THE MASTERY PROJECT, ISSUE VI

Donnique Williams | September 7, 2023

We’re never returning to work as before and it’s led us into a strange season of unrest that I don’t think we can fully blame on COVID aftershocks, the run on Silicon Valley Bank, or (potential) recessions. There’s a much deeper rot behind the full year of resignations followed by a full year of layoffs (euphemistically, “reductions in force”). Something in marketing is fundamentally broken. And has been for a long time. Marketers are overworked, undersupported, and burnt out beyond recognition.

And in this new world where generative AI promises to fix all ills, you may be asking, so what? Can’t we innovate our way out of this? Why should building and maintaining a sustainable marketing operation matter when you can ask ChatGPT to write your blog posts and ad copy in seconds? This article isn’t about why you shouldn’t use the AI tools at your disposal (in fact, we’ve actually explored how to use AI in your marketing). Instead, I wrote this manifesto about what you stand to lose if you don’t value people in times of irrevocable change. 

Historically, when major shifts happen in the markets—not unlike the ones we’re experiencing right now—the companies that come out on top are those that invest in marketing and the functions that maintain the strength of their brand. When content marketers aren’t supported by their leaders and are consistently overworked, you get boring, ineffective, and ultimately disappointing marketing. ChatGPT alone can’t fix a broken marketing team. 

So, how do you save your marketing operation? The answer may force you to look inward—at yourself and your organization. In this treatise, I’ll offer you three reasons why your marketing operation may be ineffective and what you can do about it. Then we’ll explore how by making your employee experience better you’ll vastly improve your marketing outcomes in the process.

Three reasons why your marketing team is struggling

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read “many hats” in reference to a job description for content marketers. But think about that, have you ever seen someone wearing more than one hat? It's a ridiculous image. It’s the same in marketing teams. 

Practically speaking, most content operations at every company need four archetypes to be successful. 

1. Promoter owns planning, chooses channels, and sets the schedule. Common titles include: growth, marketing, demand generation.

2. Creator writes or designs. Common titles include: content marketer, writer, designer, producer.

3. Operator is responsible for publishing, uploading, monitoring SEO, and measuring performance. Common titles include: marketing operations, project manager, creative producer.

4. Expert is only responsible for ideas and advice as needed. Their customers are their friends and peers. These are often called subject matter experts. 

The trouble arises when you begin to fold these roles into one another, stack hats on one team or one individual, and expect there to be no repercussions. When you ask your writers to become experts on Google Analytics or ask your demand gen lead (who doesn’t interact with customers directly) to speak on what your customers want to hear in content—things fall apart.

It’s impossible for people to focus on this many high-level considerations at once. Humans are notoriously bad at multitasking and task-switching, leading to losses in productivity and high-stress situations. Some of the hats your marketer is trying to wear will eventually topple over because they were never meant to wear so many at once. 

The solution: Redistribute the hats

Instead, commit your teams to building an operation that places folks in the archetypes that fit their strengths. Do an internal audit and identify the gaps in your operation. Are there team members that are being asked to wield two or three archetypes? (Lots of teams hire generalist content marketers but we’d argue that specialization leads to the best outcomes.) How can your marketers wear one fabulous hat instead of three hats haphazardly balanced atop their heads? 

It’s not uncommon for us to get on sales calls with our potential clients and see their faces drop as we explain the process of creating truly good content. It’s not because marketers don’t want to create quality work—in fact, that’s what gets them interested in Fenwick in the first place. One such discovery call led by Clarissa, our Design Director, followed the same tragic story arc. After she explained our love of quality and our focus on strategy, the dejected marketer shared that though she loved our approach, she’s grown jaded. “We need doers who aren’t worried about the mission,” she said. 

“That call made me sad, for two reasons,” Clarissa explained, “First, how "disposable" she seemed to be to her leadership. She knew that she couldn’t rock the boat for fear that she was entirely replaceable. And second, how defeated she was that we weren't a good fit because of who she reports to—because her leaders wouldn't see the value of quality work if it meant slowing down even a little.” 

Marketers are asked to do more with less, to create quality content with a speed that undermines their ability to do so. Yes, it’s true that AI can do that task faster. But does that mean it will result in better outcomes? Or just more of the same? Even ChatGPT needs editing (and often more than we’re willing to admit). Innovative, engaging marketing takes time. 

If your marketing team is consistently treading water—bombarded with requests, lacking sufficient budget, bleeding team members—they know the value you place on quality marketing. And so they’ll default to trying any marketing efforts that are fast and cheap to give you what you want—leads, pipeline, vanity metrics—at the expense of quality marketing. Or marketers will stick around long enough to realize they’re disposable before prioritizing boring marketing pushes that won't reap resistance or reward. Either way, you don’t actually get what you want—a sustainable marketing operation with high ROI activities. 

The solution: Acknowledge mistrust and rebuild 

First, you need to acknowledge whether you actually trust your marketing teams to strategically guide your content. If you’re assigning tasks rather than entrusting them with problems to solve or strategic goals to achieve, get curious about why that is. What would happen if, instead of setting a predefined target of 10 blog posts per month, you asked your team to help sales book more discovery calls with your ICP, and let their expertise determine what media would most intrigue those readers? 

