Marketing Is Hard!

But it doesn't have to be.

As an outsource marketer, my job is to market marketing to marketers. You'd think this would be easy, since we should ostensibly speak the same language. But it's not easy, because I'm trying to sell a new marketing paradigm to people who think traditionally about marketing. Because it's a new way of thinking about marketing, it inevitably requires a new way of talking about marketing.

It's lonely out on the leading edge, but I'm used to it.

In the early 90s, I started a career in technical writing. In the late 90s, I branched out into Internet marketing. What do these two things have in common? Well, for one thing, at the time I started in both of these activities, neither was yet regarded as a discipline in its own right. That is, when I became a technical writer, you couldn't yet go to school to become a technical writer. And when I became an Internet marketer, you could not yet go to school to become an Internet marketer.

All of this has changed, in part because we have entered what has become know as the Information Age. The University of San Francisco, among others is now offering online (of course!) certificates in Internet Marketing. And technical writing degree and certificate programs have been around for quite a while now.

The point is that our educational system is largely reactive: disciplines within academic institutions frequently emerge as a result of practices in the so-called "real world." Marketers in this real world cannot rely solely on history to formulate marketing strategy. They must look laterally to see what the competition is doing, and they must look forward to understand what is possible and to seize the advantage. That is the essence of lean marketing.

By the way, another thing both of these careers have in common is that they are information-based. Internet marketing is different from traditional marketing in that its goal is to sell using information rather than hype. As an Internet marketer, my objective is to target the most highly qualified prospects and help them make an informed buying decision.