Are You Paid To Walk The Line or Draw It?

In yesterday’s post I discussed the increasing move by many companies to online marketing. That same report mentions that only 38 percent of marketers are happy with their present marketing efforts. That means over 6 out of 10 marketers aren’t happy. How did this happen?

Clearly, if such a high percentage of people are disappointed in their marketing, something has to change. It was Einstein who said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” If things aren’t working out the way you want, don’t do the same thing again and again. Try something different. The old terra firma of marketing is now mud and may even turn to quicksand. The way to tomorrow’s marketing success is seldom found on yesterday’s roads. I think marketing has changed more in this last decade than it did in the previous 50 years. Look around. Read the books, blogs, journals and stories. Feel the change and acceleration. This is not the time to steer the “steady course” of the past. There are a wealth of new methods, new tools, new media and new ways to measure your return on investment.

Marketing people—whether they realize it or not—are paid for results. Some marketers can still hide behind squishy numbers and fuzzy logic, but their ranks are thinning rapidly. A few pages of solidly documented, take-it-to-the-bank marketing success stories on a resume will quickly exceed the value of a no-track-record Harvard MBA.

The question you’d better ask is whether you are being paid to walk the line or draw it. I have seen many marketing jobs where top management is demanding results. However, management is also equally reluctant to give marketing the leeway to try what is needed to break the tyranny of the tried and true. “Hit it out of the park” they say, but add, “stay within the baselines on your way to home.” If you are in marketing management and you are in a “walk the line” job, you are in the danger zone.

Marketing is demanding more people who will draw a new line to success and align internal and external resources around the way it points. Sure, this way is filled with uncertainty, too. But, leadership is about taking charge and relying on a sense of the future, rather than a dependence on the past. There is no safety in yesterday—at least in marketing.