Six Reasons to Become a Marketer

“Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.”

This is my all-time favourite description of marketing. It was uttered by David Ogilvy, the Brit advertising tycoon who founded Ogilvy and Mather and became one of the titans of the “Mad Men” era.

While the popular perception of marketing is that it’s a fundamentally dishonest profession, the truth is that the best marketers tell people true stories. The plain truth can be boring, and so that’s where the profession gets exciting.

The how, why, when, and what you tell your audience is the part that’s endlessly challenging. The skillset you develop as a marketer will be transferable and robust. You’ll pick up skills that you can use in life, hobbies, volunteer work, side-hustles, or new careers.

There’s no limit to what you can do as a marketer. From technical skills like SEO and email marketing to photoshoots, design, planning, or heading out into a crowded street with a loudspeaker, there are so many hats to wear in the profession that caters to all kinds of personalities and skillsets.

The vast array of different skills required makes marketing a highly social, diverse, and collaborative field. I’ve never worked in a marketing department without a frenetic buzz about it.

A career in marketing can pay well, but that’s not the reason most people enter the profession. There are so many other reasons why marketing can be so rewarding, here are six...

1. You’ll Become a Psychologist

One of the questions that advertisers and marketers have to answer time and time again is: what motivates people?

To be a marketer, you have to understand what makes people tick in order to communicate with them effectively. This is endlessly fascinating.

Great marketing is where the product intersects with the customer’s life. You need to walk in your customer’s shoes to figure out how to convince them that what you’ve got will benefit them.

We use survey data, focus groups, web analytics, A-B testing, heatmaps, psychology texts, we even talk to friends and family, all to understand why people make the decisions they make.

Ogilvy said, “the consumer isn’t an idiot, she’s your wife.” Setting aside the woefully dated gender presumptions, Ogilvy is saying that the consumer isn’t gullible, the challenge is to really pick apart the complexity of our desires, fears, hopes, and aspirations to make the stories we tell fascinating.

It’s research that drives innovation as we find new insights into the unending quest to make our messages ever more compelling to our audiences.

2. You’ll Become a Better Writer

I was once working late, maybe 7 p.m., my colleague and I needed a line that nailed the proposition of a new product before we left the office. We jabbered words at each other or sat thinking as the air con hummed and our stomachs rumbled.

We literally typed sentences over and over into the content management system of the live homepage of the website until we got the perfect four words.

At 8 p.m. we hit publish, high-fived (I know), and went out for drinks. To nail it in an hour seemed like a miracle. The next morning we got the news that the tagline had to go. The boss didn’t like it. In marketing, you often watch your art get trashed, there are great ideas consigned to the waste bin, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Copywriting is the fundamental skill of the marketer. This is because marketers are storytellers. We tell the stories of brands or products that bring them alive to the customer.

As you progress in the marketing field you’ll become an increasingly good writer. You’ll write great sentences, most will be trashed, but the golden sentences will get shinier.

And marketing is not all just snappy, concise ad and social media copy. Longer form writing is also part of the marketing toolkit as blogging and “brand journalism” content is a powerful attractant for customers.

Many novelists worked as advertising copywriters— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Martin Amis, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, and Fay Weldon to name just a handful. There’s no doubt that the communication skills you learn as a marketer can improve the craft of writing.

Making the truth fascinating: David Ogilvy made great advertising by thoroughly researching his audience and product to see where the product's features intersected with the audience's desires.

3. You’ll Be Good With Money

In essence, marketing is the smart allocation of resources to maximize your return on investment.

These resources are a marketing team’s time and money, but it’s ultimately how you use your money that you’ll be judged on. Budgeting is a life skill that every good marketer will master. Not only will you learn how to plan your spend and find good value, but you’ll also need to learn what gives you the best return on investment.

Every marketer must analyse the performance of everything they spend money on, from creative services to stock inventory. Every penny must be stretched. That’s not easy, but it gets you in the mindset of getting the most out of your money.

4. You’ll Learn to Pitch Like a Pro

Whether it’s negotiating costs or pitching to new clients, being an effective in-person communicator is an essential skill you’ll develop as a marketer.

Presentations are part of the job and confidence is a trait you’ll quickly pick up as you progress in your career. Being a "smooth-talker" isn’t enough, you need all the data and research you can get hold of to back up every word you say.

Ogilvy said, “If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope have you being able to advertise anything else?”

Developing expertise in branding will help you hone your personal brand and vice versa. You’ll find smart ways to further develop your career and meet new personal challenges.

5. No Two Days Are Ever the Same

For most “generalist” marketers the job involves all the above skills plus so much more.

One day we’re looking at creative concepts or directing a photoshoot, the next day we might be planning digital campaigns or writing copy for a new product.

One of the great joys of the marketing profession is that you are constantly meeting different creative or analytical challenges as the weeks go by. The pace can get frantic, but I’ve never met a marketer in my field who’s bored.

6. You Can Change the World

Every cause needs a marketer. From conservation charities to human rights law firms. An organization that needs to attract people’s attention requires people who are skilled in doing the attracting.

While some people will have you believe that marketing is a nefarious profession, the fact is that no organization in the world can survive without good communicators. Marketers tell the story of an organization to the public, they find a place for a cause in the public consciousness.

I work in marketing for a museum. The work the marketing team does is vital to convey the museum’s purpose.

Our creativity takes the work of the museum out into the public arena, educating and inspiring people before they even decide to visit. We have an audience of millions and create campaigns that not only promote our experiences and products but also enlighten and inspire people.

Even if you work in less “worthy” fields like “fast-moving consumer products” or corporate banking, you can make a difference. Marketing is all about making your voice heard, in the boardroom, or on billboards.

Even if the truth is boring, your challenge is to make it fascinating, to make people laugh, smile, or cry.

If advertising is here to stay, we ought to make an art of it.

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This is an edited version of a post originally written for Better Marketing on Medium.