Why I Am Not a Marketer

When I said to my wife, "I hate marketing. I'm not a marketer," the first thing she asked me was, "But you work in marketing, right?" And her rhetorical question does, in fact, have an answer: I consider myself an Experience Creator.

I've been a social media professional for the last six and a half years, and I have seen the profession and the medium grow and evolve each year. But when I stand back and assess where social media and marketing are in 2020, I shed my professional, corporate clothes and put on my consumer hat.

I want convenience and I don't, ever, want someone to attempt to sell me anything. When a sales person comes over to me while I'm browsing the shelves in a nearby retailer, I start a clock in my head for how fast I can get him or her away from me. That person is only there to help (most times), but I don't want that interaction. I like to browse and make a purchase decision based upon my own insights and research.

And this is how marketers need to think in 2020.

In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced big changes to Facebook's Algorithm and News Feed. The key point for why Facebook made the change was because they had "gotten feedback from our community that public content -- posts from businesses, brands and media -- is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other." I take a step back and look at my own feelings when I'm shopping, and this is the problem. I don't want a retailer or sales person to follow me around and sell me things. This includes when I'm shopping online as well. I don't want OLA or OLV crowding the corners of every website I visit. I don't want cluttered marketing speak and materials on every e-commerce listing when I only care about product features, images of the product, and consumer reviews. I care about what people who own the product have to say and not what a brand wants me to think.

What's even worse is many marketers have a I-am-smarter-than-them mentality and truly believe they are providing information and services that consumers want. Well, marketers are wrong. According to Unlockd, "85% of advertisers think that the mobile advertising experience is positive for the end user, with just 3% admitting that it could be negative...However, consumers don’t agree. Just 47% of them consider the experience to be positive." These statistics make more sense when I reflect on my own experience. People don't care about the irrelevant ads they are seeing, and when a website tries to punish users for using any ad blocker, it's makes a consumer click out of the website (check your bounce-rates, folks). I will admit I will not buy products if a brand or company aggressively markets them with in-your-face advertising. Moreover, with TV advertising, I don't remember the products or services. I remember the annoying jingles, and I can't turn the channel fast enough. (There's a reason Netflix and other streaming services, which are commercial-free, are projected to be worth $70+ billion by 2021 according to Research and Markets.

But I am a social media marketer, as my wife said to me, so how can I say here that I'm not a marketer?

Social media is a medium that is meant to connect people with people, to share stories and images, and to build a positive society where everyone can learn from one another through digital conversations. But when brands and companies insert themselves into your lives with an ad or social media post, consumers feel like fleeing because the brand has invaded their space. No one likes a pushy door-to-door salesperson, but at least you have the ability to not allow that person into your home. With social media and digital marketing, you don't have that. They barge in and blast their messaging, and there's little you can do about it. Sure, you can block brands from posting to you, but with an almost limitless amount of brands and companies, if you block one, two more will swoop into that ad spot with their annoying ad.

The brands that market well to consumers are the ones that don't try to sell or advertise. They are the ones that organically interact with consumers. The top thing consumers look for from brands, according to a Sprout Social study, is for a brand to be responsive to consumers, and consumers will most likely unfollow/disengage from a brand that is annoying or offensive to them on social media. My takeaway is consumers want a brand that is one of them, a person, and is responsive like a person is. They don't want corporate/technical speak. They want to feel like they belong to something bigger.

I am not a marketer because I am a person who happens to work in marketing. And marketing needs to evolve beyond increasing sales and revenue. Yes, these things are important to all businesses, but the mentality that revenue is only generated from the skilled marketer who is smarter than a consumer because of his or her MBA and big, complex systems is slowly dying thanks to empowered consumers behind a keyboard.

So stop. Just stop. Get smaller. Get more intimate.

You must learn who your consumers are, who you want to reach, and evolve your brand to learn to talk to them like people. Create interesting content that will resonate with them and make them want to share it with their friends and families. Create a personal connection. I work as a consumer service marketer, if I have to put a label on it. I work to build a bond with the consumer. I hear them out. I listen. And then, only then, do I react. A consumer's time is precious, so you have to listen and learn. As a marketer, you can't think you're smarter (even though you may want to believe so). Instead, you have to be positive and educate consumers about your products and brand. One-to-one connections are going to be the new way of marketing. You have to create experiences.

So no, I am not a marketer anymore. I, to label it, am an Experience Creator.