13 marketing lessons I've learned in 13 years of being a marketer

I've learned a lot over the years, and in this article my goal is to share some of the most important lessons and fundamentals that I think everyone in marketing should know.

1) You can't be a decent marketer if you can't write well (this is 3x more important for non-native English speakers). In order to write well, you need to read good books and in-depth articles (not LinkedIn posts, sorry) and write daily (even if you never intend to publish).

2) Social Media is just another form of media. Nothing more. And marketing is not only about media; it's about the message, who is communicating that message, and who is receiving it. If you do your homework right, you can write your message in a napkin, put it in front of the right person, and you'll make money.

3) True marketing principles don't change with new technology. You're reading this piece on LinkedIn on your smartphone, but you could've listened to this advice on a podcast or a YouTube video just as well. In the future you'll consume information through whatever tech becomes available and you'll still behave the same way, buy the same way, and feel the same way. Human psychology doesn't change: we're hardwired to seek the new bright shiny thing. We need that dopamine hit.

4) One of the most important principles in marketing (and a valuable skill to learn) is and will always be the ability to grab and keep your audience's attention. You're halfway through my post for a reason.

5) Now you just felt some emotion reading the last sentence, you're maybe a little irritated, wondering where I'm going with this – that's good. A good message creates an emotional response. You are refocused and paying attention. Every thing you buy is an emotional response initially, then it's justified by logic. The story you tell other people why you bought something is (almost) never the real reason why you bought it.

Quick break: It's early Friday morning, I'm sitting at the kitchen table, drinking my coffee. As I reflect on all these years and the lessons I've learned, all I can think of is how lucky I've been to be part of this industry, the people I've met, and the projects I got a chance to work on.

The caffeine is starting to kick in and the next few lessons are about to get interesting. Stay with me.

6) Chances are we've never met and I've not used a single emoji in this post to hold your attention, yet it feels like we're in the same room, having a friendly conversation, and - for some reason you can't explain - you somehow are beginning to trust me more. We all know people buy from people they know, like, and trust, but in order to do that you need to build a relationship first.?It takes time and effort. You can't rush this. One action at a time, but you'll get there eventually.

7) Who (market) you share your message with is more important than what (message) or how (media) you share it. I'd rather have 100 founders or investors on my email list, than 10,000 followers on LinkedIn.

8) Speaking of followers, it seems it's the only thing people are concerned with these days. Understand that if you are new to marketing, have a lot of followers on social media, and you've never created anything of value for the marketplace, the only skill you've developed is posting content on that specific platform that gets you followers and reactions. But that's pretty much it. That's why there are so many influencers with thousands of followers,? but can't afford to pay their own hotel room. Having an audience is nice, but that alone is not enough to build a business or a career that lasts. You need real skills.

9) About 90% of the content you read on LinkedIn these days is just regurgitated stuff, copied and pasted, visualized for quick consumption to attract likes and shares. But that's not marketing. If you post or consume that kind of content on a daily basis you're fooling yourself and your audience; not building a relationship. If you don't have something worthy to share, get busy working.

Now that we covered some of the fundamental principles. Here are a few more practical lessons you can implement right away:

10) A couple years ago I went to Portugal with my fiancé and we tried surfing for the first time. We booked a surfing lesson for beginners at a local surf school. The coach was really nice, funny, and taught us the basics for over an hour, on the beach. After about 100 times of rising up and down the board on the beach, we eventually got into the water. It took me at least 2 more hours to start catching some waves on my own and manage to ride for more than 5 seconds. In life and in business, it's always easy and simple when you're planning and thinking, but in the real world? It's tough. Everything is 10x harder than it seems. That perfect scenario? It never happens. The surfing lesson ended with me feeling exhausted, but happy I did it (just like any worthy experience should feel like). I learned the fundamentals and I also painfully broke my big toe in the process (but that's a story for another time).

11) The lesson above is about storytelling, in case you weren't paying attention. There's always a point to be made or a lesson to be learned from your experience. But, how do you get more (professional) experience? You try new things and test as much as you can until you arrive at some results. Once you get results, you try to find the underlying principles that made your test successful. If you can replicate your results in another environment or by changing some variables, you're on to something. Steph Smith (from a16z) says the only way to be great at something, is to be good, repeatedly. To be a good marketer, just try doing more things. And have more stories to tell.

12) Speaking of stories, I'd rather listen to a hundred stories of failure and learn how they kept their sanity, than listen to someone on TikTok sharing success tips and motivational speeches. But, these type of stories are rarely found online, because nobody wants to share their failures or bad experiences.

13) And the last lesson, which you probably know already, is to use AI to write content like this...

But, of course you know AI can't write stuff like this. Maybe it will, in a few years, and if it does, by then we're all probably are going to be long gone, killed by TerminatorGPTs. If you are early in your career (and you want to hone your marketing skills), just don't use AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing, whatever – even if it makes everything easier. Learn the skills first, then use tools to make your process more effective.

If you enjoyed this post, reach out and let me know. You might convince me to start hitting the publish button more often.

Thanks for reading!

Gent

P.S. But, that's not all! You're getting a bonus lesson free of charge.

14) The last and final lesson is to always overdeliver. If you read this to the end, you'll probably forget everything I said in this post, but chances are you'll never forget how it made you feel reading it and I hope you'll become a better marketer because of it.