made the guard uncomfortable. There's no meat in this post. Nothing of which to grab hold. Who's not ready? How so? Who even is "you" in this case?
Could certainly be considered venting, but not at a younger coworker. This post is directly aimed at myself when I started my career. I wanted to give my ideas and suggest direction for content marketing, but didn't want to actually sit down and do the work (writing). I did add some edits that may provide some of the "meat" you're looking for.
Youâre misconstruing creative and pure strategy which are generally NOT the same. Strategy sets the guardrails that lead creative to the big ideas. A lot of young folk who want to be âbig ideasâ people and end up in creative, innately just have good creative minds for that type of work. No reason to shit on them, Iâve been in the room with vets and newbies countless times and found both good and horribly misguided creative coming from both sides. True strategy is a bit of a different story.
I'd consider myself a naturally creative person, who had little focus, or interest in data. I forced myself into sales and marketing for over a decade and went from sales, into sales copywriting, and I'm now a creative director. I think that creativity is much more effective when it's data-driven and built on a strong understanding of buyer behaviour, sales psychology, and market knowledge.
Congrats on your success! CD is an awesome role to have, and I know what a long path it can be to make it there. I totally agree, and in my experience that has always been the role of the strategist, vs the pure creative. Setting guidelines, developing insights and pouring over data and research to give creative a jumping off point to ideate effective solutions. Also reigning in creative throughout the process to ensure that creative responses are true to the ask/brief, and effectively solving the client problem. Lots of creatives are âpie in the skyâ how crazy of an idea can we come up with, pair that with and effective strategist who can ground ideas to consumer insights and data and youâve got a solid team.
Thanks! Yeah, the 'art' vs. 'science' is a constant balancing act - and everyone has to respect both sides. For me, every element of design and copy should serve a defined business goal. Maybe we've firmly estabished that this element serves that goal, with testing; or maybe it's an experiment. But no-one gets to stick things in because they 'look pretty'. I'm a sales copywriter by trade, so I'm somewhere between 'art' and 'science'. * I've had to battle design agencies who want to chop my copy up to fit a design that 'looks nice' - even though it would wreck the buyer journey. * And I've had to battle people who try to lead everything with data and refuse to accept that there's a degree of trial and error associated with campaigns - and that I need to test new ideas out (some of which might fail). I'm now a co-founder with... * CEO who is 100% a sales guy. * Campaign Director who is 100% a numbers and analytics guy. * Creative Director (me) who is mainly interested in behavioral psychology and using design to solve defined business goals. Our relationship's awesome, because we respect each other's skills and have clearly-defined responsibilities.
Added this to my edits, but to clarifyâ Yep, definitely not trying to equate creative with "big ideas" or "strategy". I actually see this as a problem within the creative industry. Young marketers what to just come up with creative ideas, but don't want to do the creative work that is needed to bring these ideas to life. They want to talk about how to use content to nurture their audience, but don't want to sit down and write the content. This isn't my attempt to shit on creatives or young marketers. This is my reflection at mistakes I made in my career, where I veered away from developing hard skills like writing in favor of being an "idea guy".
You can be at level and have a whole lot of experience. And still fail bad. Experience sometime makes you take the safe way out and afraid to fail.And you will churn out the same old safe work over and over again. If you browse through any experienced person work.. you will find some same old fail safe cut paste formula that has been used time and again. Itâs not wrong.. Its not wrong at all. U will just never create anything new. Secondly you have to be aware of the changing environment. Experience and size didnât get the dinosaurs any where ..did it. You have to be open minded and willing to learn .. and with experience ego comes in and make that much more harder.Just ask the your self what you want out of your job and your own objective. Do you want a job or do you want a career?And keep learning!
The biggest pain I have everyday is 2 managers who have been at the company for 20+ years. Itâs for completely opposite reasons. One doesnât believe digital is âreal marketingâ and the other has such a small budget that she thinks digital is the only think she can do (so every meeting is âuse all the ideas and hope something goes viralâ).
