You don’t know what you don’t know – Run Towards your Fear!
You don’t know what you don’t know – Run Towards your Fear!
It’s estimated that greater than 80% of digital marketers don’t have formal training.
According to IBM’s, “Stepping up to the challenge: CMO insights from the Global C-suite Study,” 82% of Chief Marketing Officers feel underprepared to deal with the explosion of data in the market place.” Adobe recently reported that only 48%of professionals who consider themselves primarily digital marketers feel highly proficient in digital marketing.
Does this mean that _52% of digital marketers are afraid they aren’t up to pa_r?
So is this fear substantiated; is the “monster in the closet” real?
Unfortunately, it probably is. The status quo is sub par and technology is changing so fast that tactics from 5 years ago might as well have been 50 years ago.
Nelson Mandela once said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Bravery is a step beyond fearlessness, it is the willingness to run towards the fear. If we are to be counted among the courageous, then we must embrace this fear in our lives and let it drive us to be better.
In order to succeed, we must see this fear as our inner voice telling us that there is room to improve. The insecurity tells us that we see weakness in ourselves. This awareness can be used to drive us to continued education, training, and new methods. The fear of competition tells us that we have found admirable traits in others that we recognize as valuable. Embrace this fear! See the excellence modeled that you envy and emulate those traits you desire for yourself.
If the market is changing, then it is time to change with it; its time to read more and learn more. It’s time to audit your organization’s approach, identify gaps, and prove that you can see better results.
Read your competitors blog and look at their marketing materials. Find those that are the best at what they do and embrace it. Identify the new technologies and strategies and take the risk. Take inspiration and challenge from those who are succeeding where you fear failing and push yourself to improve.
When you realize the monster in your closet is real, don’t hide under the covers –
Run towards your fear; learn and grow.
Put the method on paper: the Tactical Marketing Workbook.
The full methodology converted into working sessions - eight phases of fill-in worksheets, exit checklists, and one-week action steps. Print it, work one vertical at a time, and turn the framework into decisions your team has actually made.
Philip Easley-Bosley is the founder of Tactical Marketing and a thirty-year expert marketing consultant. His path to founding the firm ran through sales and marketing leadership, years inside Act-On Software consulting with thousands of clients as Lead Marketing Automation Strategist, and a consistent priority on training and team building that a linear career could not have produced. He sets strategy, owns the architectural calls on every engagement, and writes about marketing operations, automation, and the discipline of building systems that hold up on Monday morning.