So all the ‘best advice’ is around niching down. However, I call BS on that! As a marketing generalist, I see an application for being semi-skilled in many areas of marketing – and I wonder how much of that is because I started my marketing journey when things were simpler.
Our choices were PR, print, radio and activations – using email addresses for anything other than business communication was for those walking a fine line between good and gauche. Web sites were good if your customers could find them, but they were limited and represented nothing more than print online.
But the wild ride of even the last 10 years has been amazing! The proliferation of tools, tags, tests, analytics and advertising options is blazing. Applying the early principles of ‘salesmanship in print’ and direct mail to a whole new world is both fun and daunting. Studying neuromarketing, social marketing, ecommerce marketing, email marketing mixed with traditional marketing is now de rigour! And I LOVE it!
I am so grateful for my careful grounding in the basics. If I were to do my Masters in Marketing today, it would almost force me to choose a track – whereas I could dabble in everything because specialisations were not as intense as they are today. That is not to say specialists are not required – I absolutely rely on them to do what only those with in-depth platform knowledge can do well. But it is my generalisation that allows me to know what to ask for and see the big picture.
My core passions of design, copy and strategy have given me an excellent grounding from which to grow all other skills I require to be a modern marketer – and many more to come that I don’t even know I will need!
I thoroughly enjoy upskilling as required rather than cramming to know everything to pass a test and never applying it. I learn as I need, and I am a proudly agile marketing generalist!