Is It The End of the Digital Marketing "Expert" Era?

For the past century when developing skill sets it made total sense to work toward the title of an expert. But is this way of thinking now outdated due to the social web and a world where we all must constantly recreate who we are and what we do? Also, isn't it now possible for people to find out information from a variety of sources from people "in the field" who aren't experts as much as practicing doers?

Watch this video about my favorite movie "The Karate Kid" starring Ralph Macchio. The view from the observer flips the thinking that Daniel (the character played by Macchio) is the hero of this story. In actuality, based on an inverted point of view, Daniel is actually the villain.

This is the way many experts set themselves up to be seen. As the hero. The know it all ninja. The big problem? Much of these experts present their logic in a linear fashion using linear presentations in the form of PowerPoint to showcase how they're a social media expert or a search engine marketing expert or a big data expert.

There's just one problem with that. We don't, nor have we ever, lived in a linear world.

And yet, could many of these heroes possibly be villains? Snake oil salespeople using whatever sway they can gain from paid social ads, keynote speeches and blog pieces about ways to grow your following, conversion rate optimization and ROI all be a farce?

Why is it a farce you ask?

Because no one has the wholly definitive answer to many of these questions. I had the expert tag in my LinkedIn title for awhile until I realized, "Wait, I'm learning every day like everyone else here."

Who cares how long I've been doing any of this. None of that matters in a world where what I learn today I need to unlearn and relearn tomorrow due to changing technology. In fact someone working for 20 years in an industry just means they didn't get fired. It doesn't mean they necessarily excelled. Again, watch the Danielson video. So he wins at the end, it doesn't make him the hero. We have to rethink how we look at and analyze scenarios from different points of view.

We're still all in learning mode in the world of digital marketing. There is still too much change that lies ahead. Mobile phones as they exist now will cede power to The Internet of Things, there will be touchscreen surfaces everywhere, cars will be a computer, beacons and wearables will overhaul how search operates (no more typing in a box at google.com). The digital marketing expert (many who still don't understand how to code and thus don't understand how the new technology will be made or interacted with) doesn't want you to know this.

The expert/ninja/guru/prophet business is reaching the end finally in our vernacular. For the past two decades gurus could live because they could survive on transformation, search, social and content marketing. Yet the wave about to come will drown many of them and expose them for what they really are, a bunch of modern day television evangelists preying on the pockets of people who don't know who else to turn to because they saw the gurus ad for their book in their Facebook news feed or when they searched "expert."

Everyone will become a marketer by 2020 with how product development and communications is evolving. The expert doesn't gain financial advantage from such a situation.

But the cycle has played itself out. There aren't many new groundbreaking books on digital business strategy and the majority of new books still are presented in guru fashion with the author's picture on the front or back cover meant more as an advertisement for that author's consulting services than their mentor-ship or education.

What many wannabe gurus/ninjas fail to understand is the digital world is about the hive data mind. How to learn from many over one. The majority of today’s biggest business changes are being driven by “quantitative," left-brained data-centrics who excel at finding meaning in odd observations within big data but aren't very good at putting numbers into stories or at thinking about what big data means for the world beyond their own. The majority of gurus? Good right-brained folks who act like CNBC's Jim Cramer on stage and run around and yell shit to get you to tweet about it. They may not even understand design or the fact their MBA is not as valuable in a modern world that will be made, not managed.

Few, if any new pundits can be diverse across several industries and almost zero speak to Millennials or startup decision-makers, the companies that are powering tomorrow. Even my experience with writing my book has been interesting to say the least, without much data driving creative decisions or design thinking at the heart of how solutions should be solved.

I now understand why people who write business books get book deals. They are a bunch of conformists following an algorithm that is in major need of disruptive innovation.

Because of this, it's highly unlikely businesses would want advice anymore from someone with aptitude across multiple disciplines like a Peter Drucker, even though the biggest educational movement in business now is how trends from one industry can influence another industry that is radically different from their own. I've dubbed this type of learning "intersection learning" because it's two very different industries intersecting together in order to understand how one can learn from the other. For example, how can medicine learn from finance? Tech from human resources? Accounting from the music industry?

So where does that leave the most important part of this equation, the people who are in dire need of learning? Well, you're in good hands. Because while the expert tag may be going away, tools are becoming more customer-centric than ever before. This means more time doing, rather than trying to learn how to do with the majority of marketing analytical tools available to us.

Those who pounce and self-teach themselves how to operate these tools will gain ground quickly. Not in simply learning how to use or create something but learning that knowledge in the modern era is more indirect than direct and thus doesn't need another hero.

Geoffrey Colon is author of the book Disruptive Marketing out in 2016. He works at Microsoft and hates being called a subject matter expert, guru, ninja or prophet.