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By: DemandLab on April 1st, 2016

Why Unicorns Will Undermine Your Marketing Strategy

Mythically multi-talented and fantastically versatile, the marketing generalist is the unicorn of the 21st century. Everyone has an idealized vision of what they look like, but no one’s actually seen one—let alone captured one.

And while unicorn dreams are nice to entertain from time to time, if you try to staff your marketing department with these imaginary creatures, you’re setting yourself up for frustration and failure.

Unicorn-hunters

Yet many organizations are resolute unicorn-hunters, as a quick look at marketing job postings reveals.

Here’s an excerpt from a real job posting on Monster.com:

  • Perform search engine optimization (SEO) work for website, including keyword research.
  • Write copy and create content for products on corporate website.
  • Assist with digital marketing initiatives and efforts with the goal of generating traffic and increasing conversion from customers’ web-searching to placing an online order.
  • Maintain style and consistency within the website and comply with style/voice guidelines.
  • Assist with monitoring website statistics including individual campaign performance (email and paid placement).

In just those five requirements alone—and the job listed even more—this organization is asking one person to fulfill the role of SEO specialist, copywriter/content creator, editor, and demand gen specialist. That’s one sparkly unicorn.

Here’s another excerpt from a marketing manager job post:

  • Experience in customer and market research.
  • Demonstrated ability in creating a full range of corporate communications including proposals, news articles, case studies, press releases and collateral materials, employee newsletters, organizational communications and video scripts.
  • Experience with graphic design software tools. Video editing a plus.
  • Comfortable with online tools and technology, including content management systems and social media tools.

In other words, this organization is looking for someone who’s a high-level strategist, a content specialist, a designer with video-editing chops, and a marketing technology whiz. Is this realistic?

The convergence of marketing and IT

While most marketers are used to wearing several hats, there is a point at which these expectations become counterproductive—and a big headache. And as the marketing discipline becomes rapidly more competitive, more advanced, more technical, and more specialized, even highly versatile, gifted marketers are going to flame out.

At the recent B2B Content2Conversion Conference, a presentation by Christine Nurnberger, CMO, Bottomline, redrew the talent map for marketing operations. Rethinking Marketing: New Roles, Responsibilities and Reports called out the need “align skillsets with centers of excellence” instead of expecting each person to be successful performing a range of roles.

An article published in CMO earlier this year makes a complementary point. In Three Must-Have Members for Your 2016 Marketing Team, Laura McGarrity, VP of Digital Marketing Strategy for Mondo, talks about the key human resources the modern marketing team requires—and they are all highly technical, specialist disciplines. In a marketing world where mobile is now the dominant web-traffic conduit, where 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic will be video content, and where segmentation, optimization, and continual measurement of marketing activities is a must, everyone needs mobile gurus, video content creators, and marketing automation experts rounding out their teams.

This convergence of IT and marketing role was also explored in AgilOne’s 3rd Annual Retail Marketing Survey, released in January 2016. According to the survey, as little as one year ago, the vast majority of marketers had no cohesive omnichannel marketing strategy, cross-channel view of customer data, or ability to manage cross-channel campaigns on a single solution. By the end of 2016, only a small fraction expect to still be without these capabilities.

Before 2005, no one was looking for chief marketing technologists. Today, it’s a designation gaining rapid recognition, as marketing technologies proliferate and gain in both power and complexity. Marketing has shifted from a purely creative and strategic discipline managed by smart, intuitive “madmen” to a highly technical discipline that requires an understanding of software management, digital asset management, and data analytics.

A jack-of-all-trades approach to marketing is no longer sustainable because the technologies that are now table stakes for effective marketing campaigns require deep knowledge, dedicated expertise, and a commitment to continual learning. Tellingly, the 2015 Martech Intelligence Report revealed that only 7 percent of B2B marketers say that they have all the marketing technology tools they need and are fully utilizing them.

Technology isn’t a magic cure-all, but the organizations that invest in it—and invest in the people who know how to extract the greatest value from it—are leapfrogging ahead of the competition. Of the top-performing companies, nearly four out of five (79 percent) have used marketing automation for two or more years. After adopting the technology, companies see their sales revenues increase by 34 percent. That’s a big win, but a marketing generalist isn’t going to be the one bringing it home.

A five-star team

So how can you move away from a Swiss-Army-Knife mentality and start assembling a sustainable, highly effective team?

  1. Clarify the need. Start by clarifying talent requirements that best support your marketing focus. Are you ramping up your content marketing efforts? Do you need to overhaul the marketing-sales hand-off? Do you need to create a strategy for breaking into new markets? What are your biggest challenges for the year ahead, and what skill sets will be required to meet them?
  1. Identify the resources. Next, examine the centers of excellence that already exist within your organization. Who is creative? Who is analytical? Who has a high degree of technical proficiency? Break those categories down further to pinpoint the exact skills that are represented. For example, are your creative folks capable of ideating great content, or just executing on the ideas? Are they digital natives or print specialists? Evaluate these skills realistically: the exercise is about developing an honest, clear-eyed view of your talent assets. If possible, ask trusted outsiders to weigh in on the quality of your content, email communications, social-network contributions, and so on.
  1. Evaluate the shortfall. Now evaluate the gap between the talent you need and the talent you have. Which of your marketing efforts will come up short if you can’t add extra skills and capacity to your team? In some cases, you may be entirely missing a key skill set. In others, you may have the right talent on board, but not enough of it to realistically support the strategy you have in place.
  1. Explore the options. This is where many organizations take a shortcut by posting an opening for a designer-writer-editor-videographer with mad SEO skills and a flair for event planning. But if you spend a bit more time analyzing the requirements, you may find that it’s more cost-effective to supplement your existing team with a freelancer, an agency engagement, or managed services. Hiring an agency to manage your automated campaigns, for example, could cost substantially less than the salary for a full-time automation manager, while giving you access to top-shelf expertise that might otherwise be out of reach.

Your in-house team will always be at the center of every marketing campaign. They are your core, your continuity, and your culture. And every marketer will always be—at least to some extent—a multi-tasker.

But in a world where marketing technologies and specialist disciplines are increasingly powerful and complex, it’s no longer realistic to expect your core team to be able to take on every challenge. Put away the unicorn fantasy. Give your people the breathing room they need to achieve excellence in the areas where they show the greatest skill and deliver the greatest value. And rethink the way you resource campaigns that require highly specialized and technical expertise, such as marketing automation, content creation, and omnichannel alignment.

To learn more about integrating outside specialists into your marketing team, read “The Leap of Faith: Choosing a Managed Service Provider.”