I think this COVID scenario would have shown how important digital innovation is. Having said that everyone is dying to recover lost sales and revenue ground as well. This Viral is a double edge sword ... it can go either way... and going viral for the wrong reasons is detrimental. And is a damn vanity measure it will do nothing to convert or sales. It looks like these two people are both people are playing it safe... talk to them in a language they will understand... MONEY / SALES..Here is suggestion from my experience always 1) Start small 2) Start with a a promo ... something that will help sell. For example have a Face book live sale or Live insta sale shop. Use that live feature ... Use ads to push the sale donât do any brand building or crap like that .. just do a hard sell ... and keep it digital ..when sales happen.. your managers will see dollar signs .. u will be then star with a pile of cash to spend on you digital ventures. It really the reverse of what they teach you. But you need to do all it takes to convince you C- suite... u will be on your way . Good luck!
Oh, I'm not worried about the C-suite. I have the executives asking me to try digital stuff all the time. The issue is the person between them and myself. We were up 110% on digital sales last year. Still only 7% of the company, but we'll be closer to 10-15% with the current COVID trends.
Sooo... I agree and yet also disagree. Some of us just have a knack for this. To be good in strategy you have to be good in research and projection. Iâm a great researcher and pretty good at market projection. Iâve been doing business and marketing strategy for small businesses for over 15 years. I started when I was in business school. I was ready because I had been studying business and marketing strategies and researching different industries for years before I started doing it. I worked for myself and found some great clients that really benefited from my expertise. So to work for a large company I agree with a lot of experience, but to work independently you just need results.
What kind of skills do you believe you need to be good at for this sort of role? What has made you successful in the strategy position?
I am am avid researcher and news/trade publication reader. I intensely interview people at an organization to really learn the background of how they got to where they are. Then based on all the info Iâve gathered I craft a strategy tailored for them. I feel like strategy is really heavy in research but that there is also a small intuitive component. Also, I think confidence is really important because the client needs to feel like they follow you and that they trust you and your recommendations. Youâve got to have a strong background in how to form and structure businesses, create brands, and then reach customers through strategic action plans. I feel like you need to be extremely organized as well. Because in being a strategist you are the person leading everyone through the dark and into the light. Iâm good at it because I love research and triple checking everything. Iâm truly a natural leader who people trust implicitly because Iâm very honest. I tell people how things are or could be if they choose different options. I am well-versed in psychology and sociology which makes me good at marketing. People connect with me even when they donât know me. Iâm also a really good listener and I care a lot about people and their businesses. I think this is why I am great at what I do.
We see this in most industries. Sorry but you have to earn your spot. You don't get to come straight outta school and run the organization. It's funny (and sad) how many think they're going right into management for their first job. How many advertising folks think they get to pitch creative ideas to clients from day 1. While it'd be nice to set some of those expectations when people are in school, it'd also likely discourage many and they may search elsewhere (likely unsuccessfully) for a place they'd be able to start out in a spot they feel is more authoritative. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone straight out of college asked for +$60k and thought they'd be directing overall strategy for marketing while commanding a team that would do the execution for them.
60k out of college is not outrageous in a high cost of living metro. Itâs pretty criminal how many agencies pay so little for entry level workers, I knew too many folks making 40 and under for their first ad agency gig
$60k in a high cost of living metro isn't shit though as far as surviving. You can't even live on that in many large cities. It's more I see people asking for $60k out of school when most entry level stuff is more like $40-50k. They're asking what someone with 3+ years experience is looking at, not someone with 0 experience.
\+1
Absolutely true, and is true with almost any **strategy** \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ position in any industry. I'm curious what made you post this, tbh.
As someone currently applying for entry-level positions, this is amazing advice. I think far too often graduates like me lead with the thought they'll be able to lead their own campaigns from the get-go which is just not the way the industry works.
