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Do I Really Need to Hire a Marketing Team? with Jeff Reynolds, Reynolds+Myers: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Aug 02, 2022

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

This is Episode #102 and we’re talking marketing teams with guest Jeff Reynolds, Founder and President of Reynolds+Myers and Author of The Monster That Ate Marketing. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts Episode #102: Do I Really Need to Hire a Marketing Team? with Jeff Reynolds, Reynolds+Myers

Marketing, marketing, marketing. It’s everywhere you look, and we all know it’s important to growing your business. But who should actually do the marketing? Should you do it yourself or hire a marketing team? We believe a marketing team can be a phenomenal addition to your team – they’ll ensure you’re staying up to date with the ever-changing marketing world, they see the world differently than the rest of your organization, and they can even teach marketing to the rest of your team. Speaking of marketing teams, we’re incredibly excited to welcome marketing extraordinaire Jeff Reynolds on the show this week. He’s the Founder and President of Reynolds+Myers, Author of The Monster That Ate Marketing, and has top-notch insight on the best way to hire a marketing team for your organization. This episode covers everything from structuring your marketing team to that state of content marketing today. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Do I need an entire marketing team?
  • Why should you hire a marketing team?
  • What are other options if I don’t want to build a whole marketing team?
  • How do you find the right marketing team?
  • What should I look for in marketers?
  • Why is marketing like The Blob?
  • How did the Coinbase QR Code Super Bowl ad resonate with customers?
  • What are Jeff’s final thoughts?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Anne Candido 0:02
This is Marketing Smarts a podcast committed to helping you become a savvy or marketing leader, no matter your level. In each episode, we will dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We will also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. And if you miss anything, don’t worry, we put worksheets on our website that summarize the key points. Now, let’s get to it.

April Martini 0:29
Welcome to Marketing Smarts.

Anne Candido 0:31
I am Anne Candido.

April Martini 0:32
And I am April Martini, and today we’re going to attempt to answer a very loaded question, which is, Do I really need to hire a marketing team? And this is a big one, because we’ve seen a few things occur when a marketing team is not brought on board, quite frankly. And these things include, they just become a support function for sales, or the definition of the marketing department kind of skews, you know, one off executions that would be better off, not done kind of started to come out, or treatment of marketing as a second class citizen in the organization, aka admin in a lot of situations, or finally everyone doing marketing in their own way on their own time.

Anne Candido 1:13
Yeah, and the world we’re in today, where creative tools are plenty and everyone has access to create marketing, it seems like there’s this idea that everybody can be a marketer. Right? And my, my favorite analogies I like to use is like, well, you know, if you see a rocket ship go up, and you’re like, Hey, I saw rocketship go up. I could be a rocket scientist. You know, nobody says that. You know, it’s like, but people feel that way. When they see like, oh, I have a social media channel. And or I know I’ve done this, and I’ve done that. That makes me a marketer, right? Yep. Yeah, no, no, no.

April Martini 1:49
All right. So our resounding answer is yes, you need to hire a marketing team. And due to all of that, we feel so super passionate about this topic that we’ve brought on another expert to help us tackle it. And that is Jeff Reynolds, Founder and President of Reynolds+Myers. Jeff, welcome. And please introduce yourself. Yeah. Hey,

Jeff Reynolds 2:07
great to be here. Yeah. So I’m Jeff, Jeff Reynolds, and my day job as President of Reynolds+Myers, but, and we’re a market, we are a marketing consultancy, that helps in the food, shelter space, mostly. But I spend the rest of my time writing, advising, and, and coaching both sort of entrepreneurs and helping them grow into big companies and helping big companies think and act more like entrepreneurs. So sort of straddle those two worlds.

April Martini 2:37
Yeah, awesome. Well, super happy to have you. And with that, we’ll get into Do I really need to hire a marketing team. So the first point we have here is a marketing team makes marketing a discipline in your organization. So remember, all those reference points that I made above, right? What can happen when you don’t make this concerted effort, build the discipline and allow marketing to be represented as a department, it can become an afterthought in the best case, or non existent, quite frankly, in the worst cases. So by having a marketing team, you’re signaling to the organization, that you’re making a commitment that this is important. And then it’s going to be a respected part member, however you want to look at it, of your organization. And what you’re doing is bringing that immediate expertise to the table. So all those things that we talked about before can be addressed all those challenges that happen when this doesn’t happen appropriately. And really, that idea of seeing marketing as a catch all I mean, it just kills me every time I see this happen, right? Because I’m like, Oh, and you know, we you mentioned you coach, we also coach and funnily enough, a lot of our we’re not I mean, I guess it’s not coincidental, since our expertise is in marketing and branding, a lot of the folks that we coach end up in this position, and it’s a product of somebody decided a team was worth it, but then the infrastructure wasn’t built around it, and it wasn’t done with intention. And then then it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Right? The right people aren’t hired, there’s no training. And this is where people are like, Oh, hey, I can raise my hand and do marketing. And they just get nominated as a member of the team. So when you commit to having the actual team, it brings focus, it draws the right people in, you know, even if historically, your organization has not had marketing. And the really key thing I want to say here, and then I’m going to have Jeff give his perspective, because I know he’s chomping at the bit over there. But is that when you’re trying to hire a marketing team, you don’t have to be a trained marketer in order to do it. And that’s part of the reason to have this episode, right is to help people understand not only why it’s so important to have an organization, but what to do about it. If you yourself are the hiring person, and you don’t have the experience or your organization just in total, doesn’t have experience. The worst thing you can do is put your head in the sand. So Jeff, I’ll stop talking now and let you give your perspective.

Jeff Reynolds 4:55
Well, it’s obviously it’s a big topic right here and you The first thing that comes to mind, with your things you said, I agree with everything you said, is, you know, if you’re gonna build a new factory, if you own a company, you don’t just start, you know, you don’t go buy a piece of land and go out with our shovel and start digging, you have a plan of attack, you ask yourself why you’re doing this in the first place? Yep. You know, you know, you don’t just start building factories. And I think my first cents on a marketing team, you know, thinking this through it’s, the question is why? What is the why you creating the marketing team? In the first place? Do you believe in the power of marketing, you know, and sort of like, what’s the mission and the why of the marketing team you’re developing? So I guess I would start with that basic, whether that’s a question or an answer for yourself, it’s, it’s really getting clear on sort of that, the reasons behind even wanting to do this, because if you don’t decide why you’re doing it, how do you even figure out what the what the hell was going to be?

