Friends of Dave #107: Here's Why People Hate The Marketing Department
STRAIGHT TALK ALERT: I spill tea on why your marketing really sucks...
Before we get things started, I need to confess that one of my resolutions for 2019 is to troll my teenagers every chance I can in order to passive-aggressively contribute to their angst. This means finding every opportunity possible to purposefully overuse popular younger generation lingo in daily discussion with them. Like I try to add "AF" to all adjectives when I talk to them -- such as I am "hungry AF" or "stoked AF" or "constipated AF" or the dreaded parental "disappointed AF." So in that vain, I just put "spill tea" in the subhead -- having little confidence that I actually used the term correctly...but I will probably floss in front of my kids later today when I tell them that I did...whatever....IDGAF...
So it's 2019 and apparently everyone is hating their marketing departments. If you email me protesting that you are not one of those people, I will definitely call BS. And if you happen to work in one of those said marketing departments (btw, you may know this already and if you don't this might make your Monday a little awkward) but I am here to inform you: people at your company think you suck. Okay maybe not you personally (I mean, we are Friends here), but they definitely think what you and your marketing brethren do is the opposite of good.
How do I know? Because just about every business conversation I have with friends, family and executives includes some form of "I don't know how to say this nicely but...our marketing department...*whispering while looking around to see if anyone is listening* sucks." I'm just wishing one day soon someone describes their marketing as "shitty AF" so I can come home and tell my kids....
Why the universal hate for the marketing team? After spending a career leading teams in sales, marketing and business development, I am here to tell you it is complicated (AF). But because I have seen all sides to the issue, I will share a few of my perspectives on why I believe people think their marketing sucks:
No one understands what marketing actually does -- including the people who do it. Do they write press releases and update websites? Are they responsible to get closable leads? Do they drive product strategy? Do they provide sales people with materials? Do they make sure our booth gets to the big conference we are sponsoring? At most firms, it is not clearly defined what constitutes success for marketing -- the C-suite just knows "we need it" (marketing can be like an Instant Pot in that regard). So marketing people stay busy working on the things they like to work on, getting super stressed about an upcoming website update or webinar that only 10 people will actually attend, and everyone else wonders what the hell they do all day that actually helps the business (more on this below).
Most marketing people have never been in sales. It has long been my opinion that the #1 customer for marketing is NOT the company's clients. By far the primary customer for marketing is their sales team (that doesn't mean the customer is always right, by the way). Marketing is there to help enable the salespeople to tell the company/product story and ultimately close business. Yet, most marketing teams are filled with people who have never carried a bag or had a quota themselves. They have never been in the trenches nor have they ever applied the marketing messages they create to try to close business. In an age where knowing your customer is of paramount importance, marketing departments like to talk in jargon like SEO, SEM, ABM, earned media, and digital transformation, but seldom can they connect the dots in a way that helps salespeople hit their number. And the quickest way to draw ire from any good salesperson is to not help them hit their number.
Expectations set for marketing are unrealistic in the first place. If you have a crappy product/technology, crappy sales execution/customer service, crappy margins, crappy corporate culture or, ugh, all of the above, marketing cannot magically put lipstick on the pig and solve all of that overnight with new branding, new website, glossy leave behinds, messaging, marketing automation, analytics, etc. Yet I cannot tell you how many companies expect it. While I believe it is the job of the CMO or marketing leader to partner with other leaders throughout the company (sales, finance, technology, HR, etc.) to help be a catalyst for change or improvement in each of those areas, marketing cannot execute it alone. I've seen first hand that it is really easy to point a finger at marketing as your company's issue when there are equally as big (if not bigger) problems elsewhere in the organization.
Marketing people can be annoying (AF). Yes, I said it. Let me put it in relatable terms for you: look at your company like it is a high school. In this case, your sales team are the jocks, customer success are your Student Council members, the finance team are the mathletes, legal is the debate team, your IT/engineering listened to Rush and were in the AV Club, and HR are those nice, random kids that kind of just blended into the background and who you look at in a yearbook years later and say, "Oh yeaaah, I remember him/her...whatever happened to them?" Marketing? They are the theater nerds and cheerleaders. With their energy, creativity and penchant for contrived drama, on any given day in high school they could find a way to get under the skin of the people in pretty much all of the groups mentioned above (sometimes multiple groups at once). Think about it. Today is no different. Right or wrong, people just don't get marketers. Using another relatable term, think of the marketing department as the Nickelback of your company.
