“Anyone Can Do Marketing.”
One thing that everyone in the field of marketing & communications has to deal with wherever they go is a fundamental lack of respect for what they do. For some reason, people who are in completely different fields feel marketing and communications is a soft skill that anyone can really do if they made the attempt. Often times, they feel they themselves are better at it than they are in reality.
It’s a lot like dancing or being funny. A lot of people think they can do these things. A lot of people are wrong.
Yet, despite multiple examples of major companies committing unbelievably stupid marketing or communications blunders, the attitude persists.
Imagine watching football with your friends and one of them makes some mind-numbingly asinine comment like “I can do that too, I know how to run.” That’s how marketing people feel when someone says they can do what we do because they know how to write an email.
Don’t get us wrong, we find it adorable when we read emails from these kind of people. We just wonder if they properly identified their audience and developed character profiles, determined the motivations and interests of each one, highlighted the common spheres of motivations, packaged and customized content to those inclinations, developed counterarguments to likely objections, created a call to action, designed a simple glide path for them to follow, redrafted the content, targeted the identified audience, deployed at statistically-measured optimal times to disseminate, measured the email’s effectiveness, targeted the group who failed to take action with new customized content, socialized the results with leadership in the form of an easily digestible presentation, advised on organizational course corrections in light of the data, built messaging around the new direction, calculated ROI from the aggregated completion of desired actions, then brainstormed on a new campaign series to increase the effectiveness of the next email.
That’s all.
All kidding aside, let’s be frank: Creative marketing and communications professionals are as economically valuable, (if not more), as those working in finance, IT or operations.
We wonder those things because all of that is just one small facet of our jobs, email marketing. Since anyone can do it, it’s baffling to us how people with such busier lives and far more important jobs find the time to do all of it. We truly must be a sad lot.
All kidding aside, let’s be frank: Creative marketing and communications professionals are as economically valuable, (if not more), as those working in finance, IT or operations. Here are a few reasons why:
Creatives Can Learn Anything. No One Can “Learn” To Be A Creative. When it comes to finance, IT and operations, there is a certain science to them. You have to be good at calculation. Calculation, though, is a skill. Anyone, including creatives, can learn a new skill. Especially in a world where virtually every knowable skill is available to learn on the spot via Google or YouTube. Talent, on the other hand, is innate. It can’t be learned, only developed. If you do not have the natural talent for marcom, for creativity, you never will.
The More Digital Things Become, The More Important We Become. In an increasingly digital world, content is indeed king. The days in which face to face meetings in order to get buy-in, close a deal or work out a project was the standard for business are long gone. Nowadays, the majority of instances in which people interact with you or your brand will be digital. That means the content at each touchpoint is more significant than ever.
Creativity Can’t Be Automated. Almost Everything Else Can & Will Be. Machines will only get better at calculation. They’ll get better at seeming human. One thing they won’t ever be able to do is be truly creative. 74% of educators say that the risk of job automation is lower in professions that require creative problem-solving skills. Yes, we know. There’s that AI that wrote a novel. We also know that book sucked. So again, we win.
Many of those in marketing and communications were among the first let go by companies who were impacted by COVID-19 out of a general belief they are not a “critical business function.” It’s unfortunate because many of those companies will quickly learn how important effective marketing and communication strategies are to their business operations. If you understand how important it is to have professionals managing your marketing and communications, contact us today.