“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
The Internet has fundamentally changed the marketing function, causing the greatest shift in the ield since the inven-
tion of the television.
Digital marketing, social media and mobile devices have dramatically changed how we connect with our audiences.
They’ve created a tremendous opportunity, as well as a tremendous burden.
The marketing function has become complicated.
No longer can we rely on print, publicity and a media buyer to distribute our catchy ad campaign; marketing nowadays
requires heavy IT resources and an understanding of complex metrics to effectively (and proitably) connect with our
market—busier people, who have shorter attention spans, and often suffer from information overload.
Social media, search engine marketing, email marketing, mobile devices, website optimization, content marketing . . .
it’s impossible for an individual marketer to master them all, in addition to their traditional media activities. And then
there’s strategic planning, creative development and inancial measurement.
It’s overwhelming. And it has caused many marketers to specialize, focusing on a single medium as their area of
expertise.
But the reality in most small to mid-size enterprises (SMEs) is that their marketing team only has room for a handful
of specialists, if any. Most don’t have the budget to employ experts in all the necessary marketing mediums needed
to effectively reach their audience. And even if they do have the budget, they often don’t have enough work to justify
hiring full-time specialists.
If you’re not a specialist hired solely for your expertise, you’re forced to know a little about a lot—to be well-versed in
how to use a combination of digital and traditional mediums to effectively meet your revenue goals.
For the typical marketer at an SME, it’s created a quandary:
Identifying the “right things” to be doing, and then learning how to do them well
Many would argue that it’s more dificult for marketers to determine what we should be doing, instead of how to do
things right.
If we’re not sure what we should be doing, it’s easy to dive into the hot new tactic of the moment . . . without having
a strong understanding of how it ties into the rest of our revenue-generation activities.
Specialization makes it easier to perform tactics well, but specialists aren’t necessarily the best resource to determine
strategy—the “right things” to be doing. Specialists typically favor their own area of expertise.
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