Just like a brand, we each bring a core strength as a marketing leader. There are four general core strengths to build your brand career around; running the business, marketing execution, strategic thinking, or managing people. Most importantly, manage your marketing career around your core strength.
When you are finding yourself in a career transition, this can trigger new thinking. For many marketers, their immediate response is an urge to pick two or three core strengths. Evidently, we are trained to believe that being a generalist means you can do it all. Yes, you need to do all four, but you still have a natural core strength. Or, you should. Try out our game and see where you land.
Your marketing career
Here is the game I have created to help you choose your core strength to build your marketing career around
- Using the diagram below, start with four chips. You must place one chip where you believe you have the highest competitive advantage to win.
- Then put two chips at the medium level that backs up and supports the core strength.
- Finally, the game forces one chip to be at the low end, which is almost a throwaway weakness that will not be part of your long term strategy.
It is a great game to try, even ask for peer feedback to challenge your thinking. If you still say, “I’m pretty good at all 4”, then push yourself, because I might not believe you. No one is equally great at all four. You have to know your strength. As you make your next move, each choice may lead you to 4 different career choices.
Business management
1. Your strength is running the business
The natural business leader enjoys the thrill of hitting the numbers, both the financial and market share goals. It would be best if you were fundamentally sound in the core elements needed to run a business, including forecasting, sales, analytics, finance, and distribution.
As a generalist, you can work with every functional area for the benefit of your business. You are equally strong negotiating with sales as you are working with R&D scientists. And, you know every number on your business and enjoy the details it takes to get through hours of forecasting meetings and can debate big picture strategy at the highest levels.
With the Myers Briggs, many of the best brand leaders are ENTJ (extrovert, intuition, thinking, judgment) which is the “field general” that brings intuitive logic, quick judgment to make decisions that capitalize on a recognized business opportunity. And, you bring a taskmaster style who makes things happen.
Build your marketing skills
As we look at the marketing skills, this business manager requires the broadest collection of marketing skills, using experience to fill in any gaps over the years. From what I have witnessed, they could still have skill gaps in either the creativity or people leadership areas. Using your experience, you can get more comfortable giving freedom to your agencies and allow your team to handle the creative execution.
In terms of your career, you should try to stay in product management as long as you can. The reality with many marketing roles is the age-factor. I faced it, and you will. I hate that it exists, but it is a systemic reality. When you find roadblocks in your current industry, consider new verticals before you venture into new career choices. The thrill in running a business might not feel the same in a specialty role or a people leadership role.
Going outside of traditional marketing, you can use your experience to explore working on behalf of private equity firms who look for turnaround managers, or you can venture into entrepreneurship, where you can leverage your core strength of running a business.
M A R K E T I N G B O O K
beloved brands
the playbook for how to create a brand your consumers will love
Covering every aspect of brand management, it is no wonder that our readers reach for Beloved Brands multiple times each week to guide them through the challenges of day-to-day brand management.
Get ready for a mind-bending journey as we take you on a deep dive into your brand strategy. We’ll challenge you with thought-provoking questions designed to shake up your thinking and help you see your brand in a whole new light. And our unique process for defining your brand positioning will leave you with fresh ideas and new possibilities for how to differentiate your brand.
But we won’t just leave you with ideas – we’ll show you how to turn them into action. Learn how to write a brand plan that everyone can follow, ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned and contributing to your brand’s success. We’ll walk you through the creative execution process, from writing an inspiring brief to making smart and breakthrough decisions.
And when it comes tao analyzing your brand’s performance, we’ve got you covered. Our innovative methods will help you dive deep and uncover insights you never knew existed, giving you the knowledge you need to make the best decisions for your brand’s future.
But don’t just take our word for it – our Amazon reviews speak for themselves.
With over 85% of our customers giving us a glowing five-star rating and an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5.0, we know we’re doing something right. And with numerous weeks as the #1 bestseller in brand management, you can trust that we have the experience and expertise to help you achieve success.
Ready to join the ranks of the Beloved Brands community? Order our book on Amazon, Rakuten Kobo, or Apple and start your journey towards brand success today.
Take a read through our sample chapter on strategic thinking
Marketing execution
2. Your strength is marketing execution
You are the type of marketer who is highly creative and connects more to the creation of ideas and love to build consumer insights into your work, and less excited by the business results and data. You think fast with instinct rather than slow down with strategy. And, you are high on perception, comfortable with ambiguity, and push for different work. Moreover, you respect the creative process and work well with creative people.
Depending on your level of experience, you might be strong in other areas of marketing, but your passion has a distinct focus marketing execution, whether that is the advertising, social media, product innovation, customer experience or customer marketing.
The marketing job changes at every level
As you hit the mid-level of your career, you might feel pressure to be more strategic or take on more substantial teams. It is natural to be tempted by power, and that temptation can lead us into an area beyond our passion. As I was moving up in my marketing career, my true love was for the marketing execution and managing the business.
My team kept getting bigger, from one person up to five, then ten and then all of a sudden leading a group of 40, I was missing the marketing side of me. I was no longer creating the work, but instead leading those who were creating the work. Managing people has never been my strength or my passion, and I desperately missed marketing.
