5 Ways You Can Lose Your Marketing Job

Grouxo Marx, a genius in his own way, inspired me to write this post. Intelligent and fun, disruptively constructive, philosophical disrespectful, and forward-thinking. In the new era of marketing, an industry that is coming out stronger from this long-lasting crisis, marketers should be re-thinking the way they plan and practice in order to survive. Their job is at stake!

1. “If you don’t know where you go, you may end up anywhere.” Grouxo Marx. => Objectives

Objectives are the key element of any project. In fact, clear objectives are the only way to prove whether you succeeded or not in all cases! If marketers still plan their marketing projects with goals like “Increase brand awareness” or to “Improve the relationship with our customers”, they are most likely on the path to be judged subjectively by their superior’s taste for creativity, a nice picture of the booth at a trade show, or whatever he or she liked or disliked of their marketing project.

1. “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.” G. Marx. => Validation

Isn’t it right, that you would never jump into a pool without knowing that it is full of water? If marketers do not validate marketing projects from an economic point of view prior to investment, they are most likely on the way to have budget cuts, undermining the relevance of their job. Let’s say that you are planning a point-of-sale promotion, wouldn’t you calculate its break-even point? Do you know what is the impact on sales needed for the project to pay itself?

1. “I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty” G. Marx. => Monetary conversion

Whether we like it or not, money rules. If marketers are not able to convert marketing inputs into monetary outcomes, even while isolating marketing positive effects on branding and awareness, they will always fall short of General Management and shareholders expectations. “Show me the money!”… sounds familiar?

1. “I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”. G. Marx. => Evaluation

If money rules, marketers need to be able to show the impact of marketing on the profit and loss account. Even if we don’t know if our marketing project is losing money, doesn’t mean that losses will not keep accumulating. Sooner or later we will pay the price. If marketers do not evaluate the economic impact of projects and campaigns, they are headed for surprises (if they are good, most likely, they will not be attributed to marketing, if they are bad, marketing will be one of its causes)

1. “Getting older is not a problem. You just have to live long enough” G. Marx. => Planning

Let’s admit it, most companies do not gather enough marketing intelligence from their very own campaigns and projects. Business intelligence not only comes from market research and industry trends. Probably the best, as rigorous as needed, and closest to your reality business intelligence comes from the things that you did. What types of data do marketing professionals collect from their own practices? Is it useful for the future? How much do they use key learnings for their marketing planning?

To summarizing, if you are a marketer wanting to keep your marketing job and professionally progress during the years to come, make sure you set relevant, clear, identifiable, and measurable objectives; you validate your projects from the economic point of view, converting marketing results to money (not just value, cash); evaluating your marketing from the financial point of view (not only costs, but also revenues and generated profits), and finally using your experience to improve and plan for the future.