The Problem with Reliance on Junior Marketing Folks

A typical young lady in marketing

Had an interesting chat with Todd Lebo, Senior Director of Content & Business Development at MECLABS Primary Research. He observed one of the most common mistakes made by B2B companies – excessive reliance on junior marketing team members.

That rang true. I’ve observed the lack of marketing leadership affecting a lot of companies. It’s been confirmed by many other marketing experts too.

While these junior members handle day-to-day responsibilities, they lack the leadership and strategic planning skills a marketing department really needs. It adversely affects a company’s ability to attract and win new customers.

An Example of Junior Marketing – a comment shows the problem.

The global marketing firm Find New Customers was meeting with a prospective new client – a multinational software firm –  in New York City. In the meeting, we turned to the young lady responsible for operating their Marketo software and asked her to define lead nurturing.

She told me “Lead nurturing is sharing information with prospective buyers to convince them to buy your product.”

OUCH!

I bit my lip and said nothing. But in the back of my mind, I was appalled. I knew this was a terrible definition, but how to I tell them?

That’s NOT an adequate definition of lead nurturing. (If you cannot even define it, you sure can’t implement it.)  Here’s my definition:

“Lead nurturing is the process of sharing highly relevant content with target buyers, regardless of their timing to buy. The goal is to earn their trust and become the preferred provider for their business challenges.” Notice my definition is all about the buyer.

If you wish to learn more about Lead Nurturing, watch this presentation from Find New Customers.

It is clear this young lady lacks the experience or knowledge to implement lead nurturing and scoring, though she has the operating role with a fine software product like Marketo. Interestingly, I spoke to their Chief Marketing Officer – he agreed completely. His team, though hard workers, are novices at B2B demand generation and global marketing and are unable to create a best-practices marketing plan.

The Real Problem – A Failure of Leadership

What we have overall is a failure of leadership. Fortunately, this particular company realizes the problem and may hire Find New Customers to provide leadership in lead nurturing and scoring. The CMO told me he’s a fan of outsourcing talent.

I suggest rather than hiring marketing leadership, you should do what this CMOs wishes to do and turn to outside experts such as Mac Macintosh of AcquireB2B, Paul Mosenson of NuSpark Marketing, or Dan McDade of Pointclear. Their expertise can provide the short term leadership your company really needs and provide the guidance your young and experienced marketing staff needs to develop a best practices marketing strategy.

The Effects of Junior Marketing Folks Shows in the Data

The problem with junior marketing folks shows in the data too.

As you see from this chart by Act-On Software (sponsor of Mad Marketing TV), the twice-weekly show hosted by Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers, companies do a good job on “top of funnel” activities, such as email, direct mail and events. Those functions can be handled by junior folks.

But very few (see chart) do “middle of funnel” activities such as lead nurturing and scoring. (Look at the low scores for lead nurturing and scoring in the center of the chart.) Those functions tend to be beyond the abilities of junior marketing folks. For instance, lead nurturing requires deep buyer personas, compelling content and story-telling skills – far beyond the pay grade of most “marketing managers.”

What do you think? Do you agree that too many companies, especially smaller ones, have too much of a reliance on young, inexperienced marketing workers?

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“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.