The generalist marketer, someone who has mastered several marketing disciplines in broad terms, has found himself in a difficult position.
Specialists' perspective
There is no doubt about it: specialist knowledge and experience are essential for any organization that wants to do marketing at a high level. But not all marketing-related questions can be approached from a specialist perspective. For example, companies have to deal with quite a few issues that cannot be solved with isolated online marketing disciplines.
For example, a hotel chain with SEO and SEA can attract new customers, but if it turns out that many customers are dissatisfied with the hotel services (which are often 'offline'!), then the marketer ultimately responsible will have to think outside the box. The solution that he or she must find here transcends the various online and offline disciplines and requires creativity, empathy and broad experience. It may be necessary to turn several buttons at the same time to get happy customers again: personnel (recruitment, training, corporate culture), pricing, facility, check-in procedures or website usability.
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The ultimate marketing generalist is normally the person ultimately responsible for marketing: he or she is the one who formulates the vision, forms and manages the team, and monitors the direction.
It seems that this view of the CMO role is not shared everywhere. For example, I recently read an advertisement for a Marketing Director vacancy at a medium-sized startup. It asked for someone numrat grek who “has no secrets from pay-per-click advertising” and who also has “in-depth SEO knowledge”. The marketing executive seemed to coincide with the PPC advertising marketer and SEO specialist.
Central marketing role as a starting point
In my role as a marketing consultant, I often advise companies not to start by focusing on partial solutions or hiring specialists (a tendency I often encounter), but to start by properly investing the central marketing role in the organization. There are three strong arguments for this.
1. Specialist knowledge can be purchased
Specialist knowledge, for example of Facebook advertisements, is relatively easy to purchase. Especially for smaller organisations it is therefore not absolutely necessary to employ a Facebook guru. However, it is important that it is clear in broad terms which disciplines need to be purchased and how they relate to each other. Typically a task for the marketing lead who can oversee the entire range of activities and specialisms.