Kevin C. Whelan: I want to talk about my prediction for how marketing teams. Particularly in-house marketing teams will be structured. Going forward And this may take a little, little bit of time, but this is what I'm already seeing in terms of how teams are being structured and the way I think the industry is going. So. A long time ago, or even until recently, it was sort of feasible for a marketing manager to be someone who does most of the teams marketing. And I think. What's ended.
What ends up happening is that there's a lot of specializations in marketing. And when we set a marketing manager in the role of being. In charge of doing all the different areas of a marketing program, everything from the creative side to the technical side. Right down from content creation through to ads, to SEO, to, to graphic design, to email, to, uh, you know, you name it. There's, there's at least easily, there's at least 10 to 15 specializations.
And that doesn't even take into account the industry that we work for. And that could be potentially a whole specialization as well. So, what I think is going to happen and what I've noticed happening. And obviously this is a bias because I'm in inside of clients who hire people like me, who are outside advisors. But what I'm seeing happening is that there's someone in the middle of a marketing department and that's usually the marketing manager. That person is.
Typically good at a few areas, maybe creative or technical? Not always both, but sometimes. Uh, and usually they're sort of T-shaped there, they have a, you know, a semi broad range of skills that they can oversee and manage different channels, different tactics, responsibilities. But they're usually good at a few different things. And those are the things that they end up doing. Tactically. And they either. Well, you either hire around them, the different specialists.
Uh, or you outsource it and in a lot of cases, until you reach a certain size, we're talking, you know, in the tens plus of millions of revenue, depending on the type of business in the margins, it doesn't really make sense necessarily to hire a performance marketer before, you know, $10 million or so, or, or maybe it does, depending on the business, in which case it doesn't necessarily make sense to hire an SEO marketer or a, you know, a graph full-time graphic designer
or any one of these specialties that does require a high degree of skill. But it. Doesn't make sense. There's just not enough work to bring in a specialist at all these different things. To do. To, to, as a full-time employee. So what ends up happening is in the middle. There are marketing managers and they're responsible for. For finding these people to outsource work to they're responsible for doing some of their own execution.
They're responsible for managing projects for maintaining budgets, for updating KPIs sheets for reviewing those KPIs. She's for corresponding with the business owner and leadership. Uh, to make sure that their, their goals and directions are being executed. But surrounding this marketing manager and this marketing manager can be senior or, or, you know, intermediate or in some cases, even junior, depending on how much support and resources they have around them.
They're sort of like the hub and they're kind of like the, I consider them kind of like the bee that pollinates all the flowers. And their job is to create visibility, to communicate, to be a good communicator, to facilitate, uh, the execution, to do a lot of execution, to pass information around between between departments. Uh, and really ultimately to. Get projects done according to a schedule. But what, what, what companies need to be educated on? What business owners and executives.
You know, need to be educated on, is that. That there's a lot of. Just like in the trades, there's a lot of specializations. You have everything from pipe fitters to electricians, to plumbers and drywallers, to painters and carpenters, and the whole, the whole works as a whole number of specializations. And it's easy for people who aren't familiar with modern marketing to think that, well, one general Jack of all trades can do everything.
And the re what ends up happening is that the work quality doesn't isn't great, or the, and, or usually both the marketing manager, responsible for spinning all these plates for doing all these things. Not only is there an immense cognitive load and it's a challenge to, to really think through and execute all these details that need to get done. Everything from an email requires design content, personalization automation. You know, tracking, there's a whole bunch of stuff in an email. Alone.
So, not only is there a cognitive load component, there's also an overwork issue. And that ends up being that this person is responsible for doing all these things. And leadership. Executives owners they'll delegate. Hey, I want this done. Can you get this done? And won't realize that every single thing, even the things that look simple and easy are much more complicated, takes a lot longer and are very cognitively taxing. So, what ends up happening is this person becomes overworked stressed.
And at some point maybe they're not able to get, to get results, not the results that they hope for, not the results that they expected. And what do people do? Well, they assume that that marketing manager isn't competent. So they go looking for someone else. And that's where the problem kind of stems and that's where the symptoms of it are. Usually they're good at one or two things they've been promoted and other expected to do all the things and it's just not realistic.