I remember our CEO telling me, “Graham, never go beyond VP Marketing. That was the last job I loved. Now, I never do any marketing. All I do is work with IT and unions.” His words stuck with me. With success at the VP level, I was offered general management roles beyond marketing, and I turned them down. I had already let go of some of my passion for marketing; Essentially, I didn’t want to let go completely. This lesson is not for everyone, but if it fits you, then follow your passion, not the pressure from others.
For those who love the marketing execution, at some point, you will have to choose to grow as a subject-matter-expert in advertising, media, innovation, or merchandising. Explore switching to an agency role or build your own business as a subject-matter expert.
What type of marketer are you?
We believe that marketers learn best when they see our marketing concepts applied to brands that look like their own. We have come up with specific examples – consumer, B2B and healthcare – to showcase our marketing tools. Click on the icon below to choose your interest area.
Strategic planning
3. Your strength is strategic planning
You enjoy strategic planning more than marketing execution. You are a deeper thinker, who is conceptual and logical, and you have possible gaps or a lack of passion to be the taskmaster that is needed to run the day-to-day project list of a business. Many strategic thinkers are more on the introvert spectrum as their energy comes from thinking, rather than socializing throughout the organization.
The one caveat is that a marketing role can never be 100% strategy. You have to execute, and with most upper management roles, you have to manage people.
If you lack that make-it-happen gene needed to run a business, staying in a traditional marketing role might expose your gap. You can build a strong team of business leaders under you, whose strengths can deliver the marketing execution. And, you will eventually get frustrated by the grind and stress that comes with running the business.
A corporate strategy role will need socializing, as you gain alignment among various senior leaders who come with diverse opinions as they try to represent the needs of their function. A global marketing job will require tremendous socializing among various markets, with a lot of negotiations to gain alignment.
When you find yourself in a career transition, explore roles in consulting, academic, or professional development type roles. Start to build your thought leadership to carve out a specific perspective or reputation you can monetize in the longer term.
People leadership
4. Your strength is leading people
You find a natural strength in leading others, and love to see one of your people reach their potential. And, you are strong at providing feedback, inspiring others, and career management of others. You are a natural extrovert with a high EQ. You can read others, which helps you with conflict resolution and negotiating skills across the organization. As you move up, you should surround yourself with people who counter your potential gaps, whether on strategic thinking or marketing execution.
Where does your energy come from; marketing or people? As I mentioned in the last chapter, consensus building was my most significant gap, and it shows up again here. I never liked being managed in the most junior roles and did not like directly managing others at the director level.
You may be the opposite of me. I have worked with many who eventually thrived more with people than they did with marketing. These types of leaders get better as they moved up.
If this is your strength, you should pursue a general management role as a leader of leaders. Look for a cross-functional shift in sales or operations to gain various perspectives of the business to enable you to take on a general management role in the future.
After you hit your peak within the corporate world, you can consider careers such as executive coaching where the focus and energy remain on guiding people.
If you have an obvious strength, build your brand career around it, instead of trying to be something you are not.
Marketing career
How to manage your marketing career from ABM to CMO
In this post, I will go through what it takes to be successful at each level of your marketing career. And, we provide a link to a game plan for how to move up through each level of marketing, starting at the entry-level Assistant Brand Manager up to the Brand Manager who delivers all activities on behalf of the brand. The Marketing Director level looks after a core business unit team, and the Vice President or CMO oversees the entire marketing team.
Brand Management Mini MBA
Invest in your future. If you are an ambitious marketer, looking to solidify your marketing skills, our Brand Management Mini MBA will teach you about strategic thinking, brand positioning, brand plans, advertising decisions, and marketing analytics.
Have a look at our brochure on our Mini MBA program
Use > to move through the brochure or x to see the full screen.
You get 36 training videos, key chapters from our Beloved Brands Playbook, and a Brand Management Workbook with exercises to try in real-time. Earn a certificate you can use on your resume or LinkedIn profile.
M A R K E T I N G B O O K
b2b brands
the b2b playbook for how to create a brand your customers will love
As a B2B marketer, you know that the key to driving growth is a strong brand. But how do you develop and execute a winning B2B brand strategy? Look no further than the B2B Brands playbook.
Prepare to think differently about your B2B brand strategy with B2B Brands. We want to challenge you with thought-provoking questions and take you through our process for defining your brand positioning. Our goal is to expand your mind to new possibilities for your brand by using real-life examples of successful B2B brand positioning strategies.
We’ll start by showing you how to create a brand plan that’s easy for everyone to follow, ensuring that all stakeholders understand how they can contribute to your brand’s success. Moreover, we guide you through the creative execution process, including how to write an inspiring brief and make decisions to achieve smart and innovative communications.
Finally, we’ll teach you new methods to analyze your brand’s performance through a deep-dive business review.
Our B2B Brands playbook offers a wealth of knowledge and insights, including B2B case studies and examples to help you learn new techniques. It’s no wonder that 85% of our Amazon reviewers have given us a 5-star rating. So, join us on this journey to unleash the potential of your B2B brand.
