Hard knocks can be the best teacher

For marketing or communication management positions, I often wonder why organizations feel compelled to hire someone with background in the product or service versus hiring someone who is a professional marketer by trade.

Learning a new product/service is relatively easy. A marketing professional can bring an objective view of your product or service.

(If you’re just “preaching to the choir”, you may not need a marketer anyway. A marketer reinforces the choir's belief in you and coaches them as evangelists but, most importantly, brings those to your product or service who don’t already know and love you.)

Years of marketing and communications experience isn’t come by easily. It’s not something you can necessarily learn from a book. Sure, you can get the basics and the background, etc. But testing and real-world applications, i.e. the school of hard knocks, can be the best teacher.

My 2 cents.