Marketing is like sex — everyone thinks they’re good at it
Everyone thinks they’re a marketing expert. Your CEO, the IT guy, company accountant, your colleague — I bet my left little finger half people in your company think they know more about the job you do.
They know everything about design, people, advertisement, writing, brand, SEO, social media audience, digital worlds, trends, community, positioning or what customers want and do. They are common species — “a focus group of one”.
Who is the marketing expert and who isn’t?
Everyone can work in the marketing department, because everybody has a profile on Facebook, wrote some sentences and use a search engine, obviously. We, marketers, are pretty good at having the right discipline to think through ideas whether people are going to want our product or services, when is the right time to hit the market and what is the right form. That’s what we get paid to do. We work hard, do all the studying, analyzing, listening, researching, thinking, re-thinking, testing, composing, blind testing … and all over again….
And they just jump into a meeting and impose their “focus group of one” opinions on you. Because they think “they do know better”. But how can you tell who knows his marketing s**t from the person who’s full of it?
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Mad Men IRL: I do know better
If you had a chance to sit in on a company meeting, you probably experienced these species in action — the CFO gives a finance update and a few basic questions are asked, the Head of Engineering talks about development challenges and board members sit around the table drawing picasso-be-like picture on paper. The Chief of Sales presents results and accidentally everybody has a shy smile on their face because they remember last year party hangover after Q3 closing. Then Marketing gets up and suddenly everyone around the table has a point of view. Literally, everyone has some advice and opinion. The focus group of one just arrived. If you are not experienced enough, you are f*cked, srsly.
Apple doesn't use focus group, they are their own focus group. They think differently and they are really good at it, they have a great team of designers and marketers working together and nobody even breath when they are around. They know what you want for your next birthday a way before you do. But not everyone around you works in Apple, you know it. Unfortunately not me, fortunately, people from “focus group of one”.
So what is the point of this post?
There is only one solution for this problem — listen to your marketing instinct! You have it and you know it. It is our natural magic. The superpower that we’ve gained through our years of working in the industry we love. It is blowing in our veins together with blood and stress hormones (caused by managing more than one social media profile and scheduling on it in a rush). A lot of marketers have pretty good marketing sense, they know the feeling … butterflies in the stomach when “the message” or idea comes up… in the middle of the night. We know who to trust, who to listen and who to ignore.
This is the message for the rest of you — if you’re the kind of person who has a knack for getting inside customers heads and knowing what they want before they know it themselves, speak up, talk to us. Be our focus group of one, we will love you. We don't know everything.
But if you are not, if you are talking head or fake-it-until-you-make-it, do us all a favour. Keep your “focus group of one” opinion to yourself. Peace.
