Esther
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, we're talking about the role of a marketer. It's very wide and varied, isn't it?
Melanie
Well, it's meant to be, I think.
Esther
Well, some people think it It should be more varied than others.
Melanie
I think some people expect it to be more varied than others. There is a difference.
Esther
Yeah. It's like that old adage, Jack of all trade, Jack of all trade's master of none. That's what most marketers It feels like, but it shouldn't. We're here to tell you it shouldn't.
Melanie
Well, no. A lot of people expect us to be a Jack of all trades and a master of all of them, in fairness.
Esther
Well, that's also true. Yeah, but that's almost impossible. I'm sure there are some They're wonderfully high-skilled in all aspects of marketing.
Melanie
We've had them all on this podcast.
Esther
We have. I'm sure there's some more, but we have had lots and lots on. Okay, so a marketer is someone who promotes a company's products or services, builds brands... Can I speak properly? I haven't had enough coffee in this morning. No. Let's try that one It's a bit of a tongue twister. Build brand awareness. Too many Bs. Drive sales, maximize profits. Sounds good, right?
Melanie
Yeah. Any of these marketing roles can be either in-house or freelance or agency. There's loads of different ways that you can have this role. But today we want to discuss the areas of knowledge that you may not have looked at or considered, or maybe you're not entirely sure where you want to go with your degree or qualification or your life skill. I mean, it's only recently in the last couple of years, I've become fully properly qualified, if you like, with a piece of paper. I've just been entirely self-trained and attending courses and following influencers and that stuff. You don't have to have a qualification to get a role in this, but to get good money and a better reputation for yourself, it's better to be qualified.
Esther
Yeah, but there's marketing There's marketing. Let's just put it that way. There's the traditional marketing, there's the online marketing, social media marketing, there's the marketing that comes with PR, there's the marketing that comes with whether you're specializing in ads or whether you're more generalist. There are so many different things. I actually, I'm glad that we started coming across marketing and started with social media at the time that we did because we've been able to build up our knowledge and build up our experience with the platforms. I mean, it may come as a shock to many of you, but we are older than Facebook. We are older than Instagram, older than YouTube. All of those platforms came about even after I graduated from university. With a marketing degree. All the knowledge that I had from marketing only was for the offline marketing, the traditional type. Then I had to reskill in all the online stuff. I feel sorry for those that are younger than us, that are younger than Facebook, younger than YouTube, that are having to learn it after the fact. Because they've got so much more that they need to learn and become accustomed to in a shorter period of time. Because we've had all those years of planning, helping, all of that behind us because the platforms were learning as well.
Melanie
Yeah, and they were a lot smaller as well. We didn't have as much competition. Everybody was making the same mistakes at the same time, whereas now there are Leviathans of people out there that know the platform intimately, backwards and forwards platforms.
Esther
Well, I think that's why many people are specializing now.
Melanie
Yeah, do you reckon?
Esther
That they're going for one a specific one because it is that bit more difficult to have the broader knowledge of different platforms.
Melanie
So have you specialized?
Esther
No.
Melanie
There you go.
Esther
Neither have you.
Melanie
Well, I have, haven't I?
Esther
Well, but you still do the Facebook and you still do work in all the different areas. You still use LinkedIn.
Melanie
Still going to step further than you, though.
Esther
Yeah, I know. Doing videos.
Melanie
No, Google business profile.
Esther
I know, yes. Specializing in that, but you do still work across other channels. Yeah, I do. You have specialized in one area, but you still have enough knowledge and enough experience across the other platforms because you were a generalist for so long. I'm making you sound really old now.
Melanie
I am really old.
Esther
So long. But it's not as if you're just going to forget that knowledge. Yeah.
Melanie
Well, the trick is to stay on top of all that knowledge as well, because this particular field, as I'm sure you're aware, everybody who's listening to this, is it's enormously fast moving.
Esther
Yes.
