As someone who has spent years working at a marketing agency, I’ve had the chance to collaborate with professionals at all levels of expertise. Over time, I’ve seen a lot of great ideas, but I’ve also witnessed some truly questionable marketing decisions. This article is dedicated to highlighting some of the most common mistakes I’ve seen inexperienced marketing directors make.
Ego driven not numbers driven
At an agency, our focus is always on delivering the best results for our clients, and that means working closely with marketing directors. However, we can’t sugarcoat things and pretend everything they’ve done so far has been perfect – if that were the case, we wouldn’t be needed! Unfortunately, some marketing directors can be driven by their egos and are resistant to change, even when presented with data that shows their current approach isn’t working.
As someone who’s been in this industry for a while, I’ve seen this happen more times than I can count. In these situations, being numbers-driven is key. By focusing on KPIs, you can evaluate whether a campaign or strategy is successful or not. And if it’s not working, it’s important to be willing to pivot and move on to a new approach, even if it’s not your original idea. In this article, I’ll be sharing some of the most common mistakes I see inexperienced marketing directors make, and how they can avoid them.
Trying to be the expert
As a marketing director, it’s important to be knowledgeable enough to strategically guide a team of experts without getting into the weeds yourself. While being a jack of all trades is an admirable quality, it can quickly become problematic if you don’t allow subject matter experts to weigh in on areas outside your expertise.
It’s all too common to see marketing directors spend large sums of money on agencies only to ignore their advice or try to dictate how things should be done. A skilled marketing director can guide a team without making technical decisions on how to achieve their goals. After all, it’s the experts who have the knowledge and experience to execute successful campaigns.
Following trends without understanding them
I’ve seen this mistake time and time again in my years as a designer, developer, and digital marketer. People love to follow trends, whether it’s in fashion, music, or anything else. It’s easy to see a large company doing something and assume it will work for your smaller company, but without understanding the why and the how, it’s easy to miss the mark completely.
One trend that I’ve seen marketing directors latch onto is the content and strategies promoted by Hubspot. Don’t get me wrong, Hubspot is a great resource with insightful articles that can lead you down a path to marketing success. However, it’s important to remember that Hubspot is a SaaS product with a blog meant to be an inbound lead generation tool. This means that not everything they say is in your company’s best interest. I’ve witnessed marketing directors copy step-by-step strategies from Hubspot that are either outdated or not relevant to their industry at all.
For instance, Hubspot’s eBooks are well-done, and depending on your industry, you could replicate their success. But if you’re just pushing out generalized eBooks to customers who have a short customer journey or to a demographic that couldn’t care less about in-depth resources, it’s a waste of time. Gated content is another example. While certain companies have a terrific reputation that allows them to gate content and get leads successfully, without that reputation, your gates are going to fail.
One trend that has driven me crazy is newsletter popups. I’ve even written an entire article on this subject. If you look online about newsletter popups, you’ll find plenty of companies writing about how effective they are. However, in my career, I’ve yet to see many of these be successful, especially when directors try to throw them on home pages and trigger them when a user first lands. Just because other companies are doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for your company.
