{"id":161152,"date":"2022-07-08T16:23:02","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T21:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitalmarketer.com\/?p=161152"},"modified":"2023-10-30T15:17:24","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T20:17:24","slug":"dont-respect-marketers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitalmarketer.com\/blog\/dont-respect-marketers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why People Don’t Respect Marketers & How to Elevate the Marketing Profession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Why<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a marketer, you aren\u2019t getting the respect you deserve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are a hard worker that loves what you do. You have spent years learning an ever-evolving list of skills, testing and refining your craft as technology and society have chaotically shifted drastically. You help businesses to make more money, allowing them to hire more people, create better products, and build empires of sustainable revenue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, no one gets excited to see a marketer walk into the room.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the accountant walks into an office, managers are happy to throw their accounting work at them. When the lawyer arrives to ensure legal compliance, no one thinks twice about handing their contracts over. Even when a plumber arrives, no one questions how they fix the toilet, they\u2019re just happy that the toilet is going to be working soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026but when a marketer walks in with a new marketing plan, hold onto your butts.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EVERYONE has an opinion. Everyone has doubts, suspicions, and sometimes hostility towards them and their promises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will question your prices, results, plans, decisions, and worst of all, even if you are 100% successful at delivering what you promise, they may STILL fire you because you don\u2019t charge less than the next marketer (who they consider interchangeable).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike most professionals, from doctors, lawyers, and engineers to accountants, human resource reps, and graphic designers, marketers garner very little respect initially. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t anecdotal either. When it comes to the C-Suite, the Chief Marketing Officer has a shorter tenure than any other executive by far. As reported by The Drum<\/a>, \u201cThe average tenure of a chief marketing officer at 100 of the top US ad spenders fell to 40 months last year, down from 41 in the year before and the lowest average since 2009.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a marketer, what would it feel like to walk into a prospective job and have everyone rise to greet you? For people to be excited that you took the time to visit? For business owners to be RELIEVED that you have a solution to present?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This should be the case, but it\u2019s not. In this article, I\u2019ll describe how we arrived at the current perception of marketers and how we\u2019re going to fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why People DON’T Respect Marketers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While the public\u2019s perception of marketers is largely unfair and unjustified, it\u2019s still there for a reason. Here is why I think that marketers aren\u2019t garnering the respect they deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing is the Most-Trackable (and Therefore Damnable) Activity<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Other than sales, marketing results are the most easily trackable components of a business. A business owner can look at a P&L and see the difference between revenue and the advertising budget, and while they shouldn\u2019t, they will make decisions based on that number. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even with the changes to privacy and tracking, there are about a million reports that can be generated on all marketing-related platforms, from Google Analytics to Facebook Ads to social media channel subscribers\/comments\/likes\/etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all this data, it\u2019s easy for people to blame marketers for all sales results, even if the actual outcome is related to product design, customer service, pricing, and a ton of other operational concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing is Complicated<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, most people\u2019s idea of \u201cmarketing\u201d comes from television, more specifically, the series Mad Men. A bunch of over-confident, chemically-addled man-children coming up with tricky phrases to doop customers out of some cash (at least that\u2019s what cynics think). In reality, marketing is MUCH more complicated than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funny part is that Mad Men actually gives an excellent view into marketing, but it\u2019s not obvious and only marketers will probably understand it. A key note in that regard is in the first episode when a new employee is walked through the agency and told that all the \u201creal money\u201d is made in the lowly and unassuming \u201cmedia buying department.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern marketing is WAY more complicated than that though. Today, marketers have to deal with more competition than ever before, a constantly evolving set of legal, regulatory, and societal rules, and a changing and growing list of technologies, platforms, and media types (some of which, like the Metaverse, haven\u2019t even been embraced yet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These complications mean that marketing is even less understood than it has ever been in history, and with a lack of clarity has come a lack of understanding and appreciation. If everyone knew what was going on, we\u2019d all start using the phrase \u201cit\u2019s not marketing strategy\u201d rather than \u201cit\u2019s not rocket science\u201d or \u201cit\u2019s not brain surgery\u201d (maybe not, but you get the jist).<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"What<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Big Tech Advertising Has Over-Simplified Marketing<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Do you remember this commercial from the Super Bowl a few years back?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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