Melanie
As Esther has pointed out, there are two specific types of marketers, if you like. There's generalist and there's specialist. And the generalists, like myself and Esther, who've been around for a long time, make Maybe we've made the decision to be generalists because we don't want to spend that time digging into the one field, or it could be managing expectations is too hard for you and you just want to do the whole shebang. But for those of you who want to go down the specialist route, in some ways I envy you because you then get really well known for doing that one thing really, really well. You're head and shoulders over the likes of myself and Esther. You become a specialist, you become the go-to person, you become the person that everybody seeks to get into books and to become a speaker at events, whereas the generalist, not so much. And although for me personally, I think if I just stuck to one area, I think I might get bored, personally.
Esther
Well, you say that.
Melanie
Well, I think so.
Esther
But you know the way that the platforms change and move so quickly. I don't think you'd have time to get bored because you'd be doing everything. I mean, we've just had recently had Louise Brogan on. She is very well known, specialized realizing in LinkedIn, and she's just spoken at Social Media Marketing World, and LinkedIn keep changing the area that she was talking about. She was talking about doing videos on LinkedIn, and they kept changing it. Every day, there was a new update or a new thing.
Melanie
She had to change it just a few days before the flipping talk as well, didn't she? Yeah, the actual event.
Esther
I know. That would stress me out. But if you have specialized down into focusing on one main platform or one area, whether that's video content or whether it's ads or whether it's LinkedIn and doing everything across LinkedIn ads, video, etcetera, I still don't think you'd get bored. You might think you do before you do it because with so many changes comes so much extra work that the rest of us as generalists just go, I'll figure that out when I need to because it's not affecting me directly right now.
Melanie
Yeah, you're so right.
Esther
But as a generalist, you'd be more along the lines of a social media executive. You'd have to have a knowledge of everybody under you and what they're doing. You'd have to know the strategy. You'd have to know the market and trends, content planning, creation, posting, or distributing content, or whether that's scheduling or doing it in the platform at the right time, whatever. Building campaigns, optimizing them, community building, measuring or reporting, client communications, so much goes into a market.
Melanie
But specialists do that as well, though, don't they?
Esther
They do, but for one platform.
Melanie
Yeah, yeah.
Esther
Okay. But also, if you have an executive role and you're supposed to know all of this stuff, it doesn't mean you have to actually do it hands-on yourself. You should inside a company, if you're lucky to work in a big enough company, you should have people under you that will do the content planning and creation, and you sign off on it because you know all the other aspects. But you shouldn't have to be going through the nitty-gritty. A marketing executive should never just be a role for one person with nobody helping in the background.
Melanie
And honestly, it's important to have a second person anyway, because let's face it, you need holidays and being off sick. And heck, what happens if you Ieave.
Esther
Yeah. Plus, how many times have we seen, and I've shared job applications with you, Melanie, going, how did they expect one person to be able to do all of this? Because it also includes Google Ads, it includes SEO, and the back-end of websites, and you're going, You know?
Melanie
You just can't have all that knowledge.
Esther
No we're good.
Melanie
You can't know that as deeply and as fully as they would like you to. I have a very basic general knowledge of SEO, a working knowledge. I wouldn't be able to do it for somebody else, if you like. I know basic website background stuff, but only for a couple of brands. I wouldn't know it any more than, say, two, maybe three. I'd just stretch if I included Squarespace. But nobody can know it all and do all of it. I do mean all of it really, really well.
Esther
Yeah. Some of the jobs that I've seen, and if you've seen these as well, do let us know. They're expecting somebody to do all of this for about 30,000 a year. I'm glad you're laughing because I was I was crying when I saw it. I was like, I'm sorry, what? But as we said at the start, Melanie and I have years of experience, and those years of experience count for a lot.
Melanie
Yeah, I'd say so.
Esther
We, and you, listeners, viewers, deserve to get paid for your years of experience.
Melanie
Let's talk skills, Esther.
Esther
Yes.
Melanie
Okay. We've talked about the roles, we've talked about the responsibilities, or some of the responsibilities. I'm sure our listeners can think of other responsibilities as well. But as you heard right from the get-go, I was self-taught initially. But then I attended courses and I followed influencers and I've been part of Mary Smith's scoop troupe. I've been Laila Bullock as well. I've followed all these people and I've partaken of their courses, but none of them are qualifications. But they've been a really good start. I've applied an awful lot of that knowledge to going forward with other courses that I've done afterwards. Now I'm getting qualified in stuff, which is great. But I'm only doing that for me. I'm not doing that for anybody else. I just want to see if I can actually get it. So far, so good. I am touching MDF here. The skills that you need, definitely, I would agree, is writing, editing, and design. Now, writing, you've got lots and lots of help with that. You've got Microsoft Word, you've got ChatGPT if you're really struggling with writing. Editing can be done through ChatGPT as well. Heck, even design can be done through the likes of Canva or Graphic AI with some description.
