1540: Why You Shouldn't Have a Marketing Department (Have This Instead) by Margo Aaron of That Seems Important

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. Why You Shouldn't Have a Marketing Department Have This Instead by Margo Aaron of ThatSeemsImportant.com.

[00:00:10] You know how you aggressively brush your teeth the night before a dentist appointment? Like, if you just brush really hard, your dentist won't notice that you haven't been flossing those back teeth for months. It never works. Your dentist always notices because she's a dentist. It's her job to know you've been half-fitting your toothbrushing for the last few months.

[00:00:28] I feel the same way about marketing, or at least how people treat marketing lately. It's become this last-ditch effort to salvage damage that was done months before.

[00:00:38] Let's set the record straight here. You can't hire a marketer and get your product launched, just like you can't aggressively brush your teeth the night before your dentist appointment and expect all the M&M damage to be gone. Marketing can't save you from an unnurtured list, poor time management,

[00:00:52] crappy team members who don't execute well, a shitty product, inconsistent communication, or, the worst offender in my opinion, lazy copy.

[00:01:02] Okay, it's not actually the worst one, but it does make me angry.

[00:01:05] Marketing enhances what already exists. It's like makeup. You can't fix ugly if it's coming from inside.

[00:01:12] But if you have nice eyes, those babies can pop with the right liner and some good mascara.

[00:01:16] I've written before about how marketing is held responsible for the outcome of a system it's not entirely in control of.

[00:01:23] And today I want to explore why we keep expecting marketing to do a job it's not designed to do.

[00:01:28] Molly Pittman, VP and traffic manager of Digital Marketers says,

[00:01:51] Like most things titled value journey, or canvas, blueprint, or framework, I thought this was a BS gimmick, but turns out it's legit.

[00:02:00] Quote, People use one campaign in the excite stage, and it's no surprise it doesn't work.

[00:02:06] Don't just think of marketing as something that happens in awareness stage in business.

[00:02:11] You need to deploy campaigns later in the customer journey. End quote.

[00:02:16] Ding, ding, ding, ding.

[00:02:17] Listen, I'm all for marketing being held accountable, just like all departments in a company should be held accountable.

[00:02:23] But no one's blaming accounting if revenue is low.

[00:02:26] No, the expectation you have of a department needs to be consistent with what that department is responsible for.

[00:02:32] If I had my way, there'd be no marketing department.

[00:02:34] Yeah, I said it.

[00:02:36] When marketing is its own department, the rest of the organization abdicates its responsibilities as part of the growth team.

[00:02:42] So they might say, we made this product, we have this event, now go tell people.

[00:02:46] I can't even write that sentence without my blood boiling.

[00:02:49] You tell people.

[00:02:50] Sorry.

[00:02:51] Okay, here's the thing.

[00:02:52] You can't keep telling people stuff.

[00:02:55] Promotion is not blasting emails about your events to your audience in order to get the word out.

[00:03:00] You can't irritate people into submission or force them to buy something they don't want.

[00:03:05] Do you remember that story about the burger place?

[00:03:07] Guy asks his friend, what do you need to have a successful burger place?

[00:03:11] The friend says, I don't know, best meat, great lighting, nice tables, fancy chef?

[00:03:16] Guy says, no, you need a crowd full of hungry customers.

[00:03:20] Marketing takes the crowd full of hungry customers and convinces them they want to eat a burger.

[00:03:25] We can't make customers hungry if they're full.

[00:03:27] You can use the world's greatest appeal, but if a customer just walked out of that Thai place stuffed to the brim, he's not eating your burger.

[00:03:34] From my experience, anytime a CEO blames marketing for failing to find hungry customers, she's covering her own failure to build something people want.

[00:03:43] Can marketing make that thing more appealing?

[00:03:45] Sure.

[00:03:46] We can change the positioning.

[00:03:47] We can mess with the pricing.

[00:03:48] We can do lots of things that most of us argue make a huge difference.

[00:03:52] But do they?

[00:03:53] Is a bad headline really the reason no one is buying?

[00:03:56] I know, it's sacrilege to say.

[00:03:58] I love headlines too, and I've read book after book on how they've generated billions of dollars for companies.

[00:04:04] I've even witnessed their power in my own collateral.

[00:04:07] But you still have to offer people something they actually want.

[00:04:10] The truth is, I'm really sorry you guys, I have to say it.

