Making your mark as a marketer – top tips for maintaining career momentum

Do you want to drive your marketing career forward? Sonia Danner shares practical advice on staying relevant and nurturing your career. It’s easy to focus on the job, but what about your own personal development. Get some useful tips like proving the value of networking, finding a mentor, putting yourself in your customers’ shoes, keeping up with industry trends and more.

Inspiration

Written by Sonia Danner, Marketreach 15 August 2024

Marketing can be a rewarding career. It’s a role that places you as the expert on (and voice of) the customer and can significantly contribute to meeting organisational goals.

But it’s a busy world and with so many competing tasks for a marketer’s attention, they often neglect the one thing that could help them be a cut above – their own careers.

Recent CIM research suggests that more than half of marketers are worried about burnout (56%) and new tools hampering their personal development (52%). Encouragingly, though, 61% felt they had the skill to adjust to innovative technologies, they just need time to adapt.8 ¹

So, how do marketers carve out the time to build necessary skills, get ahead of new technology and stay on top of customers’ needs?

Read on for our top tips on how to stay motivated and get ahead in your marketing career.

1. Network, network, network – a must for marketers

You’ll often hear marketers complain that they simply don’t have time to step outside of the day job but with the vast number of events, webinars, panels and roundtables available, there are many opportunities for you to build your network.

Networking is a vital resource for marketers of all levels. Making connections is the ultimate tool for shortcuts in getting things done. From mentorship that helps you to work through tough questions to finding trusted partners in super quick time, a solid network is one of a marketers’ most valuable tools.

2. Admire Someone in Your Industry? Get a Mentor

Do you have industry leaders you admire and wonder how they achieved success? Curious about the challenges they overcame and the tips they can share to help you get ahead in marketing? Finding a mentor can be transformative. They can help you unlock new opportunities and can provide priceless guidance.

Here’s why you might want to consider mentorship:

Gain unique insights into the industry and learn about experiences and lessons learned
Get guidance on career development
Extend your network by getting introduced to valuable connections in the mentor’s network
Get tailored advice and guidance to help you reach your goals.

Thinking twice about approaching a potential mentor? Just go for it. Many successful professionals are eager to give back and help others grow. Take the leap and ask for mentorship – it could be the game changer you’ve been looking for.

3. Trust your team’s talents

Marketers at the head of their departments often feel that the buck stops with them. While it’s true they may bear the ultimate responsibility for strategic decisions, it’s important to be able to lean on your team for their expertise and insight.

There are three key ingredients for a successful team. One is diversity – you need a broad spectrum of insight and experience to deliver the best product or service for your customers. Two, break down siloes. You might think a CRM specialist might have nothing to offer your AI expert but you’d be surprised. And third, foster close relationships with your agencies. Their deep expertise and access to resources are a valuable extension of your own team.
And, of course, this can all fall apart without giving your teams autonomy and inspiring them to work collaboratively together!

4. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes

Once immersed in strategy building and campaign planning, with all the demands from your organisation bearing down on you, it’s easy to lose sight of who you’re doing all this for – the customer.

If you ever feel that the pieces of the jigsaw just aren’t fitting, go back to marketing first principles: what does the customer need? Understand what they value, what might get their attention and what they will just consider ‘noise.’ Find data-driven insights that will give you a clearer picture of customer motivations and make sure you thoroughly understand the customer journey through all its touchpoints.

A strong framework for developing a customer-focused mindset is Mark Ritson’s Benefits ladder. It’s just such a brilliant way to reframe positioning from product to customer.²

Trust is key to building a long-term brand relationship with customers – consider having a channel with a high trust quotient in your media mix like mail (71% of people say they completely trust the mail they receive across all age groups).

5. Stay ahead of marketing trends

Adding homework to an already busy day seems like extra stress but it’s an important part of the job. For example, advancements in AI can seem overwhelming but by delving into what it means to your career and your company, you can narrow down exactly what trends should be your focus. For example, Google offers a variety of different online AI courses.³ And they are free!

Lean into your agency – they should be keeping you up to speed with the latest relevant developments, tools and data to help you build effective campaigns. There are also numerous trusted sources that can help you identify the directions of travel, from WARC’s report on effectiveness trends from Cannes Lions 2024⁴ to Google Trends ⁵ and other tools, such as Answer The Public⁶. And we can’t forget well-respected industry media titles like Marketing Week and Campaign – they’ll all help you stay ahead of the game.

6. Get out of the office for personal growth

Research has found that a significant contributor to burnout comes when people feel under-prepared to do their jobs, lacking expertise and tools. Fortune recently discussed the trend of ‘accidental managers’ ⁷ where 66% of managers had no formal training for their roles and many feel overwhelmed and underequipped.

Screen-based training courses and webinars are immensely helpful for building knowledge and confidence – there are many on offer from credible sources, such as those offered by the Chartered Institute of Marketing⁸.

But for your personal development (and mental health) it also pays to get out and about to one of the many conferences and live events on the marketing calendar, from Advertising Week Europe to MAD//FEST and all the excellent events run by trade publishers. They’re a fantastic way to upskill, have fun and build your network – a triple win.

7. Embrace accolades

Winning reflects well on everyone and gives you a target to reach for if you’re not sure how to best develop your talents. Entering awards or seeking positions on judging panels or task forces raises your profile and that of your business.

It’s more than just a pat on the back. Receiving an award gets you noticed by some of the best players in their fields, making it easier to seek out partners and network. And, that way, you fulfil the virtuous circle of developing your marketing and your marketing career.

It was my honour this year to win the Bravest Client Award at the BIMA (British Interactive Media Association) 100 for my contribution to the hard work we put into last year’s ground-breaking campaign “Discover the Circular Advantage of Mail”. It’s been such a boost of energy to the Marketreach team to have our achievements recognised.

Career development is continuous; we never stop learning, making friends and finding novel ways of solving problems. It’s what makes being a marketer exciting and rewarding and helps you get through the tougher times. So, here’s to the next event, webinar or introduction to a new face.

Making your mark as a marketer – top tips for maintaining career momentum

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