Marketers: You need to get your hands in the dirt even when you’re the boss

A lot of founders and CEOs I talk to bemoan the dearth of marketing leaders who either refuse to get their hands in the dirt or haven’t done it in so long they honestly don’t know how.

Why is it so hard to find a marketing leader who gets it done?

These founders say all they meet are marketing leaders who want to come on board and talk big strategy with the CEO and then delegate everything.

You can’t do that in most places. Unless you’re in a place that’s scaled to a massive marketing org., with teams for every discipline, you’re going to be in the dirt. And, I’d like to suggest that even if you’re not in a super lean startup where everyone’s still doing multiple jobs, it’s a good idea to get your hands in the dirt.

1. Keep up with the pace of change or risk irrelevance. The marketing tech stack and skill specializations are massive, ever-expanding, and changing rapidly.
   Yes, the underpinnings of marketing -- human nature -- will never change. But the tactics and tools are constantly changing. If you’re not hands-on with anything, ever, you quickly become less and less relevant, less capable of making the right decisions about tech stack or skills needed on your team, and so way too reliant on consultants, agencies, or others’ takes to formulate your own. If you can get in the dirt and dig around yourself, you know better what needs to get done and what it takes to get it done.

2. Marketing requires trust -- including within your own team and across teams.
   It’s a hard lesson every marketing leader has learned. You kind of have to prove yourself. Especially when you’re taking on a new leadership role, being willing and able to get your hands in the dirt proves to your team, your colleagues, and the CEO who bet on you, that you in fact can do the things you sold the team on.

3. The best way to know what’s really happening is to get your hands in the dirt.
   Again, this is especially important when you’re taking on a new role. Sure, you can just ask people for numbers. But that’s not a great idea. You need to get into HubSpot and GA and Salesforce and whatever else the team is using. You need to look at the actual data on those ad agencies’ campaigns, not the pretty packaged reports they send you. You need to see for yourself how well the website architecture is set up.

4. The best way to establish and expand the brand voice is to be it.
   I’m a writer first. So I might be biased here. But I like to do at least some of the writing myself, at least at first. When you do some of the writing yourself, you’re better positioned to guide the rest of the team (and not only the marketing team) on that brand voice. And if you’re part of the founderbrand playbook, you should probaboy go ahaed and keep those writing skills sharp and write your own stuff.

5. There’s always more to do than there are time, resources, or people to get them done.
   Unless you’re in hypergrowth and hiring crazy fast, you most likely don’t have the luxury of staying up in the clouds all the time. And doing some stuff yourself sets a great example for the team. I remember being surprised to see my VP in a big enterprise company handling the creative brief and project management tasks for a project (that team functioned like an in-house agency). It was admittedly a high-profile project. But still, I was surprised to see her spending even some of her time doing basically doing what I spent all of my time doing back then. And she was also managing like ten people at that point, and was generally wildly busy. 

6. Agencies. Agencies. Agencies!
   Some agencies are so super awesome. (I even gave one or two a shout out here.) Some agencies are not great. Others might be great, but not a great fit for your company, even if they’ve been on retainer for a while. If you’re coming into a new role that already has agencies in place, you need to dig around in that dirt to see what’s really being delivered. Especially on the ads side. But even if you’ve been where you are for a while, you can’t just leave agencies to their own devices. When you’re hands-on, you know better what you need from agencies, what. you need to bring in-house, why, and when.

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Are you a founder or CEO who’s struggled to bring in a marketing leader who’s willing to get their hands dirty? I want to talk to you.

I’m talking to founders about how they’re struggling with this or solving for it. And I’m exploring a potential side hustle that could solve it for you.

I can help you figure out who to hire, how to attract the right talent with the right job description, and how to be sure your new marketing exec. is set up to succeed from day one.

Want to my help? Contact me to talk about options & pricing for solving your marketing talent needs.