T-Shaped Marketers: Marketing pillars for small and medium-sized business teams

Business owners and recruiters won’t always tell you, but what they are really looking for when it comes to joining their digital marketing team, is a T-shaped marketer.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, I guess this is another occasion to learn!

Who Is a T-Shaped Marketer?

A T-shaped marketer, in its simplest definition, is a person who is bold, skilled enough in one or more specific marketing fields, and agile enough to efficiently combine and apply his knowledge holistically.

In other words, he is the best of both worlds between generalist and specialist.

Explaining the T-Shape of a “T-shape Marketer”

A T-shaped marketer is represented using a T-shaped illustration like the one that follows

A personalized illustration of a T-shaped Marketer by Jecolia Eunice ETAME

The vertical line of the T-shape highlights the depth of knowledge the person has in specific fields of digital marketing, while the horizontal line highlights areas of broad knowledge regarding various other marketing fields.

To succeed as a T-shaped marketer, one needs a wide range of abilities and a deep knowledge of unique, valuable areas.

Let’s take a look at what a T-shape marketer really looks like…

You may have deep knowledge, expertise, and experience in content marketing — like in my case — and have a broader understanding of other fields such as SEO, paid ads, email marketing, project management, and growth hacking.

An ordinary or specialized content marketer will use content marketing strategies to increase a business’s awareness and grow its audience.

On the other hand, a T-shaped — content — marketer, will apply knowledge tactics and good practices from content marketing and spread them to other fields or incorporate knowledge from other fields in his strategies to to achieve a greater impact. Think of deploying content marketing efforts for employee advocacy programs, SEO content marketing, or applying social media SEO for content optimization.

Why T-Shaped Marketers

Businesses of different sizes love T-shaped marketers for a certain number of reasons. They are also a good fit for startups as this environment is a fast-moving one that requires agility and reactivity. If you own a company, you indeed do the same.

Here are some reasons why recruiters want to adopt T-shaped marketers :

1. They are fast learners: T-shaped marketers are easier to train as they have a deeper understanding of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ across most, or all the digital marketing channels and disciplines that will drive attention and action with a specific audience.
2. Offer new perspectives on digital strategies: T-shaped marketers provide new perspectives to digital marketing strategies, as their knowledge and experience span various digital marketing fields.
3. They provide creative solutions to marketing problems: T-shaped marketers are creative and keen, and because they are continuously in touch with different digital marketing fields, they have the capability to tap efficiently into innovative or creative solutions that can help businesses level up their marketing game.
4. They are versatile: This is literally a superpower they’ve got and I know what I’m talking about because I’m one of them. A T-shaped marketer can easily integrate other functions in your business — These may be branding, growth marketing, customer experience, or product marketing — leading to a greater impact on business and marketing efforts.
5. They are a gold mine for companies: Both the soft and hard skills that T-shaped marketers possess, combined with their life-long learning culture, make them an important asset — a gold mine — for businesses of various sizes. They can adopt a holistic approach, and this is an aspect that makes them more precious.

Businesses view generalists as risky and specialists as costly. We are in the “T-shaped-all” era, where having a versatile and creative person in a team, who can support the business in various ways, bring new ideas, and go beyond the basics is not only an internal advantage but also a competitive advantage.

I’m a T-shaped marketer with in-depth knowledge of Content and Social Media Marketing, I’m also keen on branding which is in fact an advocacy focus for me, and I have a broad knowledge of various digital marketing fields like SEO, email marketing, copywriting, and digital advertising.

I create blog articles mostly on marketing, branding, and professional development. Follow so you won’t miss any content on those topics, and give a clap if you appreciated this article.