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Are You Willing To Kill Your Content To Save Yourself?

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Are You Willing To Kill Your Content To Save Yourself?

“Stress is an epidemic,” says Maureen Jann. “It’s almost worse than COVID,” she adds in her 2022 Content Marketing World session focused on managing marketer burnout.

Maureen knows our pain.

Earlier this year, her team at NeoLuxe Marketing asked 1,000 marketers to gauge how run-down they felt as a result of their work. After all, it is good to know we’re not alone.

The results were shared in The Burnout Index (registration required). They found nearly 68% of us are chronically stressed, numb, moody, and filled with doubt. CMI found similar results in its recently released Content Marketing Career and Salary Outlook report (registration required): Over 70% of marketers say they feel at least somewhat stressed at work.

68% of marketers are chronically stressed, numb, moody, and filled with doubt, according to @NeoLuxeMktg’s The Burnout Index via @DrewDavisHere @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

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Chances are, you’re suffering from some of that stress.

But why? Why are marketing professionals, specifically, SO exhausted?

Well, according to Airtable’s 2022 Marketing Trends report (registration required), marketing teams’ workload jumped by 52% last year. We’re understaffed and overworked.

Also, only one in five marketing teams meet their deadlines, and three in four marketing leaders are frustrated by how long it takes to ship our work. We can’t keep up.

If that’s not enough, let’s add the looming recession, the war in Ukraine, the kids, our flailing TikTok strategy, and global warming.

(I feel more stressed out just writing about burnout.)

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Now, there is a lot of great advice on combating burnout. Maureen offers some ideas:

  • Cultivate a strong support network.
  • Talk about your stress with your peers.
  • Find hobbies and experiences that lower your cortisol. (Cortisol is your body’s primary stress hormone, which marketers produce in spades.)
  • Advocate for changes to your team’s structure.
  • Spotlight the great work you and your team are doing.

These are all great suggestions; however, they may not get to the root cause. Unless we address the most common sources of marketing burnout, we’re just treating the symptoms, not preventing the disease.

Unless we address the common sources of #marketing burnout, we’ll never prevent the disease, says @DrewDavisHere via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

So, what causes burnout? Perhaps, it’s our inability to connect our everyday work to a meaningful impact, as the Harvard Business Review proposes. The Mayo Clinic suggests our cynicism and irritability may stem from a lack of social support, little agency over our schedules, or our inability to strike the perfect work-life balance.

All of these might be contributors. But I don’t feel like they get to the heart of the matter – specifically for us marketers.

If you’re anything like me, you decided to become a marketer because you love storytelling. You have a penchant for creative problem-solving. You adore diving into new technology and emerging trends.

Nothing excites a marketer more than the chance to explore a new social media platform, a new campaign, or a new medium. We love any new opportunity to get creative.

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The problem is our creative fuel is finite.

We might wake up each morning with a full tank of creative gas, but every added task burns some of the fuel. Posting a witty tweet might use only a drop. Writing a blog post might empty the entire tank.

We get cranky when we’re running on fumes and even more stressed, burned out, and exhausted when we’re pressed to keep working when the tank is totally dry.

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Our agitation climbs off the charts when we still have 10 more campaigns to execute though we’re already broken down on the side of the highway with our hazard lights on.

Some say we need to learn to say no more often. But who are we, the IT department? No. We’re marketers. We love to say yes.

Maybe so many of us are suffering from burnout because we don’t know what to stop doing.

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Does this conversation sound familiar?

“Remember those monthly Facebook Live videos we agreed to do? When was the last time we did one? February of 2018.”

But it’s still on the calendar. And it’s still gobbling up a little creative juice every time we kick ourselves for not having done it.

Dump it.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cut the stress by doing this

I’ve embraced an entirely new approach to every exciting marketing opportunity: Kill two things, so my creative energy can live on.

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Essentially, I kill at least two other projects, initiatives, or campaigns before I take on something new.

To retain his creative energy, @DrewDavisHere kills at least two projects before he takes on something new via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Why two things?

First, we need to make an easy sacrifice. We need to tell everyone we’re no longer doing those Facebook Lives, so we can get it off our calendars – and off our minds.

The easy one is the thing we’re still supposed to be doing, but it’s fallen so low on the priority list no one seems to notice it’s not being done … until they do.

Then, we must kill something that’s harder to let go of – perhaps the one where egos are attached, budget is allocated, and resources are committed, but the outcomes aren’t matching up with the effort we put into it.

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The hard kills are often the ones that can put the most creative fuel back in your tank.

For example, you know the podcast the CEO asked you to start? The podcast no one listens to.

Kill it.

What about that monthly newsletter with an open rate of .0001%?

Kill it.

If we’re going to thrive as creative marketers in this fast-paced digital world, we need to learn to end more than we start.

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Our creative fuel is finite. Burn it wisely.

What two things are you going to stop doing right now?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Get more advice for content leaders in the Chief Content Officer digital magazine. Subscribe today to get it in your inbox every quarter.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute



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MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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MARKETING

More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.

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