a.k.a. ‘Some of you don’t know what marketing does and it shows’
If you own a business and want growth, then you need a marketing function. Simple enough.
But what type of marketing? A quick Google search brings up vastly inconsistent ideas around how many types of marketing there are. Ahref says there are 18 common types, Asana says 19 and Hubspot comes in at a whopping 41. And there is existing literature on the 7 functions of marketing and other confusingly numbered lists.
It’s almost like no one can clearly explain the categories of marketing.
Part of this nebulousness results in similarly vague job requirements.
Some red flags that point towards a hiring team that doesn’t understand what type of marketer to hire look like:
Phrases that overemphasis flexibility, i.e. “must be agile”, “must be able to change directions quickly” or “scrappy”
Titles that are too broad, like the dreaded Marketing Guru, Ninja or Wizard (shudder)
Responsibilities that are overly broad, i.e. “Must have direct experience in positioning, SEO, paid social, organic social, content creation, sales enablement and also direct mail when we’re feeling a bit panicky about leads.”
Corporate buzzwords like “growth mindset”. As opposed to what? Don’t all marketers need to help their organisations grow in some way? It’s literally one of the main functions of marketing.
These terms are unhelpful and vague. Often, it results in a mismatch between an organisation’s needs and a marketer’s skills — sometimes realised too late, wasting time and effort on both accounts!
But there is a better way to describe types of marketing.
THE ACTUAL TYPES OF MARKETING IN 4 CHARTS
Audience
Channel
Customer lifecycle
Product lifecycle
AUDIENCE
This is probably the most recognisable and clearest paradigm to marketers and non-marketers alike.
There are business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) marketers. Confusingly, sometimes the latter is called D2C (Direct to customer).
Partnership marketing often sits squarely to the right of the spectrum. Interestingly, influencer marketing could be considered somewhere in the middle as influencers often work as the face of a business they own.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is also often practised under the B2B banner to the left.
CHANNEL
Single-channel marketers have domain knowledge of specific channels and associated technologies, like email marketing
Content marketers would be in the middle because they would need knowledge of multiple channels, like social media and SEO.
Many marketers would probably put themselves somewhere in the middle and tend to veer right as they go up in seniority. Senior marketing leaders must have a baseline knowledge of all channels to hire a team with the right domain knowledge.
CUSTOMER LIFE CYCLE
This is mapped to the marketing funnel, where customers will start from having no awareness of a brand or offering all the way to being advocates.
Marketers to the left of the spectrum in Awareness will often be classified in Demand Generation (Demand Gen if you’re friends), whose role is to create awareness of the offering and generate demand for it. It’s in the name!
Lead Generation marketers (again, Lead Gen if you’re friends), are focused on converting the Aware segment into marketing-qualified leads and sit in the Consideration part of the spectrum.
Along Consideration and Conversion is where things get murky, and questions around territory start cropping up, especially in the B2B space. Who owns the success of converting leads into customers — Marketing or Sales? Whose responsibility should it be to go on the hunt for prospects?
As we travel to the right along to Conversion and Loyalty, the kinds of job titles that practice marketing here don’t often include the word ‘marketing’! Say hello to Customer Success and Community Managers. It begs the question of whether these titles should be under an overarching marketing function, but it depends on the organisation.
The biggest sin would be to treat the space between Conversion and Advocacy as an afterthought.
PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
Despite the name of this chart, the bulk of Product Marketers’ responsibilities often sit on the left side of the bar as they’re focused on a product’s development and early stages.
When products are mature, a business is more likely more reliant on brand marketing, especially if they are an incumbent.
But what about products in the decline stage? The most innovative marketers need to step in and work strategically with the business leaders and make smart decisions on moving forward. Does the product require a drastic pivot, or should it live out the rest of the cycle until its demise quietly? What new and exciting offer will take its place?
NOTE: CREATIVE VS TECHNICAL?
The idea that there are creative marketers versus technical ones should be dispelled immediately. Creativity is employed in some way across all of the spectrums described above, and in modern marketing, there is always some level of technical ability needed to practice marketing, period.
WHO SHOULD USE THESE PARADIGMS?
HIRING OR TALENT ACQUISITION TEAMS
Use these charts to better visualise clarify what skills are required in your teams. You’ll be able to write clearer job descriptions and attract better-suited talent.
In modern marketing, the titles of Marketing Executive and Marketing Specialist simply aren’t descriptive enough, and to expect someone to have all of the skills along all of the spectrums is unrealistic.
MARKETERS
Match your skills along the above spectrums while also considering your proficiency.
This will be a useful exercise in better explaining your role and your strengths in your organisation. It also raises good questions to recognise how much is expected from you. Are you expected to inhabit a wide area of the charts and at high proficiency?
If you want career progression, it’ll also help you visualise how to develop your marketing skills. For example, do you want to increase your proficiency in a narrow part of the channel-specific paradigm and become a specialist, or do you want broader knowledge across the spectrum?
TL;DR — Use the scales of channel specificity, customer life cycle, audience and product lifecycle to better describe types of marketing. This will ensure hiring teams can better describe their needs, and marketers can communicate their strengths more clearly to non-marketers.
What other paradigms do you believe marketing exists in?