You can’t be a successful marketing manager just watching Steve Jobs videos or just reading Medium articles.
Don’t even try.
At some point you need to do the work.
Just think about it, do you think you can learn cooking just by reading recipes or watching masterchef? No. You must step in the kitchen and try. Some studying it’s not bad, it can help you get a preparation, a method and a mindset, but is the real work that is actually paying off.
The 10.000 hours rules applies: you have to spend at least 10.000 hours to master your craft. And marketing does not make any exception.
Furthermore marketing is a vast discipline. There are a maremagnum of branches to grasp.
Marketing can be about branding and positioning,
it can be PR,
performance (what we used to call “direct marketing”, the type of marketing that can be adjusted on the fly, without awaiting for the end of the advertising flight),
and media buying (on several channels and adtech platforms),
and digital that represent a completely different cup of tea
which leads to SEM/SEO topics,
which leads to mobile marketing,
which leads to app marketing,
and content marketing,
and email marketing.
And it implies a deep understanding of tracking and attribution,
of data, numbers, and analytics, otherwise you will never step up.
But it can also be about account management,
or lead generation, including the creation of conversion’s funnel, together with lead scoring and nurturing,
and CRM which has become a very sophisticated field.
Marketing can be about graphic design, art direction, copy writing and UX,
or sales, in fact marketing is often incorporated into the commercial division.
Marketing can be about events, or about the creation of marketing collaterals,
it can be community management,
or reputation management,
And I am sure I am leaving out many other subjects to this (already) long list.
On top of all of that, if you want to become a great marketer you need to possess a very good understanding of the human psychology.
The point is that, you cannot pretend to become an expert after reading a 5 minutes article or after watching a 7 minutes video. Because…
You
need
to
put
in
the
work.
PUT
IN
THE
WORK.
It’s really that simple.
You need to roll up your sleeves.
And start from the ground/legwork.
It’s simpler when you identify people that are better than you from whom you can learn from.
Be humble and smart enough to be open to learn from them more than they are keen to teach you.
And use every single opportunity to learn and grow: squeezing your learning opportunities into you 9to5 job can be very limiting. Use the evenings, the weekends, every single shift, to read, explore, think, write.
It worked from me. And I am sure it can work for you as well. Period.