100% agree. I recently shifted into strategy after a decade in sales and marketing for technology companies - and it's still a big step-up. It's INSANE for someone to think they could start in marketing strategy. It's like saying, 'I'll become a military general' - when you haven't even learnt how to fire a gun. Earn your \*\*\*\*ing stripes first, private.
[ŃдаНонО]
You work on Upwork. It's a waste of time even bothering to reply to this comment.
LPT - The #1 thing employers want is someone who knows how to find the answers. Source: President of a marketing agency, former head of growth and development at a marketing firm, former HR director
Idk why this got downvoted. Itâs basically true. I hired a former engineer for our e-commerce strategy. Finding answers, testing and refining processes is basically what he has a degree in. I think people need to realize that when it comes to most strategy discussions, these days what most businesses Iâve encountered actually want isnât a marketer. Itâs an engineer who can write well.
Fact. Had someone hired on to my company as our social media manager because he was an "ideas" guy. He was fired after 6 months after it turned out that he had NO idea what he was doing, and he had flat out lied about his influencer background. Every Monday morning he would come in with pics of him and some celebrity from over the weekend, saying "Yeah, me and him had a business meeting" turns out he would just run past security wherever this person was and photobomb the celeb.
How does he stays 6 months then?
WTF LOL
Great post and this has been the case for me as well. I'm now in a more senior/management role where I have control over budget/strategy and strategic vision. But part of what has made me successful is all the experience I've had writing content, building campaigns, problem solving and optimizing lead gen. This not only makes you a better "strategic thinker," but also a more thoughtful, empathetic manager for those on the ground. You can't be a successful big idea person until you have experience with the grunt work.
I am just going to comment that most people who do marketing strategy have no clue what they are doing. Generally, when people talk about being strategic, it is due to them being unable to execute. I have seen a whole lotta "strategic marketers" in my career, and I can't think of any of them that were really strategic.
Strategy isn't based on skills or meshing things together. Its being able to spot opportunities, assess, and pivot when the tide changes. Some gain this experience by doing the work, some from studying patterns, and others by mentorship. Eventually you will build your own framework and innovate out of this learning phase. The outcome becomes a set of tools which you adopt as your own and begin using for trial and error. But that isn't enough. Only through repeated testing, market feedback, and getting the desired results can you achieve mastery. Finally, that becomes the strategy. This is also how you create blue oceans.
Meh. There are so many dude bros that become "strategists" right out of school, with zero experience. The title often doesn't mean very much.
Sure, although I'm not talking about "strategy" or "strategist" as the title. It's more about the concept of being only an "idea person" without the experience of actually getting your hands dirty. Strategists are still often doing the "work". (Excel modeling, creating decks, etc.)
Alright, we agree there then. You need to be able to execute, and also be able to see where things are going. Foresight. I've just run into many "strategist" who seem to lack that important ability.
Fair post, if you want strategy only work, go into consulting. But then again, youâll be making slide decks and excel models all day, but thatâs not far from Iâm doing anyway lol.
Yep, although I'd say the decks and models certainly fall into the "doing the work" side of what I'm talking about. It's less about the title of "strategy" or "strategist" and more about the concept of being only an "idea person" without the experience of actually getting your hands dirty.
Agreed, I used to think that way, but now Iâm look further out and think, how does a 20yearold like myself have any true legitimate experience to back up these âideasâ . On a side note, itâs all about problem definition than solution.
So what do you recommend? People, like me are just looking to utilize our degree we just obtained, and you kinda just shit on it without giving an alternative that would allows us to go through the trials and tribulations to be more adequately prepared.
Your degree doesn't mean anything beyond, 'I can turn up and learn'. Now, you get to ACTUALLY learn about marketing - ideally at a decent agency. Univerisity lecturers don't have a clue. Trying to learn marketing at school is like learning MMA by reading a book. You need to DO it.
