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What’s a T-Formed Marketer

Graphic shows a T-shaped marketer

If you've never heard of a T-shaped marketer, you might think we just invented it. But we swear – it's one thing. And it's a pretty big deal.

The reason all seasoned marketers are looking for a T-shaped marketer is because they can do more as a marketer. It gives them a basic understanding of all necessary parts of marketing (such as SEO, funnel, social media, influencer campaigns, etc.) and creates a coherent marketing strategy.

If your marketing strategy depends perfectly on someone who is newly aware of your business (the first phase of the Customer Value Journey, awareness), up to advancement into your higher-level products in the sixth phase of the CVJ, Ascension), then you have a winner.

T-shaped marketers create and maintain the perfect flow between all the different facets of marketing. So you can become one.

What is a T-shaped marketer?

A T-shaped marketer is someone who has experience in around 1-3 main marketing facets. For example, you can be great at content marketing. You have a proven track record of doing great things with your content and organic strategies.

They are also familiar with other marketing aspects such as email marketing, pay-per-click ads, community building and SEO. They are just not as savvy as in the first two facets.

This is a T-shaped marketer.

The horizontal part of the "T" is the broad knowledge of marketing. It is all other facets that you are familiar with – but not necessarily absolute experts.

Then the vertical part of the "T" shows the singular depth of knowledge about a topic. It is the marketing facet for which you are an absolute expert. In this case it would be content marketing.

T-shaped marketers are not specialists, but generalists with a specialty. You can see an entire marketing strategy and understand every part of it, even if you’ve only run a few PPC campaigns at the time.

And that's what makes them so valuable.

What is the advantage of a T-shaped marketer?

As a T-shaped marketer, you can support customers from A to Z with their marketing strategy. While you have your bread and butter (such as SEO, social media, paid ads or community building), you can develop marketing strategies in collaboration with your marketing team.

T-shaped marketer with disciplines

This is what makes T-shaped marketers so valuable. Not only will you develop converting marketing strategies from search engine optimization – you will do so across the board. You will be able to put together an SEO strategy that will flow into a content marketing strategy that will flow into an email marketing strategy.

Companies need T-shaped marketers to manage all of their marketing strategies from SEO to email. T-shaped marketers do this by using their expertise and knowledge of other marketing strategies to steer this ship towards more traffic and more conversions.

How do I become a T-shaped marketer?

Are you beginning to understand why it makes sense to be a T-shaped marketer? At DigitalMarketer, all members of our marketing team understand all facets of marketing. This is not only because they live in a marketing world, but also because they can switch between SEO strategies and email marketing strategies.

This is a winning team (and that's why we love them).

To become a T-shaped marketer, you want to start with the basics:

You want to start with a general understanding of the basic marketing principles across the board. This doesn't mean that you need to have a marketing degree, but a comprehensive education or certification that offers you a little bit of everything is a good place to start.

THEN you have to ask yourself:

What am I an expert or what do I want to be an expert?

For example, you might know the pros and cons of SEO, or create a successful content strategy or a killer email funnel. This list should contain 1-3 facets of marketing that you would call yourself a marketing specialist.

If you are not an expert (or want to improve your skills), take a few courses on your core discipline. You want to overlay training, certification, and continuous learning to ensure that your expertise keeps pace with changes in the industry.

Once you know what you are or want to become an expert in, you can ask yourself the second question:

What are the weakest facets of marketing?

For example, you may not be well versed in SEO, but you may need to brush up on your email marketing terms and strategies. Or maybe the copywriting skills just didn't stay from the first step. You want to go through this again.

Remember that you don't have to be an expert at everything, but you want to know enough to get around and enough to interweave your marketing strategies.

Becoming a T-shaped marketer is one of the most valuable things a marketer can do for your business and marketing skills. It gives you the breadth of all disciplines and the depth of your area of ​​expertise. It is the best of both worlds and yet accessible.

T-shaped marketers are the ones who can use their general knowledge base to put together a marketing strategy and collaborate with team members across all marketing aspects to develop an incredible strategy.

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