Your Marketing Manager Is Not Your Entire Marketing Department
Digital marketing has become a collection of specialist professions. Here's why marketing managers should lead the strategy, protect the brand and coordinate expertise, not be expected to do every job.
Marketing managers, this one's for you. Feel free to share it with your boss.
Dear Business Owners,
Please stop expecting your marketing manager to be an expert at everything.
We've worked alongside marketing managers for nearly 30 years, and we've watched their roles become increasingly complex.
Thirty years ago, marketing involved newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards, signage and creative campaigns. Each required knowledge and experience, but a good marketing manager could reasonably oversee most of it.
Then digital marketing arrived.
Today, businesses need to consider Google Ads, Meta Ads, search engine optimisation, website development, email marketing, social media, analytics, conversion optimisation and now AI.
Every one of these has become a specialist profession in its own right.
At Net Age, different specialists manage Google Ads, Meta Ads, SEO and website development. Even our dedicated teams, who spend every working day focused on their particular disciplines, regularly sit together to discuss platform changes, solve problems and work out the best approach. Google and Meta constantly introduce new features, systems and optimisation methods. Keeping up is a full-time job.
If teams of dedicated specialists have to work hard to keep up with one discipline, how can we reasonably expect one marketing manager to master all of them?
Yet many businesses want one person to develop the strategy, manage the brand, understand the customers, run the advertising, create content, manage social media, optimise the website and analyse the results.
That's not one job. That's an entire marketing department.
Marketing and Advertising Are Not the Same Thing
Marketing is about understanding your market. Advertising is one of the ways you reach it.
A marketing manager should understand the business, its customers and its competitors. They should know who the target audience is, what those customers need, why they should choose the business and how the brand should position itself.
They protect the brand's identity and voice. They ensure the business sends the right message to the right people, and that different teams and suppliers are working towards the same commercial goals.
They develop the overarching marketing strategy, set priorities, manage budgets and coordinate the people responsible for delivering that strategy.
Advertising is an important part of marketing, but knowing what your advertising needs to achieve does not mean personally mastering every technical detail of Google Ads, Meta, SEO or website development.
A marketing manager should understand what needs to be achieved. Specialists bring the expertise to help achieve it.
Even Large Marketing Departments Use Specialists
We work with businesses that have marketing departments of 20 or 25 people, yet they still ask Net Age to manage their Google Ads.
Not because their marketing teams aren't capable. Because Google Ads is a specialist discipline.
The same principle applies to SEO, Meta Ads, website development and other areas of digital marketing.
Even specialists need specialists.
What About Smaller Businesses?
Not every business can afford a large marketing department. A smaller business may have one person overseeing marketing, and that person may need to be hands-on across several areas.
There's nothing wrong with that. But being a capable marketing generalist is not the same as being an expert in every discipline.
Prioritise the marketing activities most likely to help the business grow. Give your marketing manager realistic responsibilities, useful tools and access to specialist support where it will make the biggest difference.
As the business grows, its marketing resources should grow with it. That doesn't necessarily mean hiring 20 people.
For many growing businesses, that coordinating role is filled by an independent professional. As we explain in Your Marketing Manager Doesn't Have to Be on Your Payroll, an independent marketing manager can lead the strategy without a full-time hire.
A Message to Business Owners
Before questioning why your marketing manager isn't delivering everything you expect, consider whether you've given them a realistic job to do.
Are you employing someone to develop and manage your marketing strategy, or expecting one person to perform the work of an entire team?
Those are two very different things.
A great marketing manager understands your customers, protects your brand, develops your strategy and ensures your marketing activities work together towards business goals.
The more specialised marketing becomes, the more valuable that coordinating role becomes.
Your marketing manager doesn't need to be an expert at everything. They need to know what matters, who you're trying to reach, and how to bring the right expertise together to make it happen.
And that's an enormously valuable job.
From the team at Net Age, with nearly 30 years of experience working alongside marketing managers.