Anne Candido 5:55
Right? Yep. Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And here’s what I would say, and I’m gonna make a very bold statement about this is that every business or every person, at some point in time is going to start to need to do marketing. If you’re not going to hire the right people to go do the job one of two, well, I say one of three things will happen. One is you’ll get frustrated, which is where marketing gets a bad name, it’s where they get the baggage, right? Like, you think you can do it, you think it’s easy, you go ahead and do it, you don’t get the results you want. And then you say, well, this marketing thing doesn’t work, right, or it doesn’t work. For me, that’s, that’s my favorite. Like, because people are there, everybody hitting thing doesn’t work for me, right? The other second thing that you will do is you’re over invest, because you’re not efficient, you don’t know what you’re doing. So you’re going to spend a lot of money trying to figure out what to do. And we do appreciate testing and learning, but informed testing and learning, right, so that’s the second thing going to happen. The third thing is going to be that you leave money on the table, which is the opposite of over investing, which is you’re not maximizing your marketing channels, and making them work as hard for you as they possibly could, or you do your marketing in silos. And then they’re very much disconnected and what you really need in order for your marketing to work, and you need the power of the brand to go through everything. So everything lists, that’s how you efficiently use your money, but you need somebody who knows what they’re doing in order to make that happen, which is why you need a marketing team.

Jeff Reynolds 7:14
I think a lot of this confusion comes in between when I talk about why and all this, you’re talking about the strategic reasons behind marketing, and having a marketing team versus the tactical, you know, you know, I said the other day to somebody, most companies are over invest in organic social media, for example, for the simple reason that they don’t know what else to do. And so it keeps our marketing team busy. But that’s not necessarily marketing. It’s not Nestle accomplishing the goal, you know, of revenue generation, if you know, and that’s where expertise comes in. And I think what’s confusing to your point about everybody thinks they can do this work. First of all, I don’t know why anybody would want to do this work. You know, I think the reason you can tell people don’t know what they’re talking about that but just because they’re so excited, I’m not saying I love this world, but it’s hard work. And it’s harder than ever now with the all the tactics, right. But the point is, we use these tools in our everyday life, right? So we use social media, we know people, we’re good writers, we’re good communicators, that doesn’t necessarily make you a good marketer. Now, I do I think it can be learned by most people. Yes. But I think we have to separate the tactical being good at, I understand how Facebook works from I understand how brand strategy works, and how to connect that through all these tactics.

April Martini 8:36
That’s a really good point. Yeah, I think that’s an amazing point. And you know, you preempted a little bit the second point here, which is awesome. We love that when that happens. But it’s that marketing, a marketing team ensures you’re keeping up with the ever changing world of marketing, and you just said, you know, there are more channels to handle than ever before, we discussed and we’re gonna keep saying it, how everyone thinks that they can do this, right. And you just said, it’s simply not true. I mean, I remember when digital started to take off and expand, and I’ve been a marketer my entire career. And you know, all of us as marketers, we were a little on our heels, right? It was like, we had to learn all these new things. And it really hasn’t stopped since. And it’s no longer appropriate, I think, to the point you just made Jeff to be to know enough to be just dangerous, right? You have to be so much more in it than that. And that’s why it’s always been hard to be a marketer, but it’s harder than ever now, because you have to be able to understand the landscape at the highly highly strategic level. And then the why this client to your point, Jeff is doing marketing and then build a plan that’s going to achieve their business goals. On top of all of that, you know, this is a full time job just keeping up on its own and then you have to serve as clients because that’s your job as a marketer. So I totally feel you it is a hard job. It’s a hard world. And I think it’s why it’s frustrating to those of us that are good at it, and you’re trained in it and have done it our whole careers when it gets over simplified. But I do think that’s the point where it gets dangerous. What do you think, Jeff? I see it

Jeff Reynolds 10:12
on the wall. So I call what you just described this sort of crush of new channels, new data, new information, I call that the marketing blob started from like, the 50s movie, The Blob, I think, you know, that is it just like overtakes us every day, you know, this blob, you know, another thing? And it’s the truth is, you know, marketing has never been more important, you know, in a crowded world brand and marketing is how you differentiate, obviously, but there’s never been more tools and ability for sort of do it yourselfers. But and but there’s also never been more data, more hard decisions to be made. And frankly, the problem is, we’re all still just the same humans that we were 30 years ago, before all this came, we humans have not evolved at the pace that marketing technology has evolved. Right? That’s a great point. Yes, absolutely. And so, I guess, yeah, I mean, I would argue that one way I can tell whether a marketer is sophisticated or not, is that they can explain in detail why they’re doing the activities they’re doing. And they don’t feel pressure, they don’t fall victim to marketing FOMO fear of missing out, because they already have to find their mission in life and in their role and are executing on that versus sort of this Do It Yourself mentality, which is just all about producing more and more and I have an iPhone, I go out to shoot and you know, a little video or TikTok video and all that. I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m just saying that’s not the same thing as really running a marketing program.

Anne Candido 11:42
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think it goes back to the fact that marketing is an art. It’s not a science right in. But within that art, there are people who can appreciate the art of marketing more than others. And going back to the point you made before Jeff is like, there’s one thing about knowing how Facebook works. There’s another thing about knowing what content to put on Facebook, in order to make it work for your business. Right in the first in the former is a skill like, I mean, we have a fantastic social agency that we just hired for the skill of being able to execute in tactically execute. Now they’re also really good thinker. So I’m not trying to undermine the fact that they are very good strategic thinkers. But it’s another thing of noticing and noting, well, how’s that content going to drive my business? And that comes from experience that comes from expertise that comes from being in it. And even us who are marketing experts, and it’s you as well, Jeff, I looked at it, and I tried to do it myself. And I’m like, I just don’t have the time. I don’t have the energy. I don’t have the mind space to be able to consistently churn and burn on this stuff. I need somebody who this is their job, this is what they do. And they’re in it all the time,

Jeff Reynolds 12:50
right. And every day now, right? We all know, every day, there’s a new technology and a new tool. And the challenge, I think, for marketers is to understand that, you know, when Google launches a new tool, or a new offering just isn’t example a new way to advertise. They’re not doing that for your benefit. They’re doing that. So they can make money. That’s why they are doing that. Yep. And so to understand the incentives behind all these tools, and all this marketing, marketing technology, I’m kind of picking on technology, because I do think people have this general sense that oh, if I just understood how to use HubSpot, that’ll solve my problem. If I just knew how to Salesforce, whatever the tools are, right, because those companies are out there selling magic bullets. And I’m not saying those those tools are very valuable. But they’re not going to solve no one thing. It’s rare, one thing is going to solve all your challenges, but that’s how they sell it to people. And then it’s very confusing. And that’s literally changing every day. So like in our company, you met you hired a social agency, like we don’t do, we will do social strategy, but we won’t do social execution because we’re not good enough. We don’t keep up on it on a day to day basis.

April Martini 14:02
To do that, Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s the point, right? Like, we’re responsible and on the hook with that social agency to provide the marketing strategy and the communications and what we want it to do for our business to the point and made before, but then, you know, just like both of you just said, That’s it. We don’t have the time or energy to then keep up with all of that stuff. And I think that that is the really delicate balance of making sure that you stay above it enough, right at that strategic level. But then you also know enough about all of it, which to the point you made of Why would anyone want to do this job as I’m sitting here talking, I’m like, oh, yeah, it is really common.

Jeff Reynolds 14:41
You know any marketing people that sleep well at night?

April Martini 14:47
Yeah, so I mean, I think that that, you know, I’m leaning in a little bit to point number three, which is a marketing team sees the world differently from any other function in your organization. And I think we just it was Case in point what we just said, Right? We’re not social media. experts were marketing experts. And one of the things that has stuck with me for many, many years and I use this example a lot is, you know, you go to school and you get a quote unquote degree in marketing, that doesn’t make you a marketer, right. And I had a client a few years ago that told me I was worth my weight in gold, because I was the into his Yang. And what he meant by that was, I knew a little about a lot, which makes me more of a generalist. And he knew a lot about a little because he was the specialist in his business. And that was why to him, we were the perfect pair. And I think that that just really emphasizes this point, and how marketers see the world. And we’ve talked about the challenge and being one. But I think our innate ability is to roll with what happens and what is happening today, right. So we don’t get caught up in every minut detail. And I think in an organization, there are a lot of functions that need to serve that purpose. So you know, you think about accounting and finance and operations, you know, those people are just fundamentally built different. And it’s not wrong. It’s just completely different wiring. And so I think with, you know, we get really excited about new things that come up, but not to the point where we need to know everything about them. And we’re able to keep a handle on that bigger picture. And then the other piece of what really, you know, very good marketers do, and you said before, Jeff, the ability to articulate what they’re doing and why and what the impact is of that, I think you only learn that through experience. And I continue to always hold the belief that marketers are able to see patterns and they take other industries, other experiences, other businesses they’ve worked with, and for, and they’re able to move over the things that apply and reuse them in a way that’s effective to another client or business. And, you know, call that their you know, what superhero skill or, you know, superpower or whatever that that is, but they’re able to look at the world just in a totally different way and not get distracted by the ins and outs and day to days and tactics and specifics of those tactics.

Jeff Reynolds 17:07
So you’re speaking my language, let me tell you how I would just call everything you call what you just discussed. I would call that leadership, marketing leadership. Yeah. And I think, you know, usually marketing leaders are generalists. Sometimes it’s because we’ve had a few too many road miles. You know, they got us there. But yeah, I mean, I think one thing we need to really think about in this new world order, I really like this whole, I recently released a book called The Monster That Ate Marketing. And it’s all really about this issue of separating and thinking of marketing leadership as its own craft, separate from life as a marketer. I think in small businesses, we blend it in, but just like if you’re running a small business, and there’s times when you need to think of yourself as the salesperson or the you know, and sometimes as the ops person, or you put on the finance hat, and you go to work and you do your invoicing or whatever, right? You need to, you need to be able to separate when you’re in your marketing leadership hat versus when you’re in your marketing hat, or even better in larger organizations where you can have those functions separated, because that rising above that you’re talking about seeing the world differently that you’re talking about, in my view comes from having a little higher altitude, in which you’re looking at the organization versus say, you know, the person executing the social media, you don’t want the social media person getting too caught up on a day to day basis on what the organizational directional strategy should be, you know, they just need them to execute and do well. So anyway, my bottom line is I think marketing leadership is a discussion that there isn’t a lot of training on, like, how do you like you become people like, it sounds like all we like all of us are sort of, like generalists who grow these skills over years. But like, who really taught us how to manage creatives who taught us how to organize and design our marketing departments, none of that gets taught to your point in school. So we figure that out ourselves. So all I’m arguing for here is that we should value marketing leadership, just like we value other types of leadership within an organization, not management leadership.

Anne Candido 19:16
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. And I, I chuckled because I’m an engineer by background. So I know I know that two different sides of the coin or the brain if you if you will, and you know, the thing I’ll say here and especially having been in seen in most parts of the business through my years at p&g is that marketing is the only function is solely focused on top line growth. Right everybody else does most of their job is spent trying to address the bottom line growth and the in the p&l in general like how do I you know, minimize cost of goods? How do I drive more efficiency? How do I sell more of this thing that we have right? So if none of this else is resonate? Hang with anybody, you know, just keep in mind and ask yourself, well, who in my organization is focused on top line growth. And that should be your marketers, if it’s anything else other than your marketers, to the point that you just made Jeff, that it is a it is not only a practice, but it’s a leadership, it’s a leadership position, right, you need to not only know how to practice marketing, but you know how to need to know how to lead it. And that was one thing that I think we can all agree on. And it’s one thing that I’ve always said to and this is how you kind of differentiate between sometimes I think leaders and, and the doers is like, for me, I used to say like, and I still say, you know, I don’t have all the right ideas or the good ideas, but I know a good one when I hear it, right, which is the kind of the difference between the breeding the practitioner and the leader. So make sure you have both of those folks in there. People who know how to create the good ideas, and people that know what a good idea looks like, when they see it. I don’t have anything to add to that,

April Martini 20:55
hey, look at that. All right, well, then we’ll move to point number four, which is having a marketing department means you have a team to teach marketing to your organization, which I think, you know, back to the marketing leadership and all the commentary we just had, right? First of all, hiring a marketing team in the right way, which is what we’ve been talking about here, right, really making a concerted effort to develop that department requires a lot of education within the organization before it even happens to get buy in. Right? Because it’s a bit of a black box, you know, we’ve just talked about we stand kind of outside the normal human, you know, way of being, which is we’re generalists not experts, in a lot of ways. We have expertise. I’m not saying not that, but we really do live in that more generalist space. And so I think what happens is, companies and people and organizations don’t always know what to do with us. And so if you’ve taken the time to educate the organization, on the power of marketing, and the approvals there, and you’re going to hire the team, then that team is responsible for coming in, and not only executing at that marketing, leadership level, all the way through to the execution of all the different things your company is going to do. And yes, you need the balance of all of those folks. But they also need to be educating along the way, and teaching the organization and making the proactive effort to do so. So that they are not met with resistance so that other people come along on the journey. And so there is more of that this is what we’re doing and why right from the start, versus the questions and pushback that seem to come up if that does not happen.

Jeff Reynolds 22:31
Yeah. And I really think in most organizations, you know, the more to the point, that marketing is the only part of the organization focus on top line growth, you know, at least at the big picture, when you so when you teach when you coach up everybody on marketing, you’re coaching them up on top line growth, yeah, how the company or the organization gets to, you know, improve that part of the business, right. So I’m amazed and I’m just a little side note, because we haven’t really talked about how you could build a marketing team, like one way would be to hire w two employees. Other thing would be to outsource and old variations. And I just want to say this as a consultant type, that I just think that organizations who are hiring consultants who are I think you’re missing out if you’re only hiring them to do and not there to teach you and teach your organization. And because I believe, you know, one of the principles that we live by is make everyone smarter. And I think that should be the goal of every orkut one of the goals of every organization in a world that’s changing as quickly as it is. So I’m trying to support what you’re saying about teaching and training the team. And then even when you look to outside resources, make sure they also have that sort of mentality of teaching, not the mentality of undoing a task and getting paid because the learning is what pays the dividend dividends over the long haul.

Anne Candido 23:48
Yeah, and I think that’s a really fantastic point, because it’s something that we totally embrace as well. I mean, this whole podcast was developed and called Marketing smarts for a reason. And it’s all about opening the black box and cutting through all the BS and making sure that you know, these people, especially small, medium sized businesses, who may not have grown up in big brand marketing, understand marketing so that they can go apply it effectively to their businesses. I mean, we’ve April probably worked for them. And I’ve been in with a lot of agencies who think that that is their job security, right? So they kind of keep it very close to the vest, and they won’t share how they’re doing the work but just like to die. Here it is, you know, aren’t we so smart? Are we so brilliant? Are we so creative, right? Don’t you need us now keep it you know, keep coming back, keep paying our retainers, which is fine. And some of that works for a lot of people but like our mentality is always to be of service to the point where we’re now reframing our tagline to building savvier marketers like That’s our mission, right? And that’s always when we want to do as we teach as we do, because that is so important in order to grow capability and competency. So that marketing as a whole as an industry as a function. It starts to have more or resonance with folks because like I said, in the very beginning, a lot of people opt out because they think it’s like some sort of bait and switch or some sort of like, oh, just something to get me to spend money on but doesn’t really work, right? I rather deal with all my like p&l, things of like cost of goods sold, reduce those and drive more efficiency, all that stuff I know that’s tangible. That’s I can see on a p&l, right. And marketing, you can’t really like document that on a p&l like you can on other things. So I think that it’s a really, it’s a really good point to say, being of service is a really important part. And that’s why it’s so so important to have people who are there to kind of grow that capability within your organization, because it’s just gonna make you smarter at your business.

Jeff Reynolds 25:43
Yeah. And I mean, we started doing engagements that we plan on that way where we are just one example. This was a privately held multibillion dollar food company. And they hire us. And we have one of our roles was literally to train up a new hire on on SEO on digital advertising. And we took a year. And you know, for a year, it was a slow and steady change, sharing our point of view, starting strategically getting into tactics. And then she ended up taking over the job, and we sort of coached for another six months, and then that project ended. And that the point is that project was designed to have an end right from the beginning. And it worked for everybody. And now for the record cheese but since been promoted, and is overseeing other people on that subject, but then also moving on to other things, and I, but my real point is just being an organization that is open to learning, and then finding partners who are also open to teaching. It become you know, it’s like a shared values thing that we’re all getting better together. Yeah,

April Martini 26:45
I love Yeah, absolutely. All right, so let’s just recap the four key points of Do I really need to hire a marketing team. And hopefully, we have convinced you on our very firm, yes, between the three of us. Number one, a marketing team makes marketing a discipline in your organization, it’s Nick signals that it is valued. And then it’s not the case that everyone can just do it. Number two, a marketing team ensures you’re keeping up with the ever changing world of marketing, the only thing constant in marketing is change. And marketers are the masters at managing that change. Number three, a marketing team sees the world differently from any other function in your organization. They are the generalists to your specialists, and bring outside knowledge and experience in. And finally, number four, having a marketing department means you have a team to teach marketing to your organization. They tackle the misconceptions and elevate the company by sharing the wealth of their knowledge. And in our next segment, which we call in the trenches, which for all of you listening know, this is where we give real world examples specific to industries and situations. And today, it’ll be through all three of our experiences. But with broad application, so that anybody listening to the point we just made about coaching and teaching, they can put it into action right away. So number one in the trenches is I’m not sure we’re in a position to build an entire team, what are our other options. So as this episode states, we believe you need some internal marketing support, right? But this could be and we just gave the example of hiring a single person, again, that person has to be respected. It’s all the same things we’ve said before, right, the organization has to be ready, it has to be bought in understanding it’s, you know, a higher level team. But this person can then leverage an outside agency like either of ours, right. And so we have clients to you know, Jeff gave you some examples already of this, we have clients that do this all the time as well, sometimes they just literally don’t have enough people, sometimes they don’t have the right experience. Sometimes they need that outside thinking that I mentioned before, because they’re too in the doing, including the marketing team of the day to day of the business, that’s always an option to bring other folks in, as you’ve already heard us say, but what we would enforce is that there does need to be at least one employee at the company, otherwise, it will never take because if there isn’t someone that’s responsible for it on the inside, there’s no way an external partner can know all of the internal workings, right. And then they aren’t really perceived as understanding what’s going on and being able to provide that marketing leadership that Jeff mentioned before. So we just can’t be in in the same way, all of the great things about us. And we’ve told you, there are many wonderful things about all of us on this podcast today, right? We cannot be an employee of the company if we are not an employee of the company. So our advice is, you know, let’s just make sure that there’s one person in there and responsible and and I, you know, anecdotally will say we’re also currently consulting with a client that has not historically had a marketing team. They’ve had doers of the things that we’ve talked about today. And so part of our role is going to be to help facilitate finding the right person and then doing what Jeff just talked about, which is training and teaching and coaching until that person feels like they have their legs under them. And then they’re going to be the one to eventually take it on and take off and not to say we won’t continue to be a partnership and that situation if they need us for more of the heavy lifting, but it’s about finding the right person for that organization who’s going to be capable of carrying the torch so to speak, whether we’re there or not.

Jeff Reynolds 30:09
I agree with all that what I would say is, so I’m sitting there thinking, okay, if I’m a business owner, and I’m trying to figure out who my first hire should be in my marketing team, this is open for discussion. So I’m just going to posit something you guys can disagree? We always like to debate so right. Because I think it’s interesting, because I think a lot of times we think, Well, you know, we have a lot of successful trade shows. So I should just hire somebody to manage my trade shows, right? I would argue that that one person, almost no matter what should be more of the marketing leader role, with maybe some ability, they you should, as the owner, be able to articulate your why, why you’re, why you’re hiring them, then work with them to develop the goals and strategy, you know, the goals that they should speak, specifically achieving how they’re going to get there. And then the word, I think it was an offset. It was the, you know, the capacitive capacity to figure out, Okay, I’ve sent this I set these goals, I set the strategy now, what’s it going to take to build that capacity to deliver on that strategy to meet those goals? And that is basically a full time job, in my view, and they can manage that capacity could be totally external could be part time, it could be Fiverr. I don’t, you know, there’s all sorts of different things that could be right. There’s all sorts of different sort of recipes you could put together. But I would, I guess what I’m trying to say is, I would argue that that leadership role, even as a small company, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to tactically do something, you know, generate a quick news release or whatever. But but their primary role should be the keeper of the brand and the marketing effort, not being just the doer in one little area, because it’s really hard to bring somebody in over that doer, eventually, or, and it’s very hard to move somebody from that, you know, if they’re sort of myopically focused on trade, Joe’s hard to get them to think about the bigger picture after they’ve been doing that for some years. So I don’t know. So I guess what I’m doing is, here I am, I’m arguing for this idea of if you’re gonna do it, bring on sort of the generalist not don’t start with the specialists.

Anne Candido 32:12
Yeah, I think that’s a good suggestion, I would think that that probably works in 75% of situations, I would totally agree that you should bring in a generalist that has an understanding of marketing in general is going to help you develop those strategies and those objectives and then identify the right channels. I think that is probably if I was gonna hire the one person would be the place to start. Except if I already knew that there was a channel that was working really hard for me already. Right, which so I’ll just use your example, the trade shows, if I knew trade shows, were really working. And that was a really big lead gen place for me, I would probably hire somebody who was more specifically oriented towards trade shows and like, okay, blow this thing up, blow it up.

Jeff Reynolds 32:57
I think I agree with that, too. I think the thing I’d say is, if you’re gonna do that, then you have to understand you or somebody still has to wear that leadership hat of thinking about that, why the goals and so that’s has to be on you because that person, other person, I think, generally it’s unrealistic to think the person who’s great manager trade shows gonna be great at the bigger picture of brand issue.

Anne Candido 33:16
Oh, no, you should assume they’re not going to be right. So you’re, you’re hiring a niche hire in order to be able to blow up a certain part of business, eventually, you’re going to need that market leader, whether it’s now or later, right. So I totally agree, you need them at some point. But I think sometimes people get stuck in like, Okay, I’m gonna hire this person. And they’re gonna do what for how long until I see a result, right. And so it’s hard for people to sit there in, just kind of wait until somebody delivers something based on you know, all this, you know, I’m gonna do the strategy. And I’m going to do all this like, and then my marketing planning, and then I’m going to finally do something maybe six months later, I’m not gonna wait that long, right? So um, that’s the other thing of like, kind of, like really stressing out. And being patient of that some of this stuff takes some time. And if you get, especially if you’re gonna do it, right. So if you need a short term win, then you know, do the more tactically oriented marketing, but be careful, because also you start becoming very myopic. And this is why people fall in love with the tools, right, Jeff, where they’re like, Oh, I’m going to just go get this tool, and this tool is going to save my life. And then I’m not going to need anybody else. And I’m not going to be able to, I don’t need to do anything else. Because this tool is going to just be the lights out, like everything that I’ve ever wanted, right? Which is not the truth. Either you need somebody who knows how to use the tool and how to use the tool in the context of everything else.

Jeff Reynolds 34:30
Yes. And to your point on the time thing, I think that’s a really interesting thing. Because I basically do think that most people are way too slow and make too many excuses for why they’re, why their strategy is taking so long to develop why they you know, they don’t have a clear plan. And a lot of times it’s because they’re treating it like a school assignment. They gotta get perfect instead of trying to take baby steps towards something, you know. And I guess what I’m trying to say here is whether you’re hiring somebody or you’re outsourcing somebody, to me, this is why it becomes so important. I hate be redundant here. But to really be articulating your goals, and the strategy to achieve those goals, I’m not saying there has to be like a fancy document. But if you can’t articulate that with confidence, then how do you know how to measure it? You don’t? Where do you how do you know what milestones you should be looking at? Because I definitely, I mean, how many times have I seen this where, frankly, companies give too much leash to a new hire or you know, a new, a hotshot, you know, marketing? Resume comes in? And and they take a lot of meetings, and they’re always busy, but you’re like, Yeah, but what are you doing, but I would say that same to it’s the same thing, it’s because there is no leadership in that role to have accountability and clarity. And that’s why we ended up in that spot. So all I’m trying to say is, I think this is another thing about modern life and modern marketing is balancing, you know, you have to be able to move fast. And to me, that usually means scaling down what you’re doing to some degree, instead of trying to design the perfect 75 page, you know, strategy report, I won’t name the company, but I was I was, somebody shared a strategy document for a global technology conglomerate that they were involved, they would do some work for. And it it was, it literally was a strategy for the sort of product, go to market strategy, that was the name of it go to market strategy for this product, there was no strategy in that document. There was research saying who the customers were all the love the research, all the little tools and tactic things, but nobody had the courage to say how they were actually going to go after that market. And to me, that’s what strategy really is, is about picking a direction, having courage. And the bottom line, sorry, I feel like I’m rambling is the further down the sort of experience ladder that your team that your hiring is, the less prepared, they’re going to be not only to be capable, from an experience standpoint of making those decisions, but also from an authority and incompetent standpoint, to be courageous enough to make the decisions they need to be made. So I sort of took that all over the place. But what I’m really trying to say is courage is a key ingredient to make sure stuff is actually getting done. Goals are a key ingredient to be able to judge if somebody is actually doing the right things. Right. They should be explained how the work they did today contributes to those goals. And we don’t do that today. We don’t do that usually?

April Martini 37:22
Well, yeah. And I mean, I can go off about research in the so what, yeah, so long. But I mean, I think yes, your point is really well taken. It’s like just having and I love the fact that you bring up courage, because I do think if we’re talking about marketers is different beasts, the ones that really can stand up and say, especially when there’s dissenters in the ranks of the organization that don’t necessarily believe in the power of marketing or the benefits, the ones that can stand up and say, This is what we’re doing and why and get it done. Those are the ones that I think reach those high levels of success and leadership, as you say, it’s just an inherent characteristic that I think you have to have to be able to deal with the, you know, adversaries, if you will, on a daily basis.

Jeff Reynolds 38:06
Yeah, I just think we’ve convinced ourselves in across all sorts of organizations, that sort of technical skill is enough. But actually, it’s the soft stuff. It’s the art part, and the courage to express that art where actual companies are built.

April Martini 38:23
Yeah, totally. Well said, Alright, number two, in the trenches, we currently have a quote unquote, marketing team, but none of them are true marketers, and therefore, the team has fallen into the traps that you outlined what now? So we just had a long discussion, you know, throughout this about, you have to have one tree marketer on your team, you know, and we’re talking about the marketing leadership piece of it, right. So whether, okay, you’re blocking and tackling, and you’re gonna blow out this one thing to keep the revenue stream coming. And you know, people happy from that standpoint, when it comes to an actual marketing team and finding that right leader, there has to be one period, I think we’ve all agreed on that point, right. And this is also a filter that starts to happen, right? So once you get that person in, they really become a certain kind of catalyst. And what I mean by that is, if you’ve settled into a marketing department, and you’ve fallen into these pitfalls that we’ve talked about throughout this, there are people on the team that are not going to be capable of being true marketers, for a variety of reasons. And, Jeff, you said earlier in the episode, I think it is something that can be learned, and I don’t disagree with you. But I also feel like there are people that are just not cut out to be marketers, right. And so what we’ve seen with some of these, whether it’s a coaching client or the client, where we’re doing the doing and assisting people that are marketers on the team, and this is not where I’m saying that they don’t have the degree because I again, I think that can be a piece of paper. It’s not about that to be a true marketer. But there are people that maybe they fallen into a more administrative place or maybe actually their skill wells are better served in you know, HR or you know, a kind of becomes this catch all. And then it just it is what it is. And so I think when you get this person in there and to the point of having courage, you’re also going to have to take a look at the existing team and evaluate whether those folks are the ones that are really going to move the marketing team forward. And we’ve had several instances, again, with coaching clients, and then just other relationships that we have with clients where we come in, and we’re like, where’s the marketer, right. And we even have a client where the team sat down and said, We’re not a marketing team, we don’t have a true marketer on the team, right? Like they self identified, we’re in this situation, because we literally don’t have this leadership here. Right. And so it’s really, really important that you take that step back, and then that you’re not fearful of saying, we have to reorient that. And as part of this, we have to make sure that we get the right players. Yes, that one person and what and, you know, okay, great, but if others have to depart, and then making sure to fill those holes in the right way moving forward, other than otherwise, that single person is never going to be set up for success.

Jeff Reynolds 41:04
I wish I could figure this one this puzzle out the sort of how do you identify a great marketer, because I’ve had the experience. I mean, I had a gentleman who worked for me, a young guy, and he’s sort of like a marketing savant. I mean, he’s really has really gifts, natural gifts, specifically around data, but really around his processing and the waste thing, things. But what he didn’t have was sort of the discipline aspects of, of doing the job and being ill state, you know, he sort of had to work and manage to add sort of personality, right. And then I’ve had people that look great on paper, but just can’t get anything done. They’re mired in the muck. So I wish I had a good answer for this, because I don’t know, you know, in this sort of question of are marketers born or made, I definitely think they can be made. But as I agree with you that definitely, if you don’t have sort of the core traits of being able to deal with ambiguity, sort of creativity, being able to not, you know, less, be less judgmental, sort of alerting all these different things. Like, I’ll just take the, you know, because you they, you know, engineers of the world, to me are some of the best and some of the worst marketers, I’ve seen it on both sides, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Like, it seems like they’re very extreme will let you pick which side you’re on. But but, you know, I mean, so because part of it is, of course, not just having some predefined checklist of skills, but how those skills and you know, not only skills, but attitudes, all these other things fit with the specific organization and product and market that you’re in. So, it’s there’s a lot of mystery to me in this. And I will say this, and I’m not saying this just because I have gray hair, maybe less of it than I used to. But a lot of it is gained by road miles. And and what I mean by that is just experience. You know, I really feel fortunate in myself that I lived sort of the pre Internet era, and the post Internet era. And I feel like that’s a gift versus lot of people who have grown up only in the sort of lead gen attribution model of thinking. So I guess all I’m trying to say is, a lot of great marketers will have what makes great a marketer is not only their marketing knowledge, but just their life knowledge. I don’t know how for sure how you identify that?

Anne Candido 43:20
Well, I think that’s a really good point, because they’re, you know, makes fun of me for being an engineer turned marketer. I mean, going to the dark side, I mean, I’ve heard them all right, you know, and so people say, you know, do you have a marketing degree? And I’m like, No, but I have 20 years of experience at p&g. So I grew up and probably the number one university for marketing and branding. And I learned a lot, you know, even when I was an engineer, and I was a practicing engineer there, just by experiencing and understanding, you know, for me, I think marketing can be learned, but you have to put yourself in the right mindset to do that in the mindset that I think makes for a really good marketer is you have to be relationship based. And I think that’s the kind of the difference with too between where if an engineer is gonna go be a good marketer or a bad mark, it’s a relationship based, right and it’s like being able to tap in and, and, and understand and really be able to harness those insights and true insights, and really figure out how to be able to make those emotional connections with people. And I think that could be coming from any discipline, but that is a practiced app to tootle attitudinal kind of approach to to things versus like a skill based approach of like, Yes, I went to college, and I can check the box and I got an A and all these like, marketing kind of classes, right. So yes, I agree with you that it marketing is very experiential. I do believe that expertise is what makes for good marketers. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have good instincts as a young marketer and that’s where you need somebody to kind of help develop you in To that, and you know, even for me being in communications, I was developing ABMs Assistant Brand Managers like, and they would come to me to understand the communication side because as an adult, he had a different filter for branding and marketing. And that was making them better marketers, right. So it’s like, you can get this knowledge from a lot of different places. But you have to actually want to learn and you will want to actually have to actually get into it and then want to experience it, and be in it so that you can actually grab in harness that knowledge and that learning in order to grow your marketing expertise.

Jeff Reynolds 45:33
Oh, man, I have two things. I want to say all that. So what is a conversation that Kyle has my our VP of strategy here, and I were just having earlier this morning, was about he was saying, I didn’t realize when I’m reading books, how much I’m just arguing with the author the whole time.

April Martini 45:50
We do that too.

Jeff Reynolds 45:52
I think that’s a lot of what you’re saying. That’s the mindset is developing your own point of view by thinking just thinking like challenging yourself. You know, do I agree with this? Is this right? Is do I, when somebody says, you know, the Coinbase QR Code ad that was on the Super Bowl, is the greatest ad ever written? Do I agree with that? Things like that, right. And then on the issue of degrees, I just want to say this, I mean, I don’t honestly care about somebody’s educational background. And this is even more I have in my undergrad is journalism, I have only hired one person who actually had a degree in advertising in my 25 years of agency business. Because I’ve always thought you haven’t got to be a psychopath, that 18 Go, I want to go sell people shit for a living. So I’ve always thought like, I want somebody with a random background. And then, you know, that comes into this world versus that that’s just my general philosophy. But the real point is, you know, I felt like my formal education. And I went on to get an MBA. And I just say, I feel I tell people this all the time, like, the only real value to that, for me was like learning how to talk like the other other side talks, how the PNG people talk, to learn how to think how the P&G people think, you know, that was very valuable to me as a person who grew up more entrepreneurial. But it wasn’t the lessons, it wasn’t the maybe like case studies and things help you think differently. But education, obviously, by definition is sort of out of date, by the time you get there, even though there are fundamentals. And maybe somebody else has way better professors that I’ve been exposed to. But bottom line is I don’t think it’s about formal education. I think it’s about the other things we’ve been talking about. And education always is. There’s good things about it, but it’s not the thing in my mind.

April Martini 47:38
I yeah, I mean, I would I have a few things I’ve been sort of holding out here to see all my points, so go for it. But I mean, so to the point you just most recently made about education. I mean, I tend to feel the same way. Right. So I’m one of the odd birds, right, that went to design school, got a graphic design degree realized I wanted to be more on the business side and knew I wouldn’t be able to get there the way I wanted to, which was immediately if I didn’t get an MBA, right? So I went and got the MBA, but I tend to feel the same way you do, which is that I did that strategically, because I knew I wouldn’t have credibility otherwise. But I didn’t even know how to use my MBA until I had experience. Right. And so it was like the first five years of my career, I felt like there were lightbulb moments on a regular basis where I’d be like, Oh, that’s what that meant, or that’s how that works. You know, so I didn’t agree with you on the education front, back to the engineering piece. And I’ll just pick on folks there a little bit more. So it’s great. So I have I have an who is the the right, you know, profile for a marketer, right? My brother in law’s an engineer, and he absolutely is not. And I adore him for all the things about him that make him an excellent engineer. But I will never forget when you know, we’ve talked about relationships, leadership, you know, being able to contextualize the story being able to pull for the things that are important, right? So he had to give a pretty high level presentation, and I am not going to profess to know anything about engineering, right? Like, I mean, he builds engines at GE for airplanes, right? Like, I know that I’m not in my element there. But I think it gives the point about the yin and yang that I talked about before. So he had all the things he wanted to say. And he had no idea how to say them, or put them out there or, or tell the story that needed to be told, in order to make people feel compelled to make the changes and the systems and the machines. And again, all the things I don’t know anything else about. But the magic happened when we sat together and I helped him craft that story. Right. And so I think that, you know, we could talk about any other profession, but we’ve been using engineers, but just to contextualize that example. It’s like, the magic happens when you put them together. And there’s the respect on both sides. And then also the marketer has the leadership capability or the experience or all the things that we’ve been talking about throughout this episode, to be able to be brave enough or courageous enough to move Thanks for it in a way that’s truly effective. And so, you know, we’ve talked about lots of things, I feel like in an answer to this question. But I do feel like there, there are just so many layers. And I think that’s what you’re hearing us say here, right? Like, I love the fact that you don’t hire advertisers, quote, unquote, right. I mean, I used to hate that I worked at an advertising agency, very specifically on the agency side for about five years. And the reason I joined the one that I chose is because we hired based on aptitude not on experience, right. And so I think it is a way of thinking it’s a way of challenging to your point, Jeff, it’s a way of continuing to experience different perspectives and being hungry in a way that you’re always striving to create new things. And I think back to the very beginning, it is hard, and it’s not for the faint of heart. But for those of us that love it that I think is what keeps us going. So there you go. That was what I was waiting to say long.

Jeff Reynolds 50:58
Yeah, a lot of us have no choice. We do this because this is what else would we do with ourselves?

April Martini 51:05
That’s exactly right. And now I will never forget, I mean, the point about when I’m listening to books, because I do the same thing. And I have to think that folks that are watching me run and I’m kind of like arguing with myself, I’m arguing with what’s happening in my headphones, I constantly think like, maybe I need to turn that down or run in the woods. So people are crazy.

Jeff Reynolds 51:24
It’s okay to be a little crazy, just the right amount of crazy.

April Martini 51:27
Crazy. Thanks. Be creative. All right, so we’ll round up this conversation with the third in the trenches. Question, How do I vet for good marketers. And I think that we’ve given lots of context to this and lots of depth. So I’ll just give you kind of my top line. And you know, we can I think this is good place to close out. But in my mind, they have to be able to do a few things, they have to show depth and breadth of understanding of all the things we’ve talked about so far in this episode, they have to be able to give thorough case study examples of work that they have done previously. And then you as the person vetting them needs to have probing questions. And this is where I think, Jeff, you made the comment before about being able to speak the why you’re doing things. And then we talked in this episode about tying it to business challenges. That’s what you’re looking for, in those case studies. I think a really good question is, wow, that’s a great example, how would you put that against my business, to see if they’re able to do that bigger picture puzzle piecing together thing. And then finally, and this goes adjacent to what I just said, but they should already come with an informed perspective about your existing marketing and how their experience is going to assist in what you need to be done. And to that point, I mean, they’re not going to know all of your business goals, right. But I think a really strong marketer is able to look at what’s out there and infer what that business is trying to do and whether they’re doing a good job at it. And that’s where I think that like, that’s the gold within marketers is when they can say, Okay, I’ve looked at all your stuff, I as the consumer, I’m telling you that I think you’re doing this, but I think that these things need to change or be improved, or here’s other learnings I can bring in?

Jeff Reynolds 53:06
Well, I love all those. I think the thing I’d add in this era, is there’s a lot of flash out there. And it’s really easy for people to get caught, you know, like, I’m a big fan of metrics, measurement, attribution, of course. But I also think it’s a weapon, you know, the lies, damned lies and statistics cliche. It can be weaponized to against people who aren’t sophisticated marketers themselves, which often the people to our earlier discussion who are hiring these people are not experienced marketers themselves. So I would, you know, say everything you said, and then try to say how make sure that they’re talking in business goals, not in what we call them indicator metrics, which are sort of the flashing metrics, let’s just say something like a web traffic, like, oh, I grew this web traffic from x to x. Yeah, well, that’s great. But how does that impact the business and sort of separating sort of things, the way they’re talking from sort of what the indicator are the flashy metrics to actual business goals, because the best marketers understand that we’re in this to win this from a business perspective, not simply to do the work because it’s, you know, entertaining or because your mom is going to be proud of you. Right, so, so I guess that’s all I would add is like, I think it’s just kind of a word of caution. I think there’s, I see it all the time. I mean, actually, just this week, I had a call with a client of mine. They’re early stage client of ours, we’ve since grown and our prices have gone up. And so they, so they decided they’re gonna hire somebody else to redo their website. So they hired somebody else. It’s totally fine. They’re still friends. And but it’s turned into a disaster. You know, they just get a good product. And my point is, I could have warned them about this because the promises this company were making was making simply were not fulfilled. fulfill double at the prices that they were charging. It’s simply a business model problem for this for this vendor for this web design firm. And, and the but the client didn’t know that right? They thought it was still a fair amount of money. So they’re thinking, well, that’s a lot of money. So, you know, must be good. Well, it turned out not to be good. And I guess all I’m saying is, it’s sort of like, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And that includes people who, you know, make enormous promises about how they’re going to transform everything you do and make you a whole bunch of money.

Anne Candido 55:33
Yes. And I think we actually have an episode on that, too, which is, it was it’s either something about vetting agencies or vetting contractors or something to that effect. So and we were, yeah,

Jeff Reynolds 55:44
that’s the work I actually want to do. I want to save people for bad agencies. But the truth is, too many people don’t want to, they want or too many business owners are scared to hire somebody to do that. Because they, they, they don’t they feel like that’s a waste of money. And they’d rather just get the work, but then they waste 1000s of dollars with the wrong people all the time.

Anne Candido 56:04
Yeah. And then marketing gets a bad rap. I mean, yeah, it’s I mean, it’s a virtuous cycle keeps on going. And that’s the unfortunate part is some people have to learn the hard way. I mean, you can’t I mean, we’ve learned too, that you can’t just you can’t save people from themselves. But but if I was going to jump on what you guys said about good marketers, and vetting good marketers, and, you know, you guys gave really good examples of somebody, maybe an immoral leadership kind of style role. But if you’re just looking for new talent to kind of bring in and kind of fill in the ranks, there is some more than the attitudinal things you can look for. And this is my point of view. And I invite you guys to comment, but I also think that they need to be good storytellers. For all the reasons that we’ve talked about, can they tell a story? Can they really put it together and into into it in a compelling way? Do they understand why some things work? And I say things but like marketing things, some things work, and why some things don’t? Can they kind of critically think through that? And you’d mentioned that to Jeff, it’s like, can they understand why like? Or do they have even a point of view on whether or not like the Coinbase, you know, TV ad? And Superbowl was a good one or not a good one? Right? And does that feel informed? To some extent, right? And then are they did they question are they challenged? They are they curious, like, you know, all those really good words of, you know, making sure and because if you’re going to be a good marketer, you have to be you have to go in there. And you have to really like dig in. And you have to ask all the whys, and you have to kind of pull that back out and synthesize it down and come up with your point of views. And then again, back to my original points, are they relational? Are they able to build those those connections as human relationships, because that’s what’s going to drive really good marketing work. So those are the ones that I would add in from a more of an attitudinal standpoint, all those things that you guys said, I totally agree with. But you know, a lot of people are like, especially new businesses are like, I just need some talent, you know, and what does my was that good talent look like? If you don’t have all the experience yet? How do I kind of like, get this new talent in and kind of cultivate that talent? And those are some of the things I look for

Jeff Reynolds 58:00
a clear sign to me is when you tell us like you’re having these discussions with somebody, and you’re asking these questions, and you give them a piece of information about your business? Do they actually like internalize that and learn it? And already keep asking you to the same thing over and over again, you know, how good are they? Or are they picking up money? Because to me, that’s the other thing we don’t you know, Curiosity is huge. But curiosity is huge to me, because it leads to learning. And if you’re not learning in this business, if they’re incapable of learning, whether that’s because of their ego, or their intellect or some other thing, then that’s a turn, go another way. Go a different one. Yeah,

April Martini 58:37
yeah. All right. So our third and final segment when we have a guest, Jeff is to turn it over to you, you know, bring us home, close it out, provide final thoughts. And then of course, tell people where to find you and your business, and your book, and anything else you want to promote?

Jeff Reynolds 58:52
Well, I just want to just say, first of all, thanks for having me. It’s really fun discussion, you guys do great work. And it’s really exciting. I love talking to people who sort of are into the meta discussion, the thinking about the thinking about our business. So thanks for thanks for all you do in that regard. I’ll just say this, I think in marketing, and I know we have we’re dealing with we’re using this word marketing, it’s huge. It’s a huge range. And it’s totally different if you’re a multibillion dollar, who publicly traded company than if you’re a one person startup. And I think a big part of this is just understanding that marketing, like any other part of your business, deserves to be thoughtfully designed, and to be executed. And I call it sort of organizational design, which I don’t think is a yet a total. I mean, I didn’t make that up. It’s a common term. It’s a term existing term, but I don’t think it’s yet been executed yet. Especially in small businesses. And in the marketing context, where we’re really thinking of I’m not just trying to great do great marketing. I’m trying to design and create a great marketing department. And I would just really encourage people to put the energy at whatever level you’re into, you’re in or at, to be thoughtful in, think about sort of, how am I designing this. And and this is something I got passionate about a few years ago. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what led me to this writing this book, which, to me, it’s really just trying to have a discussion about how you actually create the marketing department, you want that it’s not going to happen accidentally, that it takes work. So I hope I just hope people will put it in that premise, because it’ll not only could save you 1000s 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s Millions, you can actually flip it and make you millions. When you stop wasting so much energy doing things that don’t matter. But that some random guy on some random podcast told you to do.

April Martini 1:00:53
This podcast

Jeff Reynolds 1:00:57
I’m just saying, you know, every day people get how many suggestions? Oh, you should be doing this. What do you mean, you’re not on tick tock? What do you mean, you Oh, you should run Craigslist ads or whatever, you know, and, and you’re gonna have so many inputs, you need to develop skills to filter those inputs and be intentional. That’s all I’m saying. So anyway, yeah. Thanks for having me. The best way to get ahold me is probably at Jeff reynolds.com. And you can learn about the book and about sort of other stuff that I’m up to, but it’s just been great to be on here with you.

April Martini 1:01:27
Yeah, well, we’ve really enjoyed it too. Obviously, hopefully, all of you listening have taken away the energy and passion because I think we brought a lot of it to this discussion. All right, so just to recap, do I really need to hire a marketing team? Number one, a marketing team makes marketing a discipline in your organization, which signals that it is valued and then it’s not a case where everyone can do it. Number two, a marketing team ensures you’re keeping up with the ever changing world of marketing, the only thing constant in marketing is change and marketers are masters at managing it. Number three, a marketing team sees the world differently from any other function in your organization. They are the generalists to all of your specialists and they bring outside knowledge inside. And finally number four, having a marketing department means you have a team to teach marketing to your organization. They tackle the misconceptions and elevate the company by sharing the wealth of their knowledge. And with that, we will say go and exercise your marketing smarts. Still need help in growing your marketing smarts? Contact us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you become a savvy marketer through coaching or training you and your team or doing the work on your behalf. Please also help us grow the podcast by rating and reviewing on your player of choice and sharing with at least one person. Now go show off your marketing smarts.