The best way to look at this is that our competitive environment is really made up of two types of people: those who are willing to learn and those who are not. They are both equally important. The ones who are not and those who are willing to learn.
It’s not uncommon for marketing managers to say “I know my stuff” or “I’m a marketer” or “I’m a businessperson, not a marketing manager” about their jobs. This isn’t always true, though. For example, I once worked for a company that was really good at running a highly successful marketing campaign, but really bad at running a successful marketing campaign.
The difference is that when a marketing manager says a company is a’marketing company’ they are being honest. But when a marketing manager says the company is a’marketing manager’, they are being dishonest.
In my experience, the people who are most successful at marketing a product are the ones who take the extra step to “market it” themselves. If your salespeople and marketing people are the only ones who know what product features are and how to use them, you are not going to be able to market your product effectively.
But there’s no reason a marketing manager should not try. I’m a marketing manager, and I’ve had many marketing managers tell me, “We’re really good at marketing because we’re the only ones in the world who understand the product. All the rest of the people are just telling us what to do.” Marketing is a collaborative process by the people in it. And that’s what makes it so successful.
This is also true of a marketing manager, a sales manager, or an editorial manager. A marketing manager is responsible for the marketing of a product. A sales manager is responsible for the sales of a product. (Yes, I also used that one. I think it’s so obvious I might as well have added it in.) An editorial manager is responsible for the editorial work that is done on a product.
This is a common mistake. We all make this mistake at some point. We think we are selling to marketers, editorial managers, or sales people. We often think we are trying to sell to the entire team at our company, but really we are selling to a tiny slice of our leadership team. So instead of seeing our company’s leadership as the primary audience for the product, we often see our company leadership as the primary audience for our product.
This is another common mistake. We think that as editors, we are trying to sell our products to the entire editorial team. The truth is that we are selling to only a tiny slice of our leadership team. So even though we are trying to sell to all of them, we often see our editorial team as the primary audience for our product.
The truth is that as editors we have an agenda to sell to the entire editorial team. Sure, we might not be able to sell to all of them all of the time, but we are usually trying to sell the entire editorial team. As a marketing manager, you are selling to the leadership team not the editorial team.
We have a very specific set of tools we use to market a product to the leadership team. We use blog posts. We use white papers. We use press releases. We use our own websites. We use our own email lists. We use our own social media sites. We use our own conference call. And so forth. But because we are selling to the leadership team, we still need to sell to the editorial team.
