A Tuesday in marketing: you will be asked to prove something you cannot measure
GRW-MKT-237
2 min read
Nine o’clock. A campaign went live yesterday. You open the dashboard before you open your email, because someone will ask and you would rather know first.
Ten. The numbers are fine. Not good, not bad. You have to decide whether two days is enough to judge it, knowing that if you wait you look slow and if you act you might be reacting to noise.
Eleven thirty. Someone senior forwards you a competitor’s post and asks why you are not doing that. You know why. Explaining why takes four sentences and they have thirty seconds.
After lunch you write. Then you rewrite, because the first version was for you and the second is for the person reading it on a phone between meetings.
Four o’clock. The question arrives: did this work? The honest answer is that you cannot fully separate what you did from what was going to happen anyway. You give the honest answer with a number next to it, because an honest answer without a number sounds like an excuse.
What you are actually judged on
Not creativity. On whether the number moved, and whether you can explain why it moved without lying. The second half is what separates people who last from people who produce very pretty decks for two years and then leave.
What wears you down
Everyone has an opinion about your work, because everyone consumes marketing and therefore believes they understand it. Nobody offers the accountant their opinion on depreciation.
Who thrives
People who can hold two things at once: a real belief about what will work, and a genuine willingness to be shown they were wrong by a number on Thursday.
Who leaves
People who need certainty before acting. Marketing never gives it. If not knowing keeps you up, this job will keep you up most nights, and no amount of experience fixes that — the senior people are not more certain, they are just more comfortable being uncertain in public.
Your hour: pick a company whose product you actually use. Write one sentence: who it is for, what it replaces, and why someone would switch. One sentence. If it takes you forty minutes, that is the job.