The Biggest Mistakes I Made as a Marketer and What You Can Learn From Them

Learning does not stop once we leave university

I’m a political scientist by training, but I landed a great marketing job three years go. Boy, becoming a marketing manager for a leading payment company was challenging!

A steep learning curve and lots of new things — that’s what I was facing every day. It was challenging, but I’m a person who loves and eagerly accepts challenges.

Naturally, there were mistakes. I’ll be critical and say there were many of them. But it’s natural and I’m very grateful for the opportunity that I got. It helped me grow as a professional and fall in love with marketing.

Now, I want to share some of my biggest mistakes so you can learn from them.

Don’t Be Shy and Ask Questions

I really believed that once I got my position I was supposed to know all the answers. Gosh, was I wrong! Even today, I don’t know all the answers. I keep learning. Professionals are supposed to be learning every day. There are some things that are constant, but many things happen because of experimenting and learning.

Marketing is something that doesn’t have clear rules. Many actions and decisions will be based on various circumstances that you, as a marketer, may not be aware of. Therefore, ask!

Is the information on the website still up-to-date?
What was the social media strategy before I joined?
Should we add an additional question in the sales leads form?
Should we attend more events in another state to boost regional sales?

Also, remember that you and your colleagues are a team, and you should rely on your teammates. In the end, the success of various campaigns and activities bring benefit to the company as a whole — not only you alone.

If in doubt, always ask. It can be your superior or someone from the business development team, or sales, or anyone else— they’re the people who know about the product, how it works, and how to sell it.

As a marketer, you need to rely on the information they can provide and use it to market the product.

At first, I tried to work independently and figure everything out on my own. It was taking lots of time and effort and led to mediocre campaigns that brought in meaningless results. Working hand-in-hand with other teams is crucial in marketing. Use the knowledge the others have and transform it into the amazing marketing campaigns that I’m sure you’re capable of.

Always See a Bigger Picture

Multiple marketing activities combined make a great marketing strategy. Sporadic and spontaneous social media usage or mediocre attempts to grow the newsletter subscribers’ list may result in disappointment and stress.

Marketing is a beautiful field where multiple activities together work in a cohort. Your social media strategy, blog, Google Ads, SEO and website, events, and press conferences must fit under one big umbrella — your marketing strategy as a whole.

When planning new activities, you should always ask:

What is my main objective?
How does it fit in my marketing strategy?
What else can complement this activity?
Are the platforms I want to use a perfect fit for what I want to do?
What result am I expecting? How does the result help the company grow?
If it doesn’t work out, what’s my contingency plan?

Always look at a bigger picture. Your social media posts should not be random because “my boss asked me to post more often.”

At first, it may seem that all marketing activities serve a different purpose. For example, Facebook posts are there to grow social media following, the newsletter is there to have a database of subscribers, events are for networking, video production is for creating an active YouTube account, etc.

In fact, all of these activities should complement each other. Your social media following, newsletter database, contacts from events, and videos you make can become sales leads generating assets. They can also be a great way to raise brand awareness, and they can serve as a tool to grow brand loyalty. You decide what your objective is.

It’s important that you define the goals you want to achieve with these activities. Remember you’re investing your time, and frequently, money. Thus, something should come out of it.

Never Stop Experimenting

Marketing is fluid. It never stays the same. Therefore, if you did something well and got the results that you were expecting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that next time will also bring success.

Never stop experimenting and adjusting what you’ve already done. Learn from what you’ve done and think of ways to make it better.

In fast-paced industries, especially in startups, experimenting is very important. You may be required to adjust your activities daily, find multiple ways to work, and ensure that your activities bring the desired results.

Experimenting will also help you grow as a professional much faster.

Some of the questions I’d ask:

Are the results as expected?
How can I improve them?
If you can compare your results to previous campaigns, are they similar? If they’re too far apart, what should you do to improve them? If they’re similar, what should you do to improve them?
If your campaign doesn’t work, don’t expect it to work after more time. Think about what you should do now to improve the result. Would changing the artwork make it better? Would providing more content improve the result?

Consistently Keep Track of Metrics

There are many metrics that marketers look at. Depending on the platforms that you use, they will differ. This is especially true if some of the activities cost money — you’ll need to measure the ROI (return-on-investment).

Sometimes, especially if you open your stats once in a while, your results will look good. They can even look great!

If you reach your goal to get 1,000 new followers on Facebook with $100 on it, it might look great! You got your result. But maybe if you cross-compare with another campaign that cost you $50 and brought you 800 new followers, you’ll notice that the first one is not so successful. You spent more per new follower ($0.10) even though the $50 campaign brought you only 800 followers ($0.06 per new follower).

A great marketing manager always looks at a broader picture and not only at a final result. In the end, marketing is there to get the maximum result at the most optimised price.

Consistent reporting will help ensure that you have time to adjust your activities and address the main issues that your campaigns might be facing. Remember that adjusting isn’t admitting that you were wrong in the first place.

You should spend time coming up with a marketing report template. You should decide:

What are the metrics you want to measure?
How often will you report these metrics? Once a day? Once a month?
What are the platforms that you’ll be looking at to report?

Keep it consistent and you’ll start noticing patterns. Afterward, you’ll start noticing what works and what doesn’t.

For example, apart from my weekly reports where I provide weekly updates on social media activity and sales leads generation, I have a very thorough monthly report. It covers all marketing activities: digital marketing (social media, Google Ads, SEO), events, newsletters, PR, blog posts, and budget.

Having a clear report is also extremely helpful when you want to pitch a new project. You’ll be able to rely on data and propose the expected results more accurately.

Pitch Your Ideas to Peers First

Imagine — you came up with an amazing marketing campaign. You finished a 50-slide proposal for management’s approval. Bam, on the day you presented — it got rejected. It’s frustrating, but it could have been avoided.

Some things can be improved simply by consulting your peers. Don’t be afraid to call a quick meeting with all parties from other departments that would have to be involved (or impacted) and present it to them first. Gather their response.

Would the IT department need to make amendments to your website? Would sales need to do an extra follow-up with potential customers? Would operations need to assign a person for smooth implementation? Would finance need to issue advance payments? All these dependencies should be agreed upon with relevant teams. You should get their buy-in first and provide all the answers to the management.

We marketers often see the world through a different (frequently, perfect) prism. Things that we think work well may raise questions from people who aren’t marketers. In order for the proposal to pass, you need to get a confirmation from management. This will include all sorts of people from different departments; they also might not be well-versed in marketing.

Having feedback from your colleagues will help you better prepare for presentation day. Prepare answers to the main questions they ask you. Adjust your presentation so that it raises fewer questions.

I wish someone told me all of these things when I started — my life would have been much easier. I’m happy that I had a great boss who helped me a lot. I was able to grow professionally and learn. Most of these things I learned from him.

I hope you’ll learn from these mistakes that I made. Remember, don’t be afraid to learn — you aren’t expected to know it all.

What are some of the marketing mistakes that you’ve made? What did you learn? I’d love to find out!