Remember when your whole family went to the same doctor? Believe it or not, this wasn’t uncommon not long ago.
This one doctor was the go-to person whenever you or a family member became ill, injured, or needed medical advice. You would have a check-up done once a year. And you would only see a specialist if you need a specific test or treatment.
Sounds quaint, doesn’t it?
A friend recently told me he was having chronic headaches. I said the (least helpful) thing everyone says: “It sounds like you should see your doctor.”
My friend paused and then asked, “Which one?”
Should he call the cardiologist who treated him for high blood pressure? The ENT doctor who treated his ear infection? The ophthalmologist checking his eyes? The endocrinologist he had seen for another reason? Or his family doctor, for whom he had to wait months because the practice had so many patients?
The number of doctors who focus on a specialty has increased steadily over the last 60 years. From 1961 to 1970, 10% of internal medicine physicians moved into a subspecialty. From 2011 to 2015 it was 88%. Actually just approx. 25% of U.S. physicians provide primary care to adults.
But what does all this have to do with marketing?
Marketing is also suffering from the trend towards super-specialization
One of the biggest marketing challenges today is balancing the number and type of team resources needed. Modern marketing plans have always changed frequently. But changing plans used to simply mean shifting marketing generalists’ attention to other tasks. The resources remained the same – the team members just carried out different activities.
However, in 2024, a marketing operation requires hundreds of niche skills. Some specialties emerged around technologies or platforms (think CRM, e-commerce, marketing automation, content management, customer data platforms, digital asset management and analytics). Some focus on creative specialties (design, editorial writing, copywriting, social media content, email writing, multimedia creators/editors, and event management). And then there are platform specialists (SEO, content strategy, influencer wranglers, ad network managers, etc.).
And now, of course, artificial intelligence specialists are also involved.
Here’s a sneak peek at the upcoming 2025 Content Marketing Career and Salary Outlook (released in September): About three-quarters of marketers (76%) say they need to master specialized or niche skills to stay relevant in the face of modern technologies like AI.
Modern marketing is becoming a highly specialized practice. Balancing the need for specific skills to execute your existing strategy with the need for agile teams of generalists who can handle inevitable strategy changes could be the biggest marketing operations challenge companies face.
Specialist or generalist? That is the question
So what can we do about it? Does it make more sense to hire more specialists or more generalists?
Specialists know a lot about one thing, but perhaps little about everything else. They help you focus on a specific thing.
Generalists, on the other hand, know a little about many things, but may not have in-depth knowledge of one particular thing. Your reach gives you the flexibility to change priorities quickly.
This question reminds me of a story that could be an urban legend (but I still like it). According to the story, someone asked the UPS CEO how the company provides such differentiated customer service to its drivers. The CEO responded, “We don’t hire drivers and teach them great customer service. We hire great customer service representatives and teach them how to drive.”
If this sounds like an argument for specialists, it isn’t (because both skills could be considered a specialist role). Rather, it speaks for a conscious decision by the company as to where it would like to focus its employee development.
Does this approach work in marketing? I think that’s true.
Should you hire talented content creators and teach them how to understand an analytics report, work with AI, or excel on social media? Or should you hire deep analytics, AI or social media specialists and train them to create differentiating content?
The decision doesn’t matter – as long as you make a conscious decision in one direction or the other.
But I found that the first way works better.
The software company where I was CMO years ago operated in a niche market that required significant expertise and technical knowledge. We decided to take a content marketing approach as our primary strategy, and I knew from my time as a writer in the entertainment industry how rare content creation talent is.
So my philosophy was to hire the best content creators and designers (specialists) I could find. I felt like I could teach them the basics of media buying, analytics, and other classic marketing planning. In other words, I hired amazing content creators and taught them about the industry and marketing.
Spoiler alert: it worked. But only because two fundamental things turned out to be true in the end:
- The company agreed to invest time and resources to help content creators develop expertise and marketing skills. Developing expertise does not happen overnight, but is an ongoing process.
- The content creators wanted to learn how to become better marketers. In my consulting work, I have encountered many marketing teams that consist of specialists who have no interest in the topics that are important to the company. They say, “I don’t care about our industry. It’s just a job.” I’ve even heard some say, “I don’t care about marketing even though I’m in marketing.” I just make great content.” These people feel like their job is just to make it happen , having the “i’s” dotted and the “t’s” crossed, while earning a better salary than they could in other jobs. I tell these people to start looking now – because they won’t be with the company long.
Assuming your company meets these requirements, you need three elements to balance your team’s skills.
1. Create an educational program
I often advise my consulting clients to create ongoing knowledge sharing opportunities. For example, in my CMO role, I led a program called “Pizza and Knowledge Sharing Fridays.” We would invite technical specialists to give an informal course for marketers at Pizza. They talked about industry trends, went into detail about a specific challenge, or provided comprehensive information about how a particular technology works.
But I didn’t finish her training until pizza day. All marketers would have to demonstrate their new knowledge in a real-world application for our company.
2. Integrate generalist ridesharing into your specialists’ processes
A CMO friend recently told me about the incredibly advanced content strategy for his brand’s website. His team had set up personalization and targeted content and integrated it into their Salesforce platform. But now he’s worried. “We have trained these martech specialists to be some of the most in-depth experts in the field,” he said. “I’m afraid they’ll find out how much they’re worth on the job market now.”
And that’s another reason people work cross-functionally. When you have more people who understand what’s going on, you reduce the risk of that knowledge being lost when someone leaves the company. Because every specialist will at some point be in high demand and realize their market value.
Therefore, involve your specialists in marketing projects. I have yet to find a marketing concept that isn’t relatively easy to understand. As my mentor, marketing professor Philip Kotler, once said, “Marketing takes a day to learn.” Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master.”
3. Consider outsourcing when scaling.
You want to invest in people who you believe will stick with you for some time. Therefore, most educational investments should go toward employees, not freelancers. But sometimes it makes sense to rent your specialists instead of hiring them.
For example, projects (e.g. implementing a new digital asset management system, a new search taxonomy, a new workflow, or a content marketing approach) do not require full-time employees.
You wouldn’t hire a full-time plumber for your home, would you? But you also wouldn’t invest the time to learn more than just the basics of plumbing. For example, you shouldn’t buy a complex content management system and leave it to the marketing team to develop the implementation plan and workflow changes independently.
Instead, create a resourcing strategy that can handle temporary initiatives that require specialists for a specific period of time and a range of activities. A side effect of the super-specialization of marketing is the rise of fragmented marketing services and the abundant availability of freelance help.
Develop a balanced strategy
Over time, you can develop a strategy that balances specialists, generalists and outsourced experts. For example, you may find that you end up with expertise that you can apply to further develop marketing strategies.
For example, for content creation you could have:
- A top content creation expert – an internal SME that can write and even teach other writers
- An experienced first level freelancer – an outsourced SME that occasionally creates content or creates frameworks for the team to build within
- A skilled level two creator – an in-house marketer who knows enough about content creation to write the framework or convert raw material into great content
- A skilled level three creator – a freelance writer always available to convert raw material into well-structured articles (with some input)
- A level four expert – A young in-house or freelance writer who needs well-formed topics and expert assistance to write a decent article
Conduct an audit of your current team skills. Then create your hiring, training, and freelance plan to develop your marketing team’s strategy.
Once you do this, you will know which doctor to call for any marketing problem.
It’s your story. Say it well.
Updated from a March 2022 article.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute