The Best Advice from 23 Marketing and Business Leaders
At the end of every Smarter Marketer podcast episode, James Lawrence asks his guests for their one piece of marketing or career advice.
We’ve compiled a list of the best answers to help you skyrocket your marketing efforts and boost your career decisions.
What’s your one piece of marketing advice?
1. “If you are a young marketer, you need to become more excited about conversion and what happens at the end of the funnel than what the sales people are.”
And if you're a young salesperson, you need to become more excited about filling the pipeline than the marketing team is.
Dean Mannix - Sales and Marketing Alignment
2. “Get a grasp of sales and you’ll become a better marketer”.
If you don’t understand how the sales pipeline works, or fully understand the buyer’s journey, you’re probably not approaching marketing in the right way. You want to grow the business… you want to grow revenue.
Eshita Durve - Winning Awards for Marketing
3. “Demonstrate ROI for your entire career”.
Marketing is always seen as a cost centre, as opposed to a revenue generator. Build relationships. Talk to the right people constantly. Talk to them in a language that they like; “for me it’s always been about ROI”.
Racquel Collard - In-house vs Agency
4. “Spend extra time interviewing, meeting with, and checking in with your agency.”
In-house marketers have a tough job as you’re often part of a small marketing team, and have lots of hats to wear… your agency can make your life much easier. If you’re signing up for a 6 month contract, the trajectory of your career could be dependent on how well your agency performs.
5. “Despite all logic, all numbers, all data… there is always going to be some kind of campaign or requirement that we call ego-stroking”.
The C-suite don’t necessarily care if it makes money or not, they just want to be seen on the front page. Make sure there is some kind of budget or awareness to cater for the ego-stroke.
Aaron Aigus - Approaching Marketing with C-Suite
6. “Be careful what you incentivise.”
If you decide to choose a performance marketing model, you’ll be incentivising short term activities and short term actions. However, it’s often the long term brand building activities that are critical to success in 6-12 months time.
David Lawrence - How Much Does An Agency Cost?
7. “Marketers, no matter how creative they want to be, they have to come from a place of understanding data.”
They need to be able to answer two questions; can I understand this data, and can I use it?
Ashton Bishop - Strategy… the most misunderstood word in marketing?
8. “It helps to be technical”.
The technical side of SEO is the hardest part to wrap your brain around. But it’s also extremely creative. Balancing both is the key to success in an SEO role.
9. “It can be a thankless job sometimes and you don’t get the recognition you deserve.”
Too often the marketer is the end person who has to solve so many other people’s problems. The product manager has messed up this… the deadline is tomorrow… and you’re supposed to make it all look pretty. Be brave, have disruptive conversations and be prepared to be unpopular.
Kate Toon - How to Master Copywriting
10. “There’s a lot of bad advice out there that says ‘you need to be everywhere’. That’s terrible advice. You don’t need to be everywhere.”
If you try to be a jack of all social media trades, you’ll be a master of none. So focus on being a master of one.
Marcus Sherridan - They Ask You Answer
11. “Do the things you’re interested in, rather than the things that you think are going to make you money”.
If you’re not interested in it, you’re not going to work as hard. It’s going to feel like a chore. Be brave and get out of your comfort zone.
Matthew Gain - From Newcastle Beaches to Running Audible Europe
12. “Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.”
Someone working in marketing should be very clear on their strategy. Strategy doesn’t just tell you what you should it, it also tells you what you shouldn’t.
Darren Woolley - How to Select the Right Agency
13. “Automation isn’t always the answer.”
For businesses that have never done email marketing, it would be best to start with a manual nurturing calendar. Don’t sell in every email, and be human. HTML emails are awesome but B2B requires plain text and human touch.
Eshita Durve - B2B Email Marketing in 2022
14. “Think in terms of revenue.”
Stop thinking in terms of vanity metrics such as how many people viewed your LinkedIn page. Those are important as a marketer, but if you want to elevate yourself as a business partner, you need to think in terms of revenue.
Axel Sukianto - Generating High Quality Leads in B2B SaaS
15. “Take risks.”
The term best practice means basically everyone is doing it... It’s hard to innovate on something that everyone is doing. Don’t be afraid to push the needle and take some big swings while driving impact. But you can’t push the needle if you don’t have the fundamentals in your job. Spend the first six months hitting metrics and delivering what your company needs from you.
Ryan Bonnici - Career Advice from a Global CMO
16. “If content is chemistry wrapped in story, how will you redefine story to win the hearts and minds of the conscious consumer?”
As futurists, we don't give out 3 points to fix all of your problems. Instead, we ask questions to get your creative wheels into motion.
Anders Sörman-Nilsson - The Future of Marketing
17. “Look at experts who work for your company and shadow them.”
Hardly anyone does this, but the learnings would be plentiful. You will then be able to brief better, understand more, and upskill yourself.
Andrew Hoyne - Should you Work With A Specialist or Generalist Agency?
18. “Have a Gen Z/young person in the room for every decision.”
Representation is vital. If you haven’t got someone in your team from Generation Z, it’s a missed opportunity - they are invaluable and you will learn so much from them.
Katy Richardson - Marketing to Gen Z
19. “Keep it simple.”
Don’t overcomplicate e-commerce. The fundamentals work the majority of the time.
Iain Calvert - Maximising E-commerce sales in 2023
20. “You have to be authentic, you have to be yourself and you have to speak in your own voice.”
If you pretend to be someone you’re not, you’re going to grow, but you will grow in the wrong ways. What younger generations are particularly good at, is sniffing out dishonesty.
Jahan Kalantar - How I Grew My Tiktok to 9.9m Likes in One Year
21. “If you’re not already hiring juniors, definitely put it on your radar.”
Whether you hire university graduates, people at university or young people without much experience… you will slowly but surely reap the benefits. And if you do already have juniors in your business, know that anything that comes naturally to you, doesn’t necessarily come naturally to them. Don’t underestimate the value of training and constructive feedback.
Brittany Smith - How to Identify, Hire and Retain Great Junior Marketers
22. “You have to learn why the people who haven’t chosen to be with you, aren’t.”
You’re only going to learn so much by looking at your current pool of customers. The best market research lies with the people who chose not to purchase your product or service.
Nick Palmer - Why Great Marketing Starts with Research
23. “Know who you’re trying to reach.”
Know who your target audience is and be clear about it. Otherwise you’re opening yourself up to too many variables.
Andy Scales - What PR Is (And What It Isn't) As We Enter 2023
You can listen to new episodes of the Smarter Marketer Podcast every fortnight on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music, where season 2 of the podcast will commence in January 2023.
If you’re looking for a second opinion for your digital marketing efforts, Rocket can help. Reach us on 1300 059 620 or contact us here.
Webinar: Digital Marketing in Australia 2024
Join us for a live, moderated 60-minute webinar presented by James Lawrence on changes to digital marketing in 2024. Understand attribution and data challenges, AI and how to balance brand and performance ads. Get 8 actionable steps to get digital right in 2024.
Kayley is a marketing professional, specialising in writing insightful and informative copy, organising webinar events, and managing organic social channels. She has also been the producer of the Smarter Marketer Podcast, the definitive podcast for Australian marketers, hosted by Rocket's Co-founder and Director, James Lawrence.
Kayley has also worked at Fujitsu General Australia, where she ran their Paid Social ad campaigns, worked end-to-end on their national campaign, assisted in their website overhaul project, and supported the execution of several company and external events.
She has also managed organic social media channels for local businesses in both the hospitality and construction space, to build brand awareness in the local community by skyrocketing both followers and engagement.
