What I got wrong #3

The first thing most early career marketers do when they land a role is go straight to execution. New campaign. New social channel. New content calendar. Lots of visible activity.
It feels productive. I know. I've done it.

It isn't.

The Marketing Week Career and Salary Survey — 3,500+ respondents — found that 52% of marketers say their business has a skills gap in marketing strategy. Half. The gap isn't technical. It's strategic. And the reason early career marketers fall into it is simple: tactics are visible. Strategy is invisible until it works.
Mark Ritson's line on this is the one I come back to. Tactics without strategy is noise.
I spent eleven years at GCSEPod. We built a category from scratch, scaled it internationally, and sold it. I learned a lot.

When I arrived at Hicomply as fractional CMO, I did a full audit of the brand and the business from a customer perspective before I went near a single channel. Not because I was clever but I had become disciplined in my approach.

Do the diagnosis. Everything else follows from there.