We’ve all seen it in the movies. A character has an invisibility cloak, or drinks a potion, or perhaps turns into a ghost. And then, oooh how tantalizing, they can see what goes on when they’re not around.Well as our latest guest explains it, we shouldn’t just think of that kind of moment as some sort of sci-fi fantasy. We should work as if we’re trying to optimize that conversation.As she puts it – “It's about what people say when you are not in the room.”To hear the story behind that lesson...

I would never read so much text. This is long and boring to me. Versions of this have been said to me throughout my career from designers. And not to pick on designers, but I really don’t care. Because they weren’t the ideal customer for the product. So of course they weren’t interested in the copy.Like my old boss Mike Morgan used to tell me – you never read the refrigerator ad on page 3 of the newspaper…until your fridge breaks.So when I came across this lesson in a podcast guest appli...

One of the biggest transformations in my career came when I went from trying to sell people with my writing, to trying to help them.Helping people understand whether a product or service is truly right for them creates long-term trust. So does helping them even when they don’t buy from you.Not only is this more effective, but my work is part of my life. My soul doesn’t magically leave my body during the workweek. And it is fulfilling to help people – both morally and financially.So when I rea...

Think branding and demand generation are separate functions? Jim Kruger, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Informatica [https://www.informatica.com/], discusses why they shouldn’t be on this episode of How I Made It In Marketing.Informatica is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. It reported total annual recurring revenue of $1.63 billion for 2023. And Kruger manages a team of 140 people.Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketingUnderstand ...

Marketing is about helping your ideal customer perceive the value your products deliver.But before they can perceive that value, you have to create it.When I received the podcast guest application for my next guest, in my due diligence I found that Consumer Reports named its Stratami mattress one of the 9 best mattresses of 2024.To hear key lessons and stories from building the company behind made that mattress, I talked to Jack Dell’Accio, CEO and Founder, Essentia [https://myessentia.com/]....

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore."That quote is from Nobel Prize winning novelist André Gide. And I think there is a great lesson for marketers here.For 25 years, MarketingSherpa has published case study articles. And sometimes when I talk to marketers, they are so myopically focused on just the case studies from their industry.We’re an ideas profession. And sometimes to get the best ideas you have to step away from the famil...

Imagine this: you've spent months ideating, planning, and crafting the perfect marketing campaign. The creative is stunning, the messaging is on point, and the target audience has been meticulously defined. But as the launch date approaches, things start to wobble. A key department is out of sync, a crucial piece of technology isn't ready, or the timeline starts to slip. We've all been there – standing on the precipice of what could be a game-changing launch, only to watch it teeter on the br...

“Writing is never done, it is just due.”This is a common sentiment from anyone who has ever worked in a deadline-driven field like journalism or academia.And it certainly holds true right here in the marketing industry as well, made all the more difficult in my career personally when I transitioned from print to digital…which could be changed an infinite number of times.Or as my next guest puts it – ‘Don’t let perfection get in the way of completion.’To hear the story behind that lesson, alon...

My latest guest represents the perfect dichotomy of what it takes to make it in marketing.On the one hand, the word rockstar is half the name of her company, which connotes to me, Mick Jagger strutting around on-stage crooning “I’m a man of wealth and taste.” Or perhaps for a newer generation, Adam Levine in the spotlight belting out “I got the moves like Jagger.”But then when I went through her podcast guest application, it was filled with humble lessons like, “Be a Horse Whisperer,” “Always...

When I started in B2B, my mentor told me, “We call this business to business, but make no mistake, people buy products, not businesses. It’s people who make decisions for these businesses.”Here’s where the rubber meets the road. If you’re only focused on businesses as accounts, you’re overlooking opportunities.For example, as our latest guest shared in his podcast guest application, “Track when your customer champions change jobs.”To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more les...

Content Warning: On How I Made It In Marketing, we delve beneath the buzzwords of our industry to uncover the biggest lessons from successful careers. Our guests share detailed, hard-fought, in-the-trenches stories of how they learned these lessons and put them into practice.Today's guest has spent a significant part of her career selling condoms. As a result, our in-depth conversation may involve frank discussions about sexual topics. If you are uncomfortable with this subject matter, you sh...

Look, let’s face it, our industry can have a bad reputation.And I can see why. Just scroll through YouTube or social media and you’ll see self-appointed gurus shouting about tricks and hacks and shortcuts.But sustainably successful marketing is not about shortcuts, it’s about digging into the very essence of what it means to be a human being.Sounds pompous, I know, but hear me out.Effective marketing deeply understands and portrays human realities, behaviors, and emotions. It connects authent...