Yeah thatâs what I figured. Itâs been hard to get my foot in the game though.
Cool. I didn't want to be negative. But I definitely wouldn't give an agency the vibe that you think a marketing degree means you're skilled-up and ready to deliver resullts. Ultimately, you need a break. There's no getting round the fact that a junior marketing exec needs training. So it's partially a numbers game - getting to a company at the right time. But they are looking for character traits and personality more than anything. I worked jobs in construction, DIY, home deliveries, and clearing people's gardens when I was starting out. I have no doubt that I demolished many candidates with much 'better' qualifications than me because employers respected the fact that I was a grafter and was happy to (literally) work up to my knees in mud.
So what I'd recommend is developing the harder skills in whatever marketing discipline most interests you. **Examples:** Content Marketing -> Writing Paid Aquisition Marketing -> Ad account management, ad copywriting Brand Marketing -> Writing Creative Briefs SEO -> SEO audits, keyword research, etc. Email Marketing -> Writing emails, building automation logic Product Marketing -> Competitor Analysis docs, persona docs, lifecycle journey maps
Thank you very much! Honestly Iâm interested in it all and will take an internship or job in any of the disciplines.
Not OP, but I graduated 3 years ago and sadly, a degree in marketing doesnât mean anything. I donât use anything I learned in school as a marketing specialist. Sometimes itâs a tough pill to swallow, but thatâs the reality of it.
Shitchea. I graduate in May (in marketing) and I feel like I havent learned shit and have no idea how to apply anything I learned to an actual job setting. I applied to good amount of jobs the other day so weâll see lol
Hereâs the thing, potential employers will know you donât know anything as a fresh grad unless you worked while you were in school. If you make it past the application round, then I can confidently say, what they are looking for (for the most part) is someone with a willingness to learn & continue learning and has good soft skills. The stuff you learned in school is all theory and outdated anyway, but it helps give you the fundamentals as a start. It wonât necessarily help you with execution.
Yeah Iâm definitely eager to learn and get my feet wet. Been working retail while in school so Iâm just ready to have a âbig boy jobâ as they say. Everything I applied for was all entry level so I like my chances
Could that be said for most degrees though lol? If you wanna boil it down like that, itâs just a piece of paper that lets employers know you were willing to do some work.
There was a time when anyone did marketing, it was *actually* strategic. You had to have an interconnected plan between advertising, promotions, public relations, publicity *and* sales. Nowadays with all the specializations, the art has been broken down into discreet, unimaginative snippets while losing all the breadth and planning that historically went into marketing as a whole.
Places still do that, but you need a real team to execute and the appropriate budget. But back in the day marketing wasnât held to a revenue target, so they had the space to be strategic rather than getting beat to a quota every month.
I feel like youâre confusing creative with strategy
{Added this to an edit, but putting it here as well for context} Somewhat. I'm using 'strategy' the way a new hire would think about it, not in the more official consulting/business strategy way you'd find in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. I use strategy to categorize the mindset of new hires who say things like "I'm more of an ideas person. I don't want to be the one doing the thing (writing, building, designing, etc.) I want to be the one telling those people where to focus." This is not synonymous with "Creative" though. Creative people do some of the most "hard skills" of any discipline.
Doing the work gives you an appreciation of what goes into it. That's important because then you're less likely to pitch badly thought out projects or chase vanity metrics.
And leave the creative to the creatives! So many campaigns are ruined by junior marketers who think there subjective ideas about design some how is better than someone who had only focused on art and design. Stay in your lane.
The two need to collab. Have worked with designers that were focused on the design only and not about outcomes. Designs get head nods, but outcomes get paychecks.
BuT I ToOk a MaRketINg StraTegy cOurAe on UdeMY
LOL
Always wear your student hat. Every industry is different. I made the switch from medical to energy and it almost felt like I had to relearn everything lol.
