I was recently forwarded an article entitled Two Big Things: How to Achieve Lifetime Job Security in Your Marketing Career by Eric Gagnon, president of GAA, a sales and business development consulting firm. A few excerpts I found interesting:
Job Security Tip #1: Focus on Your Tradecraft, and Don't Listen to the Grand Master Strategist Baby Geniuses of Marketing (GMSBGOMs)
Most of what's written about marketing these days is puffed up, pretentious high-concept fluff that's irrelevant and potentially fatal to your career ...
What he is basically saying is:
Marketing is Mostly Tactical
Sure, the high-concept elements of marketing strategy are important - positioning, trends, pricing, distribution, etc., but once they're set in your marketing program, the rest is all tactical: The process of marketing execution that drives all of the deliverables and activities of your marketing program.
Tactical marketing execution is where the game of marketing is won or lost.
Eric goes on to give us job security tip #2:
Job Security Tip #2: Never Forget that Marketing is Accountable to Sales...
When a marketing manager is working with their sales VP to develop ads, mailings, and deliverables that effectively sell their company's product, and these marketing activities are keeping the company's sales team supplied with a steady stream of high-quality leads, and the marketing manager is out in front, looking for ways to open new business opportunities in the marketing program, the marketing department is never asked to justify itself.
The Role of Marketing is to Serve and to Lead
As a marketing professional, your job is both to support sales in the here and now, by producing deliverables and marketing programs that generate sales response-inquiries, leads, and orders-for your company's (or client's) sales team, and to get out in front of your marketing program to anticipate and capitalize on new, future opportunities: Creating a new promotion for your product in a new market, developing a new marketing program to publicize a new compliance or regulatory change that can be met by your product or service, launching an innovative promotional offer to counter a competitor's new product announcement, and preparing a high-level business development presentation for a major corporate partner are but a few examples of ways you can keep your marketing program forward-looking, to anticipate and capitalize on future opportunities.
As a marketer in a professional services firm, keep the broad themes here in mind:
- Execution. Don't give your partners fancy talk about branding, instead, do those things every day that make the phone ring with the right prospects.
- By serving, you lead. It's your job to help your professionals sell and market. You've got to be there supporting and leading the efforts. One way to add value that is overlooked by many is to keep a watchful eye on future trends, alert your professionals to those opportunities, and then take advantage of them.
If these excerpts interest you, e-mail me for a copy of the article and make some time to check out GAA's website. I'm glad to have found Eric Gagnon, who is a raging, but ultimately sane voice in the marketing wilderness.
Have a great weekend,
Barbara Walters Price
Comments