How to cure “Lonely Marketer Syndrome.”

According to an ongoing career explorer survey, marketing managers rate themselves at 3.1 stars out of 5, placing them in the bottom 40 percent of all careers.

Why would an occupation filled with the most exciting and entertaining aspects of the business – growth, change, and interaction between company and customer – receive such a low rating?

How could a remote-working job be rated so lowly?

Why Marketers are Unhappy

We can think of many reasons for someone to be unhappy at work, but let’s concentrate on five factors that led to a 3.1-star rating for marketing management. We’ll expand it a bit to accommodate solopreneurs/consultants and marketing agency owners as well:

Compensation and Revenue

Meaningfulness

Personality Fit

Work Environment

Skill Utilization

Marketing Compensation and Revenue

CareerExplorer survey shows that Marketing Managers don’t like their salaries, despite being rated very highly. Marketing managers have the highest average salary of any similar career, including management consultants, investment funds managers, online merchants, and advertising managers.

The marketing agency business has also continued to grow. According to Statista, digital advertising agency revenues grew from $5.69 Billion in 2012 to $30.06 Billion in 2022. This is a 437% increase over the past 20 years (average annual growth of 22%).

Meaningfulness

Are marketing managers satisfied with their jobs? According to the survey, most of them do not. Meaningfulness was rated 2.7 stars out of 5.

Personality Fit

What about personality fit for marketing managers? The survey shows marketing managers are rated as appropriate at 3.8 stars out of 5. It’s not bad at all! Not great, but not terrible.

Work Environment

What is the working environment for marketing managers like? It’s also pretty good, scoring 3.5 stars out of 5. It could still be better.

Skill Utilization

Let’s finish by talking about skill usage. Are marketing managers using their skills in a good way? The skill usage rate is 3.5 stars out of 5. Not bad, but not outstanding either.

Marketing professionals should take advantage of many factors contributing to job and personal satisfaction. Could there be an underlying cause of the disconnect?

The Marketing Profession Is Awesome

Now that we have some insight into why marketing may not be the best profession for everyone let’s look at why some people find it a great job. We’ll use the same survey factors for discussion.

Marketing Compensation and Revenue

Marketers are well-paid. Salary.com confirmed that the median was $113,582. This is an excellent salary.

Meaningfulness

It’s an abstract measure, but marketers have the opportunity to find significant meaning in their marketing. Your job has a direct impact on the success of businesses. Businesses provide goods and services to their customers and pay 47.5% of the US population. What could be more important than helping 58.9 million people get paid?

Personality Fit

Marketing is an excellent profession for those who enjoy networking, are extroverts, love building relationships, love numbers, love creating new media, or love interacting with people. You can fit into marketing if you have a personality that matches any of these groups.

Work Environment

There are a lot of marketing events and networking groups that can be attended all around the world. You can choose to work from home or in an office. You can also travel to client locations and take your laptop with you. Marketers can design their working environment.

Skill Utilization

Marketing is one of the few professions requiring a dynamic skill set. Marketing requires a wide range of skills, from technical to analytical, creative to relationship-based. A marketing career will never bore you because you need to know what you will be required to learn next. You can even create new skill sets that this is the first time anyone else has ever thought of!

Loneliness could be better for productivity.

Why are marketers unhappy after all this? Most marketers are more socially minded than the average person. They are driven by the desire to connect with other people. This could include connecting with other marketers or between companies and customers. It can also be between owners and marketing professionals.

The problem is that marketers are often forced to work remotely because they can work from anywhere. Linkedin reported in mid-2022 that the number of jobs offering “remote working” had increased by 457%. In the first half of 2022, remote working in marketing roles increased by 177%.

What happens when you have people who are primarily “social” but work remotely? You become lonely, affecting your productivity, creativity, and health.

According to Dr. Vivek M. Murthy, loneliness and depression are costly for employers. They cost $44 billion per year. One study of remote employees found that “loneliness’ was the biggest challenge for one-fifth.

While marketers may be well-paid and have challenging jobs that suit their personalities, loneliness significantly reduces work satisfaction. How can we solve the problem?

How to Fix the Lonely Marketer Syndrome

It may seem obvious, but in many cases, it is overlooked or treated too casually. Marketers should join marketing communities. The communities with the most significant impact on their business and mindset have the following characteristics.

Formal Education Systems

Ideally, your community would have a set of proven frameworks other marketers use to achieve success (preferably hundreds, if not thousands).

The second part of the event is in-person and online.

Even if you only meet in person once a year, your new community should plan in-person events.

Broad & Narrow Specialty Groups

It’s great if you can join a group that has a lot of people who are in the same niche as you. The topics they cover should be broader so you can gain more insight into interacting with marketing teams, not just those who do exactly what you do.

An Established History

New groups are exciting, but nothing is worse than getting committed to a brand only to have it disappear. Look for marketing communities at least five years old but ideally longer.

Hierarchy of Ascension

The best communities offer their members the opportunity to grow and contribute. They can become a teacher, a leader in the organization, or, if they wish, able to add to their knowledge. Search for groups with positions, prizes, and awards for the best community members.

How to find the right marketer community

You’ve already found the right website. DigitalMarketer’s marketer community has grown since 2008. DigitalMarketer, with over 120,000 marketers who have completed courses, thousands of contributors, and more than 1 million subscribers to their email list, is the marketing community of choice in 60 countries.

DigitalMarketer has something for everyone whether you are a newbie looking to get your first certification through a lab membership or an agency owner who wants to scale their business with the Certified Partners network. Or a business owner with success looking to grow with the Mastermind.