Every Monday, we marketers face a new week with the same old challenges: colleagues who think they know our craft as well as we do, managers who drop random ideas as new strategies to execute, technologies threatening our jobs, and audiences waiting in their basements for us to make a mistake.
Rachel Moore shares her insights on the realities of marketing, the challenges of working with non-marketers, and how to navigate the emotional landscape of the profession. This episode offers encouragement and practical advice for marketers facing everyday frustrations.
00:00 Introduction and the purpose of the podcast
02:00 Why non-marketers often misunderstand marketing
03:56 The importance of strategic thinking over emotional reactions
05:48 Managing workload and saying no diplomatically
07:06 The emotional toll and underappreciation of marketers
08:03 Encouragement and support for marketing professionals
Rachel Moore: Good morning, marketers. It's Monday when you're listening to this, and this is the first of whatever this new podcast is. I'm recording it and I don't even know what the title of it's gonna be. And if you know me personally, that is a challenge. I typically like to have the title in mind because it helps drive it. but it could be anything. so if you don't know me, I'm Rachel. I handle online pretty much everywhere. Rachel has the mic, which is very meta considering how I'm recording this. I've been in marketing for 18 years. I also am a podcast host and producer for ten years. Wow. I wanted to start this podcast because we got we got a vent, y'all. there is a whole hell of a lot of commiserating and catharsis that needs to happen about this thing we do. I love being a marketer. I love the creativity around it. I'm sure you all do too. There are reasons you got into it. my personal ones, I always call it the trifecta. I like the creativity of it. I like the communication of it, because you're compelling people through communication. And I love the technology around it. I love that there's always new ways and stuff to do this thing called marketing and reach people. And then getting to know all that stuff. I'm very nerdy. Everyone's got reasons you got into marketing. And we decided to do this as a profession and get better at it and grow at it and stuff. so for however many years you've been marketing or months, maybe you're brand new, there's a reason you started doing it. which comes up against why it can be so hard to work with other people who are not marketers yet because they are subject to marketing every day and every minute and every hour with their phones and their TVs and their radios and you know, print media and people talking about stuff, reading reviews, everything, they think they're they could be marketers. They're like, well, I know marketing. And that's what you have to do. You have to be like, I I know we all run into people who actually drop that stuff. It's so offensive. And you at some point you just have to like laugh it off. While and and oftentimes this is said by people that Hold a little power over our lives, whether that's our our job, whether we stay employed, if we get promoted or not, or a rate increase. So you you you kind of can't sometimes tell them or react exactly as honestly as you'd like to. That's who this podcast is for. Y'all, we are dealing with who are often very intelligent and probably even nice people. And they come at You know, with us are like, okay, well, I saw this thing over the weekend. It's a great marketing campaign. Do it, please. And we have to be like, okay, wow. And you we all God, you all know the diplomacy we exercise over verbal only, only written only, typed only communication. There's no body language usually. Now, if this is happening on a video conference, God bless us. fix that face, right? But when it's coming over like a Slack or Teams message, and someone's like, Yep, you know, I want you to do this. I saw this over the weekend. Great marketing campaign. We need to do it. And the whole backbone of their argument is that it impacted them. And they looked at the whatever the visible metrics were on the post, how many people might have liked it or, you know, reshared it or commented on it. And their brain just jumped to like, well, we need to do this too. And we get to be the ones that dip diplomatically, hopefully, come back and say, Wow, yeah, I'm checking it out now. Mind you, we're doing this as we drop every other marketing thing we're trying to do that is probably worthwhile and is a good marketing idea and stuff that we've put a lot of thought into and need to keep going. Here's yet another thing. So we get to come back to them and be like, Wow, yeah, I'm checking this out. I'd really be interested to know who their target audience is. Because guess what? The subtext of that is that the person who is giving you this new campaign assignment is probably not the target audience. They're a marketer, or you know, they're they're your C level, maybe they're a CMO, but they're someone who like saw it, it had an impact on them, not really thinking about who the target audience is, but just want you to do it because it made them feel good. And that is not strategic marketing. Now. Are all ideas that come from those corners bad? No. Sometimes they're a decent idea. Maybe it's not the exact idea we go with, but it's worth looking at, right? Not saying all those ideas are bad, but it's just the way sometimes they come across where it's like, I had a momentary reaction to this, therefore the whole campaign will be good. There's no insight into if that brand that put that out is achieving the goals they mean to achieve with that campaign, who the actual target audience is, what the budget was. And when I say budget, it can be an organic campaign. You still have the budget resources. And you know, how much time is that taking a person to put into it? Even if you put no ad spend on it, there are there is a budget consideration here. It's time budgeting. my God. I have there is one of my favorite bosses I ever had, and Vicky Steer, if you ever hear this podcast, I hope you do. I'm calling you out in a the best way ever. She always she taught me to have the best come back to say, if somebody comes to you and says, I want you to do X, and you know in your brain, you can see immediately, you're already doing the calculus on, well, that's going to be additional so many hours of work. Your immediate response needs to be great. What would you like me to pause or drop so that I can focus on this? That is the question. And y'all, that's not a bad question. It can feel bad. That is an absolutely reasonable question to ask somebody. Because then it you have to frame this as to say there is a time cost here. Regardless of if there's organic or paid campaign, there's a time and resource cost here. Other stuff's not going to get done. There are only so many hours in the day. There are only so many members on your team. And AI can only do so fucking much. By the way, yes, this is an expletive filled podcast. so I'm good. I wanna leave that there. I don't want to make these super long. My intent with this podcast is listen. We've all heard of the the the the Sunday scaries where you're not you're like anticipating going into work, clocking into work the next day and deal with whatever you need to deal with to start the week. often for marketers it is entering a realm where we're underappreciated. We might be approached with, a new campaign idea someone, some non-marketer ran into over the weekend that now you need to go dissect and assess and possibly execute on even though it might not be the best idea. and really just we have to collaborate with people who are not marketers, yet they think they understand the whole scope of what we do because they receive marketing. So that's what this is podcast is for. That's who this is for, is for you, my dear marketer. I feel you, I see you. I know I really don't see you because you know, I literally don't see you because I'm recording this and this is gonna go out and you're probably listening to it. you're hearing me, but I see you. Just know. I feel it every day, every day. And it does not matter. I've been in this eighteen years, eighteen and a half. It's not gonna go away. just know that I know you're great. I know that you know what you're about, I know that you're an expert, and I know that People need to listen to your expertise about marketing. And man, let's let's get through this together. just know someone in the universe, whose name is Rachel, believes in you and loves you and loves what you do and thinks you're just the best and also applauds you for getting through every moment that we are a marketer. With that, I will leave you to the next recording, which will drop on a Monday for you. So I hope you enjoy this one, enjoy the future ones, and see ya on the other side of this week. Bye.
