Marketing is everywhere. From ads seen online to the images posted on Instagram, to the videos on YouTube, everyone is constantly engaging with the same marketing tools many use to promote their businesses. But the omnipresence has another side, which is why everyone thinks they’re a marketer. From your spouse, to your best friend, to every co-worker you work with, I’m willing to bet that almost everyone has an opinion on the “best” way to market your product or service.

While marketing is fun, and seems easy enough for anyone to do, to be done well, it needs to be strategic and tie back to data that drives ROI. Data is what leads marketing, and without it, you are wasting energy and likely money and resources for a very low return.

I’ve had a handful of clients hire me because their understanding of marketing is based on the creative design that exemplifies their next big product or service. While this is a component of marketing, it doesn’t work without a well thought out strategy based on mounds of research and data to drive the message. This is usually a joint effort between marketing and sales and should always tie back to the organization’s strategic plan.

And, since today’s interconnected world has given everyone a voice and a platform, one thing that differentiates a person with access to social media from a marketing professional is those of us in the business study market trends, and adjust strategies accordingly. The strategies are everywhere – from social media to blogs, op-eds, to bylines, to SEO and SEM, to content, creative, and the list goes on.

There are 4 things everyone should know about a marketing professional and why they are likely a better guide than say, your top selling account executive.

Analytics are very important – Data rules in marketing and marketers need custom implementations which means custom tracking. This must be done in concert with sales, but marketing should drive that conversation based on the extensive data analyzed. In the B2B world, marketing and sales data are becoming one.
We know your audience…and we know it well! Marketers love research! We have watched and followed engagements, looked at competitors, conducted surveys, and from all this, we have created the perfect persona to create that customer-centric campaign that’ll really resonate with your audience. This hopefully equates to conversions, and revenue.
Valuable content is your billboard – The story matters, and its success depends on the emotional connections you forge with your clients and customers. Your marketing efforts should always be relatable. Our job, as marketers is not to create more content. It has never been about that. It’s about creating the right content with the maximum amount of behavior change in your customers. For that to be possible, what is being created must be valuable, useful, compelling, and, yes, different.
Strategies don’t happen in a vacuum – The best strategies are inspired by creative and critical thinking. What are your favorite brands up to, and what makes them so impactful? All ideas should be fair game, and this requires a team effort to come up with the best result, but the driver of this conversation should be marketing centric to support those sales initiatives.

If you think that profitability, win rate, reputation and brand are important to your company, we marketers acknowledge that it takes a small army to best represent a brand. However, give marketing credit where credit is due. The goal is to always yield the highest return on investment, and if you trust your marketing team, I’m pretty sure you won’t be let down.