[00:04:13] Things sell with bad headlines when the customers really want them.

[00:04:17] I know, I know, I'm going to be kicked out of every marketing club that ever loved me.

[00:04:21] But it needs to be said.

[00:04:23] I've witnessed sh** marketing sell like hotcakes because it was selling something people actually wanted.

[00:04:28] It's like when we blame the algorithm when, really, people just aren't interested in the topic you wrote about.

[00:04:35] RIP my articles on media literacy.

[00:04:37] The best, most conversion-optimized website won't work if the offer sucks.

[00:04:42] Remember what Zappos looked like in 2003?

[00:04:45] Wayback Machine is the best way to waste time if you're stuck in a meeting, by the way.

[00:04:50] Things sell when the value proposition is something people want.

[00:04:54] Marketing's job is to make hungry customers realize they want a burger,

[00:04:57] not frantically publish flyers all over the place at the 11th hour when we discover no one has bought any burgers.

[00:05:03] And publish flyers equals take out Facebook ads, equals tweak the sales page,

[00:05:09] equals send more emails, equals decrease the price,

[00:05:12] equals all the things you do at the 11th hour to get a lift in sales when, really,

[00:05:16] you should have been nurturing your d*** list and building something people actually want.

[00:05:20] Marketing is important, but it cannot function in a silo disconnected from the rest of the organization.

[00:05:26] It's part of the rest of the organization, which is why it shouldn't be its own department.

[00:05:31] If you want to fulfill the function of finding leads, attracting qualified ones,

[00:05:36] converting them to customers, and then getting them obsessed with your business,

[00:05:39] then you need a designated growth department where a member of every team is required to come together.

[00:05:45] Product people, dev team, design UX team, sales teams, operations people,

[00:05:50] customer service, PR people, and marketing people.

[00:05:53] We're all on the growth team.

[00:05:55] Handing stuff off to marketing is not how a system works.

[00:05:59] That's how production teams work.

[00:06:01] I made this flyer. Please print it.

[00:06:03] K, thanks. Bye.

[00:06:04] Marketing used to work as a fantastic top-of-the-funnel lead-gen machine.

[00:06:08] It doesn't work like that anymore.

[00:06:10] If you've been feeling like c*** about your abilities as a marketer,

[00:06:13] this is probably why.

[00:06:15] The role we have now is to educate people on this system.

[00:06:18] And for goodness sake, people, stop promising things you can't deliver.

[00:06:22] You know who you are.

[00:06:23] Marketing cannot replace the hard work of building something people want.

[00:06:27] It cannot replace the hard, unsexy work of showing up when you're not launching something,

[00:06:33] consistently providing value, surprising and delighting customers,

[00:06:36] and actually giving a f*** about the people you're selling to.

[00:06:40] If you don't want to freak out the night before your dentist appointment,

[00:06:43] brush your teeth aggressively every day, floss those back teeth,

[00:06:47] and don't eat M&Ms for dinner.

[00:06:49] This isn't rocket science.

[00:06:54] You just listened to the post titled,

[00:06:56] Why You Shouldn't Have a Marketing Department.

[00:06:58] Have This Instead, by Margot Aaron of ThatSeemsImportant.com.

[00:07:04] And thanks to Margot for letting us share her post today.

[00:07:07] In her quest to answer the question,

[00:07:09] How do you get people to care?

[00:07:11] And not finding the answers in her job,

[00:07:14] Margot set about learning all she could about persuasion,

[00:07:16] influence, direct response,

[00:07:19] copywriting, branding, and other buzzwords,

[00:07:21] and eventually started her own business.

[00:07:23] And while she was making money,

[00:07:25] she still wasn't getting people to actually care.

[00:07:28] So she started writing about her experiences

[00:07:30] and gained quite a following in the process.

[00:07:33] Today, Margot's the co-host of the popular internet talk show,

[00:07:36] Hillary and Margot Yell at Websites.

[00:07:38] And her website, That Seems Important,

[00:07:40] was named one of the top 100 websites for writers.

[00:07:44] Come check it out at ThatSeemsImportant.com,

[00:07:47] and I have that linked in this episode's description.

[00:07:50] But with that, I hope you have a great rest of your day,

[00:07:52] and I thank you for being here as always.

[00:07:54] And I'll see you back here tomorrow,

[00:07:56] where your optimal life awaits.