Being a marketing manager today can’t be easy.
There is so much information and opportunity coming at you that it must be incredibly difficult to know what direction to take the company.
Thankfully, I had the opportunity to work for a great marketing manager for five years. The things I learned while working for him have helped me with Ghost Blog Writers and I still think about those experiences and lessons all the time when making decisions.
I think the modern role of marketing manager is one of the most important in business. That’s why I’ve put some thought into what should go into either being a marketing manager or finding one to fill the role at your company.
Great Balance of Company and Individual
It seems like it’s a really difficult task to manage individuals. You have to keep in mind that people want to succeed for themselves. It’s really difficult to put others before ourselves yet great things always seem to happen when we do exactly that.
It’s one of the crazy things about life.
Marketing managers today know how to balance the importance of the company with the personal pursuits of the individual. Each person on the team needs to be focused on doing what’s best for the company, but we all have that drive to do well for ourselves.
It’s a big task for the marketing manager to effectively convince everyone on the team that when the company does well that each individual on the team will do well.
Sporting coaches do well with this concept. They get every individual to commit to performing a specific role and doing it to the best of their ability. When you get individuals going rogue and trying to do too much things can break down.
No individual can beat a team. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player of all time, but there was no way he could beat an entire team of five guys without his teammates.
Jordan may have been the star, but it wasn’t until he realized how to do what was best for the team that Chicago started winning championships.
Business is the same. The marketing manager has to understand the nature of individuals and their desire to do well. The manager I worked for really understood this. He had each of us keep personal and professional goals. We talked about our lives as individuals and worked to achieve our individual goals.
It really put myself and others in the frame of mind that if we all did well as a team that we would all feel satisfaction as individuals.
Disciplined In Decision Making
All of these aspects of being the marketing manager have to be difficult. The job is basically made up of getting people to do their best and making decisions.
It can’t be easy.
It seems the only way to make decisions as the marketing manager or leader is to have a set of principles as a guide.
When I was working for the marketing manager he always went back to the way the company worked. He focused on the goals of the company and made every decision based on those goals and principles.
Now, this does not mean that the company didn’t grow. In fact, the company made huge gains.
It just means you can’t do everything your employees and vendors tell you. There will always be all kinds of opportunities. The trick seems to be knowing the right paths to take.
You’ll probably be wrong 4 out of 10 times, but if you make it so that the times you win you really win you’ll be doing well.
Having principles and goals as the guide for decision making take emotion out of decisions. You do what’s best for the company instead of the individuals, which is really difficult sometimes.
Final Thoughts
Marketing managers are pushed in all kinds of directions these days. There is social media, big data, blogging and everything else. It’s craziness. The best ones have the discipline to know what direction to take. They know how manage individuals and get them to perform their best for the best company outcome.
It’s an incredibly difficult job, but if you focus on these aspects when finding a marketing manager (or if you want to become one) you’ll do well.
I was lucky to see it work first hand and I’m trying to follow the same path with Ghost Blog Writers.
I’ll never forget going into the marketing manager’s office with ideas. It always came back to the direction of the company and how profit would work out in the end.
It turns out that in business, profit is important.
Who would have guessed?