Esther
Midjourney comes to mind.
Melanie
Midjourney is another really good one, yeah. But then there's the communication part, and I'm afraid this is where you cannot fail because the whole point of marketing is communication.
Esther
Yes.
Melanie
Marketing, as we've discussed many times over the last five odd years, is it covers so many different areas from visual, written, listening, the whole nine yards. When it It comes down to the communication element, you've really got to have a good, confident understanding of how you're going to verbalize something, and ideally, how you're going to write it as well, because that's all down to the strategy. If you can't write that out and if you can't explain it out, then it's not going to be very effective.
Esther
Yeah, because like I was saying, you would hope to have a team.
Melanie
Yes.
Esther
You need to be able to relay the information either verbally or written to them so that they understand it, so that they're able to follow it, so that they're able to do what needs to be done. Because of having that team, then you need to know how to manage them, lead them, teamwork, collaboration. There's so many things that are part of social media, whether it's... Melanie works for herself, but her and I collaborate. I work with a team, but I would also work externally for other teams. You need to have all of these abilities. I wouldn't just call them skills. I think that they go much deeper and a lot of them are-.
Melanie
We've got to be open to it, haven't you?
Esther
Yeah. You can learn all these skills. It's not that we just woke up one day and went, I'm going to be a social media manager and I will write all my content perfectly with no help from Grammarly or any other documents that can help you correct your spelling and grammar. I will be fluent in all these different skills just because I want to. No, you have to work on it.
Melanie
No, absolutely. As you were mentioning about the teamwork and collaboration, that will involve an enormous amount of project management as well.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
Although I work for myself, I have got close relationships with a couple of VAs that have helped me out over busy times over the years. I've had to manage my project management. Website designer is part of my project management team. Erin, big shout out to you. Hi. My bookkeeper as well. She's on my project management as well. There's so many things you got to get your head background. It's technical skills, project management, your teamwork and collaboration. But you know what? None of that works if you don't also look back and see what's working or what's not. If your tools If your tools aren't working properly, if you're not following your analytics or your insights, if you're not looking at how much something's actually costing price-wise, so if you're using paid-for tools, which I would imagine a lot of you are, are you getting the best deal? Are you Are you making enough money to cover all of your costs and still making a profit? All of that is also part of your job, believe it or not.
Esther
Yeah. It's not enough to just know and learn about social media in general. You need to be curious and constantly trying to see what's coming next. We're not mind readers. We don't have a big crystal ball, but there are other people that you can follow, like Melanie mentioned, Mary Smith, who has an inside scoop into a lot of the workings that will be going on at Facebook. We have mutual... We know, sorry. Again, caffeine hasn't kicked in yet. I apologize, guys. We know of Andy Lambert, who created Content Cal. He's got the inside scoop as well on a lot of stuff that will be coming up in social media. But you can predict some of the things. I mean, a couple of years ago, AI wasn't as big as it is now, and you could just see the shift moving. Now Meta is including it in its ads. Twitter, formerly known as no, X, formerly known as Twitter. I always get those the wrong way around. It's just Twitter. For me. They have their own AI in grok. All of these platforms are adopting AI. Are you doing that? Are you adapting to the new things that come in?
When Melanie and I, or when, sorry, when social media first came about, MySpace was a thing. Bebo was a thing. I mean, if we had just focused all energy in learning about those, we'd be out of a job before we even start. Blab was a thing. I mean, we could list so many. I loved Blab. I know Blab was great. We could list so many things. Even Clubhouse has stopped existing now, and that was a more recent one. We could list so many platforms that we have used, that we loved, that we really enjoyed. But if you, again, that comes down to the whole putting all your eggs in one basket and specialized in any of those, then time to adapt and move on to another one. If Twitter was your thing and you no longer like X, then you have to adapt onto another platform. All these things just keep moving and changing. There is no guarantee that Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn will be the same for the next six months, let alone six years.