Understanding goes a long way to building trust. If you have capable marketing leaders who make choices that don’t make sense to you, approach them with curiosity. Choose to become a humble student of marketing and try to understand the thinking behind their decisions or their rationale behind vetoing your latest podcast idea. Give them the chance to share their side and listen with empathy. This is work, not war. Mistakes can be corrected and trust can be rebuilt. 

When you better understand your marketing operation and your marketing leaders’ approach, you’ll be able to trust they can take on strategic projects with competency. You can trust that when they prioritize quality over quantity or speed, they have a loftier goal in mind. When you don’t see the engine moving, they are stoking the flames in the background.

In work, as in life, boundaries protect the people who create them and those they interact with. They act as a guide to behavior—if you do this, I will do this. The problem with the current state of tech is that content marketing teams aren’t allowed to have boundaries. Sure, many companies will wax poetic about the importance of work-life balance, or they’ll emphasize the importance of quality work. But as a leader, you might not realize that you expect a high level of quality without boundaries.

That might look like unbelievably tight turnarounds, a refusal to accept pushback on requests, cutting budget but not adjusting expectations, or a “let’s just get it done and worry about X later” mentality. This approach will not yield the best results in marketing and risks alienating your team.

When your content marketers know that the expectations are impossibly high and they have little flexibility, they begrudgingly fall into “production mode.” Churning out ill-conceived, uninspired marketing pushes, which may or may not reach your short-term goals (and definitely don’t address your long-term ones). 

In a single quarter this year, the Fenwick team lost ten points of contact to burnout and mysterious work-life circumstances. They were all marketers at tech companies. They were all immensely talented. They were all run into the ground by the weight of overwhelming expectations. 

The solution: Rescind unrealistic marketing expectations

It might require some soul searching, but if you think your marketing operation might be wracked by the break-neck speed of your company, just ask them. Check in with how the last quarter has felt: Rushed? Disorganized? Frustrating? Listen with empathy and with an understanding that it’s likely not personal. 

Your organization has goals and needs to meet them. But marketers should be winning with efficiency, not effort. Many marketers fall back into effort because it's simpler—just do more. But fewer, high-value marketing efforts will always glean better results than more, mid-tier ones. The most important thing is not to sacrifice marketers at the altar of pipeline. Listen and create boundaries to address the work culture that creates toxic productivity. 

That internal work should also come before hiring anyone new to your marketing team. Are you creating processes that enable your content folks to succeed? Does the phrase “fast-paced environment” listed in your job descriptions actually mean consistent overwork? The cycle of burnout and turnover will continue to plague you until you address the underlying issues at the core of your marketing operation. 

Want your incredible marketers to create incredible marketing? Give them agency 

I’m not an HR professional, but I am a human being. I have time to write this article because I’m encouraged to actually take my vacation time and write fun side projects. I’m encouraged by my manager and team to set boundaries when things start to veer off course. Fenwick’s principles allow me to head off burnout before it happens. I have agency. 

Unfortunately, in the tech space, this is abnormal. It’s only in comparison to the unbearable speed of tech and the constant overwork endemic to marketing agencies that Fenwick’s approach can feel inflexible to clients and alien to our points of contact. When in reality, a human-centered way of working shouldn’t be so revolutionary. 

The key to unlocking this better way of working—and jumping off the marketing turnover hamster wheel—is agency. Conventional wisdom states that cold-hard cash is the major motivator for employee turnover. But actually, a sense of agency at work—the belief that your employees can influence outcomes that affect them—is what leads to belonging and retention. 

McKinsey research shows that workers who describe their employment as positive have 16 times the engagement level of employees with a negative experience. Those experiences are typically associated with employees feeling that they can influence outcomes at work.

To enable agency, people leaders should reflect on how employees are empowered to contribute feedback and ideas about three categories of employee experience (EX): social, work, and organization experience. 

Organizations that design an employee experience model that optimizes all nine of these areas have the highest chance to attract, inspire, and retain the best talent. In fact, McKinsey research shows that employees at companies with high EX are more inclined to surpass work expectations, with a 40 percent higher level of effort towards discretionary work. 

So, I’ve created a bill of rights for you, the leader of the marketing team. A list of commitments you can make that will lead to increased employee engagement and agency—and in the process, better marketing outcomes. Consider printing and signing this bill. You can even ask your direct reports to co-sign, so they’re aware of your commitment to a better marketing operation.

Manifesting better marketing for everyone

It’s no secret that in an economic downturn, marketing is the first on the chopping block. But that approach shows a clear lack of understanding of the value of marketing. 

Without marketers, your organization lacks the brand consistency your customers expect, you go without the activators of your GTM strategy, and your audience drowns under the onslaught of AI-generated, clichéd copy. 

If you undervalue marketing, there’s a good chance that you undervalue your marketers—and they know it. These folks speak to your audience, engage them, guide them through your funnel, and help you retain them as customers. And if they’re stretched thin, taken advantage of, and consistently rushed, marketing outcomes will be worse—not to mention the strain on the mental health of your team. 

Marketing can be creative, flexible, satisfying, and sustainable. But if we continue with business as usual, it can’t. And in this next chapter of work and life, why wouldn’t we strive for better? 

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