“All marketing is the same. If you can market one thing, you can market anything.”

Mostly True. I wish I had a nickel for every time I've answered this question.

To those who say you can't:

• If you learn to drive a car, does that mean you can't drive a truck? If your car is an automatic, does that mean you can't drive a stick?
• If you excel at baseball, does that mean you can't excel at football?
• If you can be a great nuclear physicist, does that mean you can't become a famous astronomer?
• If you build a successful online payments platform, does that mean you can't build a successful electric car company?

The belief that marketers can't walk, and then chew gum at the next job, is a total load of Wuhan Bat Guana.?

It's unlikely that anyone reading this can out-qualify me, so I will keep my own counsel, without restraint or apology. In addition to an undergrad degree in Marketing, and a Master's in Marketing, I also have an MBA with a concentration in...Marketing. Not to mention more completed courses and certifications in Marketing & Ecommerce than anyone else on LinkedIn (per LinkedIn Learning staff). More importantly, I bring 30 years of marketing experience - in B2C, B2B, and D2C. I've worked for tiny startups to Fortune 500s. I've worked in a variety of sectors/industries - including consumer electronics, computers, telecom (services), automotive parts, jewelry, clothing, home improvements, industrial equipment, HVAC, to name a few.

No matter what move you make, you will ALWAYS need to learn something new at the next job, whether it's about the customers, the products, the industry, the distribution, the legal environment, the company itself, or anything else. The legal environment is another one that gets cited often. In jewelry, I had to learn a whole new set of jewelry regulations. In automotive, same thing, along with dangerous materials. In marketing, we routinely have to keep up on developments in consumer protection laws - GDPR, CCA, CanSpam, PCI, Prop65...it never ends. Learning never ends, because change never ends. So if you believe that marketers must be pigeon-holed into one type of marketing, or one sector, you only do so out of ignorance. I suspect that people who believe these limitations don't really understand marketing at all - probably far too internally-focused on the product or industry, not focused nearly enough on the customer, who all put their pants on essentially the same way.

When you think like this, you sacrifice out-of-the-box thinking. Many B2B companies suffer from this problem, as does the financial industry. Too bad, because they all look the same and fail to distinguish themselves.

The most common claim I hear is that B2C marketers can't move to B2B. I don't know where that comes from, but it's complete hogwash. I've done it, and it was easy. If you are not able to transition from B2C to B2B and back, or from one industry to another, then you're shitty marketer to begin with. Too many people act like these transitions are insurmountable, when in fact, they're EASY.

Marketing is unique among business skills. It is uniquely human. There is nothing human about accounting and finance. Not much humanity in operations management, nor in IT. These are all very quantitative, objective disciplines. Marketing is outward-focused, focusing on subjective things like people, their emotions, their tastes and values. To be a successful marketer, you have to focus first on customers, consumer behavior, neuroscience. I recommend this article from Peter Yang in Inc.com. Human knowledge is more important than product or industry knowledge. https://www.inc.com/peter-yang/psychology-says-you-can-actually-sell-anything-so-long-as-you-use-these-4-hidden-switches.html.

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