Melanie
You're definitely right. Curiosity and adaptability do need to be basically your basic fabric to go into this role. But so does attention to detail and being organized. Now, you try being a generalist and be organized. It's tough, okay? It's extremely tough. But time and practice and using the correct tools honestly does help. You've got to be open to innovation. You've got to be unafraid to try new things.
Esther
Yeah. But just going back there to the attention to detail, how many times have we seen images with a type of... Or with... Yeah, they've used AI and there's an extra finger or there's three eyes or something. Check. It doesn't take long to just double check before it goes out. It is so simple to just spell something the wrong way, or it's so simple to put the wrong logo on an image or put it into the wrong platform.
Melanie
Oh, managing multiple accounts and putting in the wrong... Yeah, that's happened to never me.
Esther
Never, never. We're above all of this, but you live in learn. That's why, again, collaboration, coming back to having someone that can just double-check things for you, having someone who will do the images if that's not your strong suit. I mean, I'm not a designer, but it's something that I've had to learn to do. My husband and I were at a local paint shop the other day, and the guy was asking me what color. I went, I don't know. He's the graphic design guy. He's the designer. He knows what color. I see in Microsoft 32 colors, and that's me. I mean, in the future, don't know. It's just pink. Talk simply to me, and it works. But if you collaborate with the right people, those that have a better skill set or a better understanding of the things that you're lacking working, then that will help you as well. You'll learn from them because you have to have that mentality of, I want to grow, I want to learn. That comes back to the curiosity as well.
Melanie
Okay, so we've now got a better understanding of the roles, the skill set, the knowledge that we're going to have to work on. It's an ongoing thing, especially if you're in something... Well, any of them are actually fairly fast moving these days because new tools are coming out all the time. Most of you would have started as interns or trainees or juniors of some description. You've got an intern at the moment, don't you?
Esther
We do.
Melanie
Which is rather cool.
Esther
We do.
Melanie
Then you work your way up to an executive or on the way up to being a manager, and hopefully then you've got a few people working with you or for you or whatever. The whole aim is to get more senior roles. Once you've got there, then you're probably working in an agency or a larger team, and you've then got people responsibilities on top of that and maybe sorting out people's finances and holidays and all sorts of other bits and pieces. So it depends on what you aspire to, don't you agree?
Esther
Let's not be adding more roles to the Marketing Manager. Let's just leave the finances and the the HR, the hiring to those other departments. Okay, let's marketers, stick to marketing. We've got enough to without doing everything else.
Melanie
I agree. So where are you in your journey right now? Are you hoping to work your way up and establish better control over your direction for your career? Are you an aspiring Marketing Manager who is currently working towards a degree? Wherever you are, you don't have to go through the full educational system because not all of our listeners are young people. I'm aware of that. You can go to the School of Life and work on building up your knowledge just like I did. Just like Esther, I get speaking opportunities, just like Esther, I can get booths and I can set up trade stands, and I get large clients just like Esther, too. So it's not the end of the world if you haven't got a big degree, although it would be nice to get one.
Esther
But at the end of the day, it's down to you. If you want to be a specialist, be a specialist. If you want to be a generalist, be a generalist. Do what makes you happy, and you can always change later. Nobody's going to say, Oh, you said that you were just on that one platform, and now you're over six different ones. It doesn't matter.
Melanie
And it shouldn't matter.
Esther
No. Do what works for you, whether that's working for a bigger agency or whether it's starting your own business. Just be happy. That's what we want for you.
Melanie
So we really hope today has helped. I know we normally talk about marketing in general, but today we thought we'd encourage more of you to work your way up to where you're going to be happiest and where your passion takes you. And for those new listeners, there is more to life than being a junior or a small marketing exec. You can work your way up to running your own business or your own two country agency.
Esther
Yeah, you can. It's always possible. Anything is possible.
Melanie
Well, that's all you're going to get from us for today. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll be back next week with another podcast. Bye-bye.
Esther
Bye.
