IT'S COMPLICATED

My marketing career path has been full of challenges for the past 10 years.

First, I realized that many people have wrong perceptions about marketing profession, they either stereotype marketing as something of sweet lies, or conclude that marketing is only about creativity. People around me used to associate marketing with “graphic design”, “video shooting”, “TV commercial”, “sales”, “advertising slogan” etc. Well, they are right… partially, except that marketing covers so much more than what they know, not to mention the social media they are using every day today.

It is a complicated profession, at least based on my experience.

First, I was told that Marketing should be the visionary leader of a company, setting business direction while taking care of product and sales, but some people said something totally opposite like "Marketing is not important.". Whatever it is, one thing that I figured out is, you can never stop learning as long as you are in the marketing field.

It is complicated because the marketing landscape is changing so frequently. Facebook might be effective for you today, but it may not perform in the next month. You might be getting a good amount of CTR on Instagram but it didn’t bring you any conversion. On top of that, last year's sales figure may not have any resemblance to this year's sale due to politics, social, and culture changes.

I’m not complaining, in fact, I tried as much as possible to improve my marketing skills. There are a few critical points that my explanation can make sense to other people:

1. Marketing is a strategy - unless you are selling something so distinct that nobody else can offer, you will need a strategy. The strategy comprises of not just the design but also the substance. Does Apple iPhone need strategy given its amazing technology and features? Of course!

2. Marketing is technical - I have come across some companies looking for a marketing person to single-handed-ly manage in-house SEO and SEM, website development with Javascript or HTML skills, and take care of marketing strategy, stakeholder relationship, sales performance, budgeting, or even more. What they do not know is, SEO and SEM require tremendous investment of time and adequate skills to run effectively. Behind every algorithm and IT science, it takes experience and great knowledge to handle them beautifully.

3. Marketing is not just selling - every marketing campaign comes with an objective, but not necessarily focus on sales only. A luxury brand that keeps on running Sale will not be able to fulfill branding status. Have you seen Hermes running Sale frequently? A company would lower its product price in order to increase market share but it will not fulfill its branding goal unless it wanted to position itself as discounted brand with cheap quality.

4. Marketing is not just a TV commercial - I was once teased by a sibling when he saw a lousy TV commercial, he asked, “Is this what you are actually studying?”. I was upset of course. The TV ad is one of the implementations of marketing strategy, and if it didn’t manifest the objective/goal/message that was defined for the audience, the problem could be either bad strategy or wrong production team. Good marketing involves a bigger picture of back-end effort to market a brand/company/product.

A complicated relationship usually involved 2 or more people, whereas complicated marketing is made up of a lot of specializations, plus analysis of human behavior and marketplace. If a relationship doesn't work, you can say: "I don't love you" and leave. If marketing doesn't work, you have to say: "I will not leave until there is some good result!"