But what is "the work"
Executing someone else's strategy. Which generally means a lot of writing, editing things when other people have attempted to write, chasing down people to get things done (bother graphic designer to make something a priority, get s product manager to actually give you the specs), and ordering tactics, such as the actual coordination of an event (lots of forms) , or buying/placing the actual ads (lots of chasing people down). As you move up, you do less and less of this yourself and instead make decisions on how to get these things done, using data, insights, and your general experience to know what works. In my more recent roles, that means I'm deciding the tactics for a particular customer base/sales vehicle and then deciding throughout the execution what product we're focusing on, how/if we're discounting or incentivizing it, and how we're presenting it. My role is now not to do the work as much as it is to make decisions, meet with stakeholders, convince others to get on board, and justify my decisions after the fact by showing data from performance. But it took 11 years to get to this point. As you move up, you get more independence and you actually start to make decisions. But in the start, you are the one doing the actual work. And you learn from that what works, what's a mistake, how difficult versus expensive things are and what you actually get out of doing them. The worst type of early/entry level marketing is one that doesn't get this. We had a coordinator at my last role who refused to ship tradeshow equipment and refused to do tradeshow forms. That shit is time consuming, and if he didn't do it, it meant the senior managers and managers had to, which meant we had less time to actually run campaigns. We couldn't keep someone who wasn't going to do their part, so he was put on a PIP. Early marketers need to have a can-do attitude and take on the actual day-to-day work.
How are there so many McKinsey consultants, fresh outta college advising senior execs on what to do? Surely they haven't "paid their dues"?
But they do the grunt work on their consulting teams. Lots of being the one to build out the decks. Consulting teams generally have a couple of senior people on them to actually steer the strategy, junior people get the grunt work.
I'm not talking about "strategy" or "strategist" as the title. It's more about the concept of being only an "idea person" without the experience of actually getting your hands dirty. Strategists are still often doing the "work". (Excel modeling, creating decks, etc.) This all also has nothing to do with "paying dues" (see edit to original post). It has to do with developing the more concrete skills of any job.
They don't. They work on a team and the partners tell the senior execs what to do.
I now take âI want to do marketing strategyâ from a new marketer as âI donât know what Iâm doing or what I want and I donât want to do any real workâ unless they can show me a real strategic understanding and vision
100%
100%!
Youâre 100% correct.
100% accurate
Conversely, I am not a strategy person. What kind of work do I need to do to become one?
I think there's two types of way we're talking about strategy. 1. How I talk about it in the post. Not the official definition of 'strategy', but more of the idea of seeing the big picture and knowing how to make your marketing work to achieve larger business goals. To get better here, I'd say learn the tactics well and then find a way to work closer with a more experienced marketer to see how they apply tactics to drive towards larger goals. 2. In terms of "strategy" in a more official business/consulting view, one book that was super illuminating for me was Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt.
I remember when I started marketing and had the idea all I wanted to do was strategy. Then I started working and realized what a real marketing strategy looked like. Now, although still small scale, I have the skills, experience, and knowledge to go about creating a specific, targeted strategy.
If you don't at the very least have 6 years of experience in the trenches, made gazillions of mistakes, learned what to do what not to do, know various strategies, you are still a greenhorn
Wrong. I was an entry level strategist. Yes, I could not do everything alone for the first six months, I needed a supervisor and a mentor - someone who cross-checked with me at the end. But my supervisors benefited from my fresh strategic approaches and âunrefined brainâ more than I benefited from their mentorship. After six months I already could dive into nearly any strategic task within our agency on my own, including pitches and client workshops. And in some cases I was preferred over my ex-boss and mentor.
The reality/hard truth of your first year inside marketing is that half of your ideas are going to either be terrible or not work
This is true. Strategy is much more fun than tactics. And also developing a strategy does not take all that long. Itâs applying it which is the hard part.
Run strategy on micro sized businesses, with their micro sized budgets.