And so we just have to sort of educate people, the industry at large. That, that these are 15 different skills and we can label them from copywriting to content marketing, getting more specific into blog writing. And, uh, email content marketing and social media and all the various platforms on social media and all the, all the little moving parts associated with that. Every single channel has tons of rabbit holes and subspecialties.
Again, not to mention the business specialty of understanding how the business and the industry works and differentiation, and then there's things like strategy. So there's too much for one person to handle. The best you can expect is to have someone who's either a strategist. And that's where we come in. As consultants, the consultants listening to this are our strategic thinkers. They help to orchestrate the big picture strategy. They tend to be good at business, as well as the marketing.
Understanding the marketing mechanisms and bringing them together. You then have someone who's sort of the hub, the. The manager of the, of the whole operation, they're responsible for making sure the trains run on time. They're responsible for, you know, things like watching the budgets and, and you know, of correspondence, all the things I just talked about. And that's the marketing manager role. Now sometimes you might have multiple people, you know, In-house working at various capacities.
One maybe more strategic than the other, or one more technical, one more creative. And these roles may get broken out. But what I'm noticing though, is that the 10, whether there's one, two or three people in the heart of this marketing team, Uh, what surrounds them needs to be. A budget. And there needs to be resources to outsource and delegate the tactical execution to specialists in all the various fields.
No, obviously smaller business won't be able to afford all this and they just have to get by doing the things that they can do. And that means usually doing fewer marketing initiatives, fewer. D different activities and ultimately just simplifying their marketing to the, to the 20% of the things that get 80% of the results. Until you can generate enough revenue to justify bringing in more outside support and eventually hiring someone.
So just as a general rule, there's a huge role for us as strategists and fractional CMO is that are listening to this. As well as all the freelancers and consultants who are doing execution work, listen to this as well. But in terms of just that strategy piece, we can come in and offer that broader guidance, knowing that like Paul Graham has written on there's a maker versus manager.
The manager is the one managing the day-to-day and that's, that is a form of execution, even if they're just managing people and times and budgets. That sort of thing. The. Uh, or sorry, that's the maker, the managers thinking about strategy and business and what needs to get done and moving the chess pieces around. That's what the strategist does. And that's always not always a full-time. Requirements as well until they companies get quite large.
So. The whole point of this is just as strategists as advisors. We can come in and bring in experts, bring in people who are capable at, uh, executing certain things, you know, part of what we do. As advisors bring in freelancers and consultants and agencies to do execution work. And meanwhile, the in-house marketing manager can be good at the things that they're good at execute those things and be the keeper of the projects. Be the keeper of the budgets.
Be the communicator, the internal communicator, make sure everyone within the organization and all the moving parts are all fully up to speed and in sync and aware of what's going on. So my prediction for the future is that in-house marketing teams are going to be quite small, that you're going to have a few core players and, you know, And really just rely on individual specialists at all the various channels and activities to do the execution work and support the in-house marketing team.
And, you know, the days of one done for you full service agency. I think it's just not typ typically my experience has been that it's just not a good value proposition because frankly there's just too much to do. And oftentimes the agency. It doesn't have the skillset either to do all the things really well. So I think. The natural. The natural incentives will go towards the best solution.
I think the best solution looks like having a really senior strategic person, like an advisor or a fractional CMO to come in and help. Design the marketing program, design the strategy and design the how X work is going to be executed. Have someone in house to do that. To be the hub. To do the execution to make sure the trains run on time to make sure things are getting done and to do some actual execution work as well. Managing projects in the process.
And then having this outsourced team of specialists, these people that you can bring in like special ops to do certain projects, certain tasks and responsibilities. So if you're listening to this and you're a freelancer. Or an agency. I think it's really important that you focus on your channels that you're really best at and just cut the stuff that you're only mediocre at.
And. What is going to do is make you highly effective at a few core things, which is going to make you much more compelling, allow you to maintain premium pricing and build a reputation which is going to help you build a business. Otherwise you fall in the commodity trap where you try to do all the things for all the people and you lack any sort of expertise, true expertise and other and industry. Or a specific channel and that's, that's just goes back to the, you may be able to get by it's.
Okay. You're going to end up attracting a small business type client who can't tell the difference between good and bad quality. And ultimately, I think the value prop is just much cleaner when there's an in-house marketing manager, or if there's not someone who takes that role on a part-time basis within the organization. Like a, an operations manager or something.
