There are too many so-called digital marketing ‘experts’
As more and more new disciplines enter the marketing field the term ‘expert’ gets attached to a lot of people who haven’t actually earned it argues Tym Yee.
In an ideal world we’d all be leading experts in our fields. We’d spend most of our time contributing to the latest research, reading up on breaking news, innovating with technology in cool ways and pumping out work to such high standards that Mumbrella couldn’t help but write about how great we are.
But this life we live is digital marketing, not a feel good movie, and so the likelihood of this happy narrative actually unfolding for you in this way is pretty slim. This is not said out of spite by the way, it’s just statistically impossible.
To be a true expert in your marketing field deserving of a Jedi-like reputation, you have to have a level of knowledge, skill and experience that cannot be widely found in the landscape – you have to be better than everyone else. You have to be the best.
If you consider your team to be social media experts, for example, because they happen to be really great at scheduling posts on Facebook and have lots of experience doing it, then the rest of the market has to be honestly woeful at it – which, unless this post is shared on the Mumbrella Facebook page at midnight on a Saturday, I will kindly assume they’re not.
This can be a hard one to grasp for many marketers, especially those working agency-side, because often so much of the company’s revenue generating efforts involve smutty conversations built on such ‘creative’ claims.
Phrases like ‘we’re Australia’s leading…’, ‘you won’t find better than…’ and ‘our team of industry experts…’ are enough to get you the initial meeting sometimes, but they’re also triggers that will make a well-tuned bullshit detector eat its own interface.
To have marketing stakeholders consider your skills in a realistic light (and to re-appreciate the value of a true expert), you have to use the term sparingly or else risk shooting yourself in the foot.
Calling a mid-level specialist an ‘expert’ in order to wow clients and to win business is not a sustainable practice and more than likely will lead to unhappy faces during your client WIP when all your amicable team has done is a good, competent job, instead of creating the “next ALS ice bucket challenge,” like you promised they could.
Outside of being bad for business, the floppy use of the ‘e word’ can actually do damage to your team, too.
“This is Tym, our content expert”, has been an introduction that’s plagued me with imposter syndrome at various stages of my career.
I don’t lack confidence in my skills, but the term does leave me thinking two things: if three to four solid years of experience and a couple of degrees is enough to make you an expert in this industry, then I might as well retire at 30. And: if I am an expert, why aren’t they paying me like one?
I’m sure there are many mid-career marketers who feel the same way, and even a few who might not, which then begs the question: if you’re not the true definition of an expert, what are you? You, the pretty-darn-good-at-your-job guy or girl sitting there reading Mumbrella at your work computer, which very reasonably doesn’t have a PhD or Grand Prix hanging above it.
And how do you refute such claims without seeming like a hopeless novice or an all-round office party pooper?
The first part is easy. Stop thinking of yourself as either being an expert or not. You probably haven’t accumulated the career capital to feel at home on a TED Talk stage just yet because you’re still in the grey zone, figuring out what your truest strengths are, and how you’re going to continue to hone them over the next 10 to 20 years.
This takes shape naturally as you run more campaigns, coordinate more shoots, create bigger concepts and pitch bolder ideas. And it can’t be rushed or faked.
Once you acknowledge that, it’s time to raise the bar. Don’t just sit there and let other people refer to you as an expert, even if it makes you feel pretty special – unless you are actually some kind of genius, of course, with a doctorate to prove it!
Start publishing, learning, experimenting with your marketing niche until you get to a point where your work speaks for you. Your account managers, sales team and co-workers won’t need to shout it from the rooftops if your results do all the talking for them.
Finally, gain confidence in knowing that if there are less people dubbed ‘experts’ but we’re all still really, really, really good at our jobs it means the industry is extremely healthy. Then all you have to worry about is taking aim at that top spot in your field and figuring out how you’re going to get there.
Tym Yee is a marketer and writer at Optus.
Nicely said Tym.
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Anyone who adds Guru or Expert to a title or name usually offer a sub standard service/product, any decent marketer will see past this. These types of operations have been around 10+ years as I’ve worked in the AU market to notice it. They usually win buy in from SMBs.
Any savvy business will want to see real data and real results/case studies/ testimonials from prior campaigns and know the team working on the project has a deep technical understanding and can translate this to any marketers.
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Experience comes with time. Not university qualifications or a few years on the job.
If you can confidently tell me you have experience in:
– Navigating a GFC
– Evolution of offline to online
– Understanding how audiences will respond to video, display, mobile (App, M-sites & responsive), wearable
– Creating your own Adobe-suite marketing campaign without the use of any designers, developers and strategists,
– Planning and executing your own marketing plan. Includes: knowing how agencies and publishers work from the tech implementation (programmatic, & direct), sales staff processes, production management to execution then you are an expert.
Until then, you are still learning the trade!
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Great read. Did you have a hidden camera in my workplace? I tend to get “social media guru” a lot despite never extolling Facebook wisdom like a sage.
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I could not agree with you more Tym.
If I can add one thing, I think the expert title is also part of a trend towards more abstract, arbitrary job titles. Everyone’s job is becoming more inter-disciplinary and we want to reflect this with a holistic job title, but this can also make us look vague and unaccountable. My business card says Senior Digital Marketing Strategist, but I couldn’t introduce myself as that, I just say I work in SEO.
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I think they should be called Digital Marketing Wankers. Facebook is just one gigantic wank.
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As the old bloke in the room, couldn’t agree more about the whole notion of “digital” guruism. For one thing, the pace of change and client expectation moves so fast, we’re all inevitably learning as we go.
But irrespective of the “brilliant innovations” or claims of expertise, in the long run the work counts for nothing if the teams efforts aren’t positively and demonstrably impacting the bottom line of the client.
Very few clients would swap “being brilliant at digital” for “making us lots of money”. Which, within reason is usually why they become a client in the first place.
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Couldn’t agree more. There are really three ways you could break it up, Professional, Specialist and Expert.
If you look at the medical field, you can have a medical professional. Then you have specialists, who have honed their skills in a particular area. Then you can experts, who are considered industry leaders and the elite in their field, due to further study, research, experience, etc.
You could apply the same to digital marketing – you can have digital marketing professionals. You can also have specialists – i.e. a social marketing or SEO specialist who has honed their skills in those types of programs/campaigns.
You can then have experts in specific fields of marketing – but being a specialist doesn’t make you an expert.
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I love this ditty…
How do you become a Thought Leader?
First, tell everyone you are a Thought Leader.
You are now a Thought Leader.
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Great article Tim – couldn’t help but notice the sneaky link in the byline though!
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