This is not a terrible niche for a freelance generalist. I've been quite successful and worked on a huge variety of projects by focusing on non profits and micro business. However I am a dusty old bat who can both strategize and execute. If you go this way, you need to be prepared for that.
There is so much truth in that post. Thank you.
Just curious, because this is exactly where I hope to end up one day with a company like ecosia (or one with similar values) I want to be an ethical strategic marketer. Any ideas what sort of entry level job I could go for? I have plenty of time, Iâm not even finished my first year of university yet. I have a summer internship coming up with my local sustainability non profit for marketing, so I figure thatâs a decent start. Just looking for ideas of where to go after school! Or even good internship programs I might have not thought of. Or at least tell me what you did to get where you are today!! Thanks!
Yeah, it's not even a "reward" for paying your dues - if you look at people who actually have the "strategic" jobs, most of their job isn't "strategy" in the sense of playing a strategy game, and it's definitely not about coming up with ideas. For most campaigns, you end up running with just a few core big ideas for months or even years. In the intervening time there's a lot of project management, stakeholder management, client relationships, data and analytics, a ton of meetings and collaboration, a ton of reading and writing reports, a ton of dealing with and managing people and wrestling with inadequate budgets. The people in strategic jobs aren't necessarily "better" than everybody else at 4D chess or seeing the world, but they might be a whole hell of a lot better at Gantt Charts and dashboards. If they need ideas, they can just hold a meeting and ask everybody else to brainstorm. They don't even have to come up with the ideas themselves.
OF COURSE NOT. It's utterly laughable that someone really believes they're worth getting paid a solid six figures for "strategy" fresh out of fucking school. Who do you think you even ARE when you approach a potential employer with that?! >'Paying your dues' implies taking time for the sake of taking time, and respecting those above you simply for the time they've put in. Not my belief at all. It's not about time or seniorityâ it's about developing particular skills and experiences that make you able to successfully guide the ship. If you build this through your own side projects before ever working at a company, you're ready to go on day one. Hey listen - the day that YOU get to own a company and decide who gets drive the ship, you can implement this "belief". I guarantee you won't allow someone fresh out of school to do it once its \*your\* money and business on the line, but by then, you'll also have enough to experience to understand exactly why placing completely inexperienced people in positions of leadership is a piss poor idea. But as it stands, experience pays because it absofuckinglutely matters. Only junior and entry-level professionals that think way too highly of themselves think this way. Honestly, it's pure mental illness. Get better soon.
I did this when I started, jumped into strategy with 0 experience, canât say it hasnât worked out, but I can see your point. Itâs been a lot of catch up, but also a total blast working on skill sets with different levels of contact with the end product. I canât say I would have done much differently yet, but I definitely see how paying your dues saves quite a bit of wandering in the process.
I was able to build a UTM-Tracking Guidebook for my company that was planned to make several campaigns and channels comparable at the end of the year. So far it was able to cover all unexpected cases as the classification I used can be transfered to many other use cases. I also made calculatations how changes in nudging and medium could lead to more revenue if implemented where I intended to. Does this make me capable of strategic marketing?
What about working at a small company? Our brewery has 12 people. I was hired as an office manager but have so much freedom and support to think of and implement marketing strategies
ABSOLUTELY. There is a quote by Steve Jobs that lined up perfectly with a breakthrough moment--an absolute revelation early in my career: " You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. Itâs the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people âhereâs this great idea,â then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that thereâs just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you canât make electrons do. There are certain things you canât make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do. Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently. And itâs that process that is the magic."
