What challenges do Marketing Managers face?

Transcript

– I think a Marketing Manager’s job is hard because they’re doing the job that a whole agency does. So, where we have different people for; different teams for Social, for Google, a Marketing Manager has to oversee all of that. Yeah, a Marketing Manager not only has to take care of all of the digital marketing side of a business with all of the different platforms within it, that all have their own specifications, their own best practises, but all of that other stuff as well like events, out of home, flyers, leaflets, outbound calls, whatever it might be. All of this stuff falls onto a Marketing Manager’s desk. I often say, at many talks or meetings that I believe being a Marketing Manager or Marketing Director is one of the hardest jobs in the world. And what I really mean by that, it’s quite an over the top statement, but what I really mean by that is, I remember a story probably about four years ago: I went to speak to a Marketing Manager who was going to try and change the whole strategy. Like really try and bring in new change, really try and push forward. And one of the aspects that she said was on part of her buying plan was the water for the water cooler, the cups for the water cooler box, the charity poppy donation boxes on the desk; and while these things are all really important, someone has to do them, absolutely, I don’t believe it’s the job of the Marketing Manager to have to think about the minor details as well. And what was actually happening is a lot of her day, in actually creating and running her marketing strategy was on the smaller tasks, that a Marketing Manager wasn’t really required for. And because of that, you often get pulled in all sorts of different directions. Being a Marketing Manager is a really tough job, and it involves wearing so many different hats and pleasing so many different people. You’re expected to be the creative department that control the way the company is sort of seen, looks and making sure everything is creatively on point, but you’re also expected to be a kind of data handling side of the company, you’re expected to analyse and see the statistics and number crunch the data and report that in a way that makes sense. I also think that they get a lot of pressure put on them if they’re not making a lot of sales that week for example, or if the industry is down. They have a lot on their shoulders. On top of that, what you also find is that other members of the team will come up to you and put all the things on your desk, “Why aren’t we posting on LinkedIn? Why aren’t we posting on Twitter? Why aren’t we doing this? Why aren’t we doing this?” Even if they don’t really understand why, they’ll just start throwing other things on your desk. So, every single time I sit down and speak to a Marketing Manager or Marketing Director, I completely understand all the challenges you’ve got on your desk, all the difficulties you’ve got. And the best thing you can do to try and overcome these is write down a plan of action, take them to the people that are really putting things on your desk and say “Look, here’s what I have to do, and this is my priority list, and this is how I’m going to attack it, and unfortunately some of the things you need me to do right now are right at the bottom of the list.” We talk a lot about specialising, specialising on particular platforms, on particular niches within marketing. You know, a Marketing Manager is expected to specialise in not only all different areas of digital marketing, all of these are diverse and different, and very complex marketing platforms, but they’re also expected to be experts in how to code sites, they’re also meant to be experts in how to run events! You know, these in themselves are separate degrees, they’re separate qualifications that people make separate careers out of single pillars. But yet, Marketing Managers stereotypically are expected to do all of these different pillars. So, Marketing Managers, we feel for you. It’s a difficult job, because you literally have so many diverse skill sets required to able to just get through the day. And it can be so easy to get tied up in doing everything yourself. And that’s where you really need to start recognising the different skills within your team and pulling– like knowing; who’s good with data, knowing who’s a really good ideas person, and kind of utilising those different skills because it can be so easy to kind of fall into the category of micromanaging marketing and being completely obsessed about every tiny minor detail until the big picture gets lost. So I think, yeah, being a Marketing Manager is, it’s such a skill, and to anyone who does it, it’s just like, hats off: it’s amazing.