The Accidental Recycled Poop Marketer!That’s the headline of a recent podcast guest application.And it came from someone leading marketing for an interesting product – a paid B2B and B2C product, sold by a nonprofit, that is run by an independent city government authority, a water and sewer utility formed in collaboration with the federal government.So no matter what type of marketing you do or business you run, there’s probably a lesson for you in this episode with April Thompson, Senior Dir...

Be careful you don’t engage in marketing color by numbers so to speak. It’s easy to get lost in process flowcharts and databases. You could build out the perfect infrastructure – the right media buys, marketing automation and drip campaigns all set, everything is being properly measured and attributed – yet in all that work it is easy to overlook what that infrastructure should be for. This is just marketing color by numbers.So I love this lesson from my latest guest – ‘Embed creative wi...

Who is your ideal customer? And how does your brand serve them?Yes, I know you have KPIs to hit this quarter. Leads. Sales. A specific revenue target. And so it can be easy to quickly drill down to targets.But all marketing beings by asking… who is the ideal customer? And how does our brand serve them?So I loved a lesson I recently read in a podcast guest application – ‘Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition.’To hear the story behind that lesson, al...

Where do you see yourself in five years?I always hated this interview question. It’s not that I’m against planning; it’s that I’m for flexibility. And I don’t want to get trapped in a five-year plan.I try to focus on delivering value today helping people out, and improving my future self for tomorrow, and from there, opportunities naturally arise.So a lesson from this episode’s guest really resonated with me – ‘be open to where your path takes you.’To hear the story behind that lesson, along ...

You can’t do everything. So you essentially have to make some ‘bets,’ for lack of a better word. What is going to have the biggest impact with your audience?Focus your energy and budget there, to make the biggest splash you can.OK, that’s a boring way to say it. So I like how my next guest worded it in his podcast guest application – ‘If you're gonna be a bear, be a Grizzly.’To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories from throughout his career, I sat down...

In the fast-paced world of marketing, precision can often be a double-edged sword. In our this episode, Kiara Kempski, Vice President of Global Consumer & Vendor Marketing at The Knot Worldwide (https://www.theknotww.com/), shares why sometimes ‘hand-grenade math’—a rough yet pragmatic approach—is more effective than chasing false precision.I discussed forecasting, along with resilience, entertainment, and many other elements of a marketing career with her.Intrigued by Kempski’s insights?...

How I Made It In Marketing is not about marketing.Not really.It’s about marketers. And the funny thing about marketers is that we’re not just marketers, we’re also human beings. So to succeed as marketers, we also have to be successful humans.Which is why I always love a lesson like – ‘Balance ambition with well-being.’To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lessons and stories from throughout her career, I talked to Jordan Welby, Director of Marketing Ops at Cella by Rands...

I like to call it blandvertising. I’m sure you’ve read it and heard it before.There are words. Lots of them. They fill a space – in an ad, on a landing page, in a press release, maybe even in a keynote presentation.You’ve seen these words before if you’re in the target audience. Scalable. Leading. Agile. Enterprise-grade. Full-service. Data-driven. Cross-platform. Seamless.They seem to say something, but you’re left walking away…not really understanding and certainly not believing anything at...

“The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.” That quote is from David Ben-Gurion.And it reminds me of marketing. We’re in the digital age, or maybe we’ve crossed over into the AI age. Either way, we don’t have the long deadlines we had when I started my career writing print ads.And that’s just the difficult. What about the impossible? Well, that is part of our stock and trade as marketers, right? We push, try new things, experiment, innovate – that which was imposs...

I’ve been watching the new Steve Martin documentary, and it includes a clip of him accepting the Mark Twain Prize.He calls it “The only significant American award for comedy…except for money.”It reminded me of our own industry, but in a different way. We have many awards for creativity, and I am a creative person so I love them, but ultimately this art we do is a business art. And the ultimate measure of success is often monetary.So when I saw this lesson in a podcast guest application – ‘mak...

Wherever you are in your career today, you are not necessarily stuck there. I’ve heard time again from guests on How I Made It In Marketing about how they’ve been able to make dramatic, perhaps unlikely career shifts.On the flip side, if you are a hiring manager, do not pigeonhole potential recruits based only on their current experience.For as my latest guest puts it, ‘look past the CV.’ Hear the story behind how he learned that lesson in his career, along with many more lesson-filled storie...

One of my favorite career analogies is the music video for No Rain, by Blind Melon. There’s a girl in a honeybee costume, dancing around, and she’s so sad because no one seems to care or understand.    And then one day, she comes across this field filled with people in honeybee costumes hopping and leaping around. A look of elation crosses her face, and she joins them to dance her best dance. Are marketing careers really that different? As my next guest puts it – ‘find the place where you...