Marketing. Everyone’s an expert. Every professional marketer has been in the meeting* where seemingly everyone else (sales, finance, customer service, product development) has an opinion – nay an unquestionable, expert view (cue eye roll) – as how the company should be marketed. Its use of social media, advertising, search, email, not to mention the website and the old chestnut of how to write a press release: any channel is fair game for comment. And do you know what? On the face of it, that’s fair enough. The actual machinations of delivering a message via any of these media isn’t exactly rocket science.

So what, you might ask, does an experienced career professional actually bring to the game, since marketing’s that obvious? The answer lies in balance and judgement. Not just the what, anyone can do that for sure, but the message, the when and to whom. The how – the combination of channels to deploy that build from piqued interest, raised eyebrow, to learning more and buying in to your brand.

That’s not just blindly posting a tweet or scheduling three LinkedIn posts a week. It’s understanding the target audience, crafting a message that resonates, and strategically timing the post for maximum visibility and engagement. It’s about analysing the data to see what’s working and what’s not, and adjusting the plan accordingly. It’s a post on a topic of relevance, a teaser video which links to a landing page with a full infographic and the drill-down, multi-layered setting out of the argument that shows you ‘get it’, the invitation to the webinar, building confidence until your brand is top of the list. Complex stuff, a journey, to coin a phrase.

Effective marketing is about maximising the return on investment of both time and money. It’s about setting realistic, measurable goals and developing a strategy to achieve them. It’s about knowing which metrics to track and how to interpret the data to optimise campaigns and demonstrate value. It’s knowing when and what to spend, what results to expect or consider good or bad, when to start and when to stop – that’s what comes with experience, insights, learning, victories and, yes, sometimes mistakes.

What does this mean for your business? Well, while everyone can have an opinion on marketing, it takes an experienced professional to strategically navigate the complexities and deliver real results. Investing in experienced marketing professionals isn’t just for delivery, it’s about fine-tuning.

In the words of the legendary Bananarama and the Fun Boy Three**, that’s what gets results.

* inspired by a recent linkedin post I can’t find again. I felt her pain.
** yes, I know it was a cover, but we all have our points of reference.