When in doubt, marketing will tend to gravitate more towards communications and less towards improving commercial growth. I wrote about this phenomenon in a recent LinkedIn Update. Marketers these days become focused on the tactical benefits of content marketing. This makes sense because, now more than ever before, it is easy to create and distribute marketing content. So as part of their "marketing dashboard" (if one exists) and in an effort to justify their existence, marketing teams will proudly tout the quantity of posts they made on social media, the likes, the shares and the email open rates and click through rates. They'll talk about the number of webinars they are doing and will spend an inordinate amount of time putting together beautiful looking, branded collateral that at best regurgitates product features that a product manager gives them and at worst says absolutely nothing. They focus on the quantity of communications they produce because they believe this is what the company needs. But what the company really needs is quality -- meaning for all of this activity to be tied to a story that actually solves a business problem for the customer, drives sales enablement, qualifies and converts leads resulting in shorter sales cycles, increased revenue and clear differentiation of their offering from others in the competitive market. That takes a little more thought, effort and time. Make no mistake: no one outside of marketing cares about communications. They really want less talk about content for content sake and more action that leads to commercial growth.
Marketing is still viewed by many firms as a cost center. How many companies do you know that recruit superstars in their marketing departments? Sadly, not enough. In most cases, because the majority of companies do not truly understand the value of good marketing and are slow to implement KPIs to help measure (and reward) success, marketing budgets and salaries are kept tight. And because marketing is often misunderstood, good marketers are a challenge to manage by less marketing savvy executives (especially if they report into sales). This also means that the most ambitious people tend to be drawn to higher paying jobs in other departments or to more marketing oriented companies. And invariably, if you are in marketing and show any dealmaking ability that allows you to convert messaging into revenue, you are quickly deployed to sales, business development or another department directly tied to the growth of the business. This generally leaves most marketing departments stocked with: younger/greener/cheaper employees looking to learn and/or figure out what they want to do with their lives; creative talent that enjoys the art of developing branding, messaging and imagery but does not really understand the company's business or market; marketing tacticians who are well schooled in the nuts and bolts of traditional marketing but not necessarily in how to tell a story that can leverage data to convert into leads and closable business; and people who are simply happy to have a job and benefits without a lot of risk or raised expectations. NOTE: this does not describe every person in every marketing department (yes, there are good marketers out there!) -- but I've seen and managed a few marketing teams globally in my day, and it is pretty spot on.
Why do I point all of this out? Not because I am trying to pile on the marketing hate -- no, it is quite the opposite. I hate hearing that people think their marketing departments suck! I believe marketing teams have the potential to be a huge commercial asset to most organizations (some might say that I am hopeful AF). They just need to be self aware, less concerned about their own activity and more focused on partnering with other departments in order to contribute to meaningful revenue growth. And companies, in turn, need to be more open to harnessing the transformative creativity and innovation that marketing can bring to the organization as a whole.
Okay, enough tea spilling....let me know what you thought. I may write a follow up at some point on "how marketing teams can avoid sucking" in the future....but in the meantime, on to this week's articles. Have a good one!
XOXO
Dave
A Few to Think About...
The Hidden Benefits of Vulnerability
We tend to think showing vulnerability makes us seem weak, inadequate, and flawed—a mess. But when others see our vulnerability, they might perceive something quite different, something alluring.
Contrary to popular belief, “beautiful messes” and vulnerability have a certain authenticity and allure to people.
How to Seem Like You Always Have Your Sh*t Together
Good companion to previous one. “Getting it together” is the ultimate goal, but nobody really has it all together — at least not all the time. A few simple things to think about so you can begin to convince people you do.
3 For Your Day Job...
Most CEOs Don't Know Where to Deploy AI Within their Business
Had a conversation about this exact topic earlier this week. Managing customer and supplier relationships, as well as your operational efficiency will become best areas for artificial intelligence -- but first you have to take some time to identify the low hanging fruit.
How Smart Cities Will Vacuum Up Data — And Attempt To Protect It
For you data nerds, this is some excellent food for thought. CB Insights digs into initiatives for collecting and sharing accessible city data, as well as how organizations around the world are handling growing privacy concerns.
Why Scale and Success Can Be The Downfall of Companies Facing Disruptive Change
The business landscape is littered with the carcasses of companies whose leaders misread the tea leaves of disruption, or those who ignored the peripheral players in their space until it was too late. Others didn’t catch the change in the prevailing winds of customer preferences, instead holding fast to their historical assumptions and relying on their market dominance and scale.
If you work for a big company, read this one to see (and validate) some the challenges you face in a market that is being disrupted. If you work at a startup, read this to understand how to partner with the big companies to help them face the disruption.
3 That Are Random AF...
After Years Of Restraint, A Linguist Says 'Yes!' To The Exclamation Point
In related news, this same linguist really hates the band Panic! At the Disco....
Chessboxing: the new craze where brain meets brawn
I can only imagine what this emerging sport would be like if Howard Cosell was still alive to commentate....you have to see this....
Inside the world's first underwater hotel villa, where you can sleep with sharks for $50,000 a night
Awaiting confirmation on whether they call it the Luca Brasi Suite just to mess with people....
And The Last Word....
I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon. — www.theatlantic.com
There’s a certain novelty, after decades at a legacy media company, in playing for the team that’s winning big. Well written, fascinating, insider account of the rebirth of a former sports journalist who once interviewed George W. Bush as a delivery guy.