Jack of All Trades…
After years of feeling pressure (from where, I can’t pinpoint) to specialize in *something*, I’m embracing my marketing jack-of-all-trades brand.
I’m finally confident in the value my random smattering of skills can bring an organization. And reflecting on my personal goals, this approach lets me continue to do what I love: learn and apply new skills.
…Master of One
While I am able to do all kinds of marketing for clients, I center everything around writing. Words set the stage for effective marketing. Email, on-page SEO, content marketing, PR… it all starts with messaging and storytelling.
Without compelling words, those email automations are just another email in someone’s inbox. Without a compelling story to tell, PR is ineffective.
The Marketing Landscape
A lot of marketing jobs I see—especially those for people with 3-5 years of experience—are for specialized positions. For example, pay-per-click specialist, on-page SEO expert, social media manager, email marketing coordinator, etc.
Most of the job listings I see for generalist fall into two categories:
- Upper-level, strategic positions like marketing director and above
- Marketing roles at small companies and nonprofits where everyone wears multiple hats
For the most part, agencies are hiring specialists (which makes sense), as are companies when they build their own internal marketing team.
So I’ve been seeing and hearing this need for specialization my whole career. But it’s just not for me. I don’t want to do pay-per-click optimization all day. I don’t want to create and post social media content all day. Heck, I don’t even want to write all day. I want to do and learn different things across many areas of marketing. And, when it comes down to it, I want to be able to help clients meet their goals, with a lot of options of how I can help them do that.
Realizing—and ultimately accepting—that fact has helped me embrace my jack-of-all-trades moniker.
Why Generalists are Valuable
Small- and medium-sized businesses can’t hire a specialist for every area of marketing. And they don’t always have the budgets to work with agencies that have those specialists on their teams. Having one person who can help in many different areas of marketing is most cost-effective for many businesses.
I often tell people, “I know enough to be dangerous,” and I mean that literally. It’s dangerous for me to do design work beyond basic layout or customizing a template in Canva. Sure, I can do it.
I can open Photoshop and InDesign and pop together something decent, but that’s not always the right call.
Most of us generalists know our limitations and make the call to pull in specialists when we need someone with a deeper level of expertise in a specific area. For me, I feel like I’m better able to work with specialists because I know a bit about their domain. I can help provide the right information for them to do their best work. I can ask intelligent (but not naggy) questions. And I can be a middle man and help explain things to my client in a way they’ll understand, with just the information they need and want to know.
Always Learning
I’ll work to always keep up on the latest marketing trends—the basics, what types of businesses and customers they’re effective for, and enough information to steer someone in the right direction if they come to me with questions.
I can’t picture myself ever specializing beyond where I am now (focused on writing but deploying that in a variety of ways). And as long as clients continue to see my value, and I have the opportunity to keep learning, I’ll be happy.