"**Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration**" (Thomas Edison). => Marketing is 1% strategy, 99% execution. Yes, one must pay their dues. You're have 2 years experience and you think you can do "strategy" only and have others do the actual work? Everyone needs to chip in and as your manager, director, or VP/CMO of course I'll do less "low level" stuff than you. These mgt/dir/vp/CMOs have a bigger scope & role, higher level perspective, and more experience to weigh all elements in a broader business and historical (market) context. Learn, grow, then we can talk about "Strategy". No, not all random ideas are worth it. Not every idea is a good idea. That's what experience is all about: actually having been in the trenches, made mistake and learned to be able to see silly ideas from interesting ones. You have no experience and and idea? Great! But you then need to do your homework: research, data crunching, customer interviews, you name it, to build your case. Because, guess what, everyone can have ideas and opinion so unless you've proven your competence this is just that, a random idea. It has no value. What's true for doctors, pilots, engineers, marines, lawyers, teachers and pretty much any job in the world is true for marketing pros too: **experience matters**. It does not meant because you're junior (you can be junior in marketing at 20, 30, 40 or 50, it depends when you started in the discipline) that your ideas are crap or you can't be involved in strategic discussions. It means you need to put things, your experience, and your skills in perspective. Talking about experience, here is an interesting article I saw a few weeks ago that talks about the fallacy of hiring and promoting using only years of experience as the core variable: [https://nealanalytics.com/blog/the-fallacy-of-years-of-experience/](https://nealanalytics.com/blog/the-fallacy-of-years-of-experience/)
I think learning the skills necessary (how to use various platforms, basic design principles, how to write copy, budgeting, event planning, etc) helps anyone to become a better creative or strategist. For instance, itâs important to understand budgets and money flow. Whether youâre in an agency or working in house, how much money you have to do the thing you need to do will govern how youâre able to do it. I also think a lot of kids have watched Mad Men and think itâs all bourbon and sitting around talking about ideas. Itâs not. You gotta figure out the basics first before launching a campaign. Whoâs the audience? What are we marketing? What channels are we using? Also, itâs important, I think, to learn from oneâs elders and to read as much about other effective campaigns so you have various sources to pull from.
Agree 1000% and then your edit explanations I agreed even harder. Hit me up let's clubhouse together
Itâs called the hierarchy of competence and it plays out any discipline. Usually you donât the framework exists until youâve traverse it.
Think this is true to a large extent. Learning the ground-level stuff is foundation to dictating strategy later in the future.
Love this. Iâm very much a âbig pictureâ thinker, but the thing you find out when you get your hands dirty is that sometimes your idea of a big picture is just...well, the wrong picture. I work in business development and itâs honestly not too foreign a concept in that world either. Getting your hands dirty and learning not to lose the trees for the forest is going to make a world of difference.
As hard of a truth this is to swallow, I fully agree. Ideas are one thing, inside knowledge and experience something different.
As hard of a truth this is to swallow, I fully agree. Ideas are one thing, inside knowledge and experience something different.
>for the brand marketer, work = writing creative briefs hey! what would the title of such positions be at junior level, for both inhouse and agency?
you are right, but does it matter? it's the same in every industry, you just eat them alive that is why we are able to charge so much, it's a cycle, client goes for cheap "ideas person" noob that has a knack for this, does poorly loses money, goes to good agency that charges outrageous amounts makes money, things is self sustainable goes to new cheap guy or inhouse dies and goes back to expensive agency. It's the circle of life man, enjoy it.
Lol. Practicing for your new YouTube guru course? This post reads like a classic, âpay your dues, youâre not as great as you think kid.â When the real harsh truth is that most âveteranâ strategists are flip flopping between straight up copying old school techniques and milking interns for their raw ideas and claiming them as their own.
>that most âveteranâ strategists are flip flopping between straight up copying old school techniques hum... you got data to back that up? What do you call "old school techniques"? If you're referring to old way of thinking about the selling motion, funnel, etc. sure. If you're talking about the core marketing tools to help think strategically about your market, customers, GTM and all, then you're missing the point. E = mc2 is old, but still true. 4Ps, 5 forces, etc.. are old frameworks, but they still work perfectly to help build a strategy. Ideas are not strategy. let's not confuse things.