• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, November 1, 2011

Are you a mature marketer? 

I ask the question because over the last few weeks I‘ve come into contact with two different kinds of marketers: the mature marketers and the immature marketers.  These two are dramatically different, and their approach can have an effect on the culture of a company, as well as the results of its marketing.

The mature marketers are those who have a plan.  They are the ones that sit down at the beginning of an engagement, write out a marketing strategy, and use that strategy as a filter or a guideline for the coming months ahead.  These folks create a culture of efficiency, effectiveness and calm.  This is what most of us aspire to be.

The immature marketers react to everything that comes their way, and they are unable to prioritize any initiatives that come across their desk.  These folks are sometimes frantic, commonly very high anxiety, sacrifycing the longer-term effectiveness of their strategy for the short-term benefits of their tactics.  These are the kinds of people who have an 18-month tenure with an organization; many of us would hate to work for them.

A mature marketer is what we all want to be, but achieving that goal can be difficult in our quarterly-driven world, where Wall Street and venture capitalists are constantly applying the pressure to succeed now.  It’s the “what have you done for me lately” school of marketing, and it's killing business today.

Following these little nuggets of advice can help you truly become a mature marketer:

Make a plan. Before you begin an engagement, or before you begin a new year, sit down and write out your goals for the coming 12 months.  Write a list of marketing objectives, a marketing strategy, a set of business goals and a basic plan for how to get there. 

Establish a filter. Understand that your plan of attack is a filter that allows you to review and refine any new opportunities that come your way.  When someone asks you to take a meeting, immediately evaluate them in terms of your filter and see if the meeting makes sense.  If it doesn’t, politely decline.  If it does, then make sure you are setting expectations for the goals of that meeting.

Prioritize your day. You cannot be everything to everyone, so prioritize what you can and can’t do in any single day.  Without priorities, your day can get away from you and you won’t accomplish anything that you really need to have done.

Share your plan: Your team is an extension of you, and you need to have them all running in lock-step with you.  They need to know the plan, they need to know the priorities and they need to know the end goal. 

Make time for your team. Your job as a marketing lead is to educate your team, delegate the work, and make sure it all levels up to the same set of goals.  You can’t close your day and avoid your team.  They need you to lead them, not do their work for them.

If you ignore this simple advice, you will feel unorganized, chaotic and out of control.  Your email will run your day and you won’t achieve your potential on the job.  That is the outcome of the immature marketer. 

When you enter a room, you can just sense the mature marketers.  They have a peace and intelligence and an organizational quality about them.  That is what you should strive for.  Don’t you agree?