And have them sort of manage that and then rely exclusively on, uh, an advisor, like a strategist and then, uh, a team of independent contractors to do. The specialized execution work. You'll get better results. It tends to be less expensive overall, and that includes agencies as well. So. Being a specialist in your area. It means you're going to get great results, which means you can charge more, which means you can justify, uh, they can justify spending the money with you.
And so this is just sort of the way I see the world going. I can't imagine a world where. Marketing managers should be depended on to do all the different things, because there's just too much that needs to get done. And therefore there's a lot of opportunity to work with companies who have either don't have yet a first hire and be a fraction. Like a, I call it a managed advisor, managed advisory services, like a fractional CMO who manages the execution.
That role, I think, is vital for the companies who don't yet. Can you justify a full-time marketing manager? Or when they have a marketing manager, that person can be junior or intermediate. They don't even need to be senior yet for smaller to mid-sized businesses because they're supported by a more senior advisor. And then. Whether they work with you as an advisor or, or not having. Individual specialized. Consultants and agencies do their respective parts.
That's going to be the move because at the end of the day, anyone who's ever worked with a full, full service done for you. You know, Marketing department in a box has known, has seen that they end up being very expensive and not very good. But by you build a reputation by being very good at the thing that you offer. So if you're selling execution, still having that narrow focus, doing fewer different types of services that you can really ACE it. So you can become well-known so you can own that.
Because I think that's where the market's going. I think they're going to want to bring in specialists for all these roles. Just the same way a home builder will bring in contractors to do their various roles. Uh, I think the days of that full service done for you agency are, are going away. And I, frankly, I've not seen it work very well. So I have to trust that the most effective solution is going to be the one that wins. So there's opportunities for everyone.
As long as, you know, your place, whether you're specializing as a strategist or as an SEO or as a, you know, even design. Whether that's web design or graphic design or something else, user interface, design, user experience design, having those lanes and sticking to just a few of them. If she can keeping it narrow. That's going to be the thing is specialized tool for each specialized job.
And as the world gets bigger, people will go further to hire people who are specialized in their craft and ideally ones that are specialized in their industry as well. And so I just want to keep all that in mind. I call that the drive by test. How many other agencies and consultants are people willing to drive by? To hire you. And the more I specialize in different things, either the industry like a coworking or working with consultants, marketing professionals.
Uh, the further away my clientele becomes because I'm able to become an hone in more of my expertise. Therefore increasing my drive by factor. Therefore people come from a lot further to work with me and. Allows me to maintain good pricing and a. And run a healthy profitable business. So. Be more like the, the tool that does one thing extremely well, or maybe two or three things if you want to broaden slightly, but it should be within the same family and it should be a plausible. Specialization.
I think that's the way things are going. So that's my vision. What do you think is that what you're noticing in the marketing world to smaller marketing teams with more outsourced support, or are you still seeing in those marketing managers being stretched too thin with too much cognitive load being asked to do too much? And ending up in poor results let me know i'd love to hear more about what your thoughts and predictions are for the future of marketing departments.
Oh, and before you go, if you know anyone else who is a solo marketer, maybe they're a freelancer consultant, small agency owner, where they don't have any employees yet. And they want to go from getting out of the execution to maybe. Starting to lead their marketing efforts, maybe subcontracting or maybe getting into advisory work, which is my sweet spot.
Or maybe they want to start selling packaging, their knowledge, creating their methodology and documenting it and all that good stuff to kind of create some leverage and more. Profitability and the rep in their business, send them over. I'd love it. Uh, I'd love to connect with more people. You can either send them to this podcast forward. One of my emails. It all goes a long way to help build the mind share kind of community.
And, uh, right now I've got a new crash courses on my website, just on kevin.me. You can go and, uh, get the download on how to go from doing to leading to. Teaching your expertise as a marketer. And that's a great place to start. So if you wanted to point someone, you can either have them go look up Muncho radio in any podcast player, or send them over to kevin.me, or make an intro. You can send an intro to [email protected] and say hello. And as always, I love meeting new people.
So it goes a long way. When you're your referrals go a long way toward growing the community and just meeting new people. So. Uh if anyone comes to mind please go ahead and do that now because that would mean a lot thanks so much