Video Transcription
Are you hiring for a marketing leader in your organization and prioritizing that hire based on finding somebody with deep industry experience within your particular business niche or vertical or market focus? If so, you’re doing it wrong.
Hi, I’m Jennifer Zick, founder and CEO of Authentic, and I’m here today to dispel a very common myth among business leaders who are making perhaps their first ever executive decision for marketing leadership. So many businesses come to Authentic asking for somebody with a particular industry or business niche of experience, and in fact, they miss out on the opportunity to bring perhaps the best candidate to their business based on completely different criteria.
So let me share with you three thoughts today that will help reframe the way you think about hiring for marketing leadership in your business, whether it’s a full time role or a fractional role, or some other leadership role in marketing.
Misconception 1
The first misconception is that your marketing leader should be a subject matter expert within your industry or services, or solution set or product set. That’s simply not accurate. The expertise within your business and the wisdom of your solutions come from the deep practitioners within your business. Whether they’re product leaders or services leaders, those are your subject matter experts. The role of marketing is to amplify that expertise and to quickly understand how that deep expertise can be translated in a way that resonates with your buyers and influencers.
So start by looking for somebody who’s a fast learner, who believes in the problems you’re solving in the world, is excited to dig in and get to know your subject matter experts deeply and be able to surface that expertise through excellent marketing programming that really resonates with your audiences. Your marketer is not your subject matter expertise.
Your marketer is the amplifier of the wisdom of your organization. So seek somebody who has a proven track record for amplifying great messaging and really honing in on what your market needs to hear.
Misconception 2
Secondly, do you want to be an industry leader or do you want to be an industry lookalike? If you want to be a lookalike, hire a marketer whose entire career has been shaped and formed by the particular industry you’re competing in.
Then you’re virtually guaranteed to look just like your competition and sound just like them too. But if you want to be a leader, embrace the fact that marketers who come with diverse backgrounds are going to bring new thinking and fresh ideas to your business and to your brand. Embrace that diversity of perspective and then let it be grounded and guided by your business purpose, your values and your niche and your differentiations to reach the market effectively.
So don’t rule out a marketer who doesn’t have the particular relationship network of your industry. You can borrow that and leverage that from others within your business.
Misconception 3
Thirdly, don’t negate the rich value that comes from cross industry expertise. I talk every day with business leaders across verticals, across marketplaces and across industries, and most of them have only ever worked inside of their particular industry or business model, whether it’s B2B2C, distributor partner, e-commerce, whatever that may be, and their perspectives are shaped by their particular industry. Some particular industries are slower to mature in the evolution of marketing and modern marketing practices and technologies.
And so if you’re hiring marketing leadership that has only ever grown up within your industry, but your industry lags from a strategic perspective, you’re going to continue to lag. That’s one reason why Authentic’s model brings unique value to all of our clients.
Our Mindshare community of CMO talent meets every week combining all of the industry’s experience, all of the cross business models experience, all of the particular client experiences to enrich every single client engagement. Don’t limit your progress by hiring only a marketing leader that has particular industry experience or you will miss out on the richness and the innovation that comes from applying modern marketing best practices to your particular industry.
These are just three things to consider as you make a marketing hire. Don’t begin by filtering only first for industry experience. That can be a bonus. It might be an accelerator, but it certainly can be a distinct limiting factor. So hire first for someone passionate about your business, who believes in your solutions, who has a proven track record for understanding and translating complex business ideas to buying audiences, and who is a team leader.
Who knows how to select, integrate and hold accountable all of the vendors and contractors and agencies and partners that your business needs, who understands modern marketing technology and best practices and who is connected to an ecosystem of other marketing leaders that can enrich your business? Those are the important qualities to look for in a marketing leader that will really impact and influence your business growth.
I hope this has been helpful and I’d be happy to answer any other questions that you may have. So reach out anytime.
