I want to begin with a sentence I have been thinking about for most of my career, in one form or another. I have written it on whiteboards. I have said it in job interviews. I have put it, in slightly different language, in almost every strategy document I have produced.

I do not spend ad money and hope. I create market pull.

The sentence is true. It is also, in the precise language of what I have actually spent my career doing, incomplete.

What I have actually spent my career doing is building belief. I have built belief in the marketing functions I have led — in the team, in the strategy, in the values the work is supposed to serve. I have built belief in the products I have marketed — in the claim that the product is worth the price, in the claim that the institution is worth the credential, in the claim that the experience is worth the disruption. I have built belief in the customers I have served — in the parent who is buying safety for a child, in the enterprise buyer who is buying a one-way exit from a problem they cannot solve alone, in the citizen who is buying a vision of a country that does not yet exist.

The marketing director who understands this is a different kind of leader from the marketing director who does not. The difference is not a difference of tactics. It is a difference of what the work is for.

The Job Description That Almost Made Me Leave the Profession

I want to tell you about a job description I read, in 2017, that almost made me leave the marketing profession entirely.

It was a posting for a Senior Marketing Manager role at a multinational technology company. The requirements were standard. Ten years of experience. P&L responsibility. Digital marketing certification. Agency management experience. A team of at least five. The responsibilities were also standard. Manage the paid media budget. Optimize the conversion funnel. Report on CAC, LTV, ROAS. Hit the lead generation target. Coordinate with the regional brand team.

I read the job description three times. The third time, I realized I was not excited. I was not even interested. I was, in the precise language of the situation, exhausted by the description of my own profession.

The job description described a function. It did not describe a purpose. It described activities. It did not describe outcomes. It described the optimization of a machine. It did not describe the building of anything.

I did not leave the profession. I took a different job. I have been, in the years since, trying to articulate what was missing in that job description, and what I think is missing in most job descriptions in our profession.

What was missing was the belief.

What “Belief” Actually Means in a Marketing Function

I want to be careful with this word, because it is easy to make it sound vague or sentimental. I do not mean it in the motivational-poster sense. I do not mean it in the “brand values” sense. I do not mean it in the “thought leadership” sense.

I mean it in the operational sense. Belief, in a marketing function, is the condition under which customers, employees, and partners are willing to act before they have full information. Belief is what gets a parent to enroll a child in a university she has never visited. Belief is what gets an enterprise buyer to sign a contract with an institution she has been pitched by fourteen times. Belief is what gets a 23-year-old fresh graduate to join a team in a market she has never worked in, at a company she has never heard of, led by a person she has known for one conversation.

Belief is, in the precise language of the situation, the asset that the marketing function is supposed to produce. The campaigns, the content, the events, the community programs, the workshop series, the partnership motions — these are not the product. These are the operations through which the product is produced.

The product is belief. The product is the condition under which people are willing to act. The product is the slow accumulation of evidence, narrative, and trust that makes the next action feel less risky than the alternative.

Most marketing functions are organized around the operations. They measure the operations. They report on the operations. They optimize the operations. They do not, in the precise language of the situation, measure the product. They do not know if they are producing belief. They do not know if the operations are building the condition under which people are willing to act, or if the operations are merely producing the appearance of activity.

The marketing director who understands the difference is a different kind of leader.

The Operations That Build Belief

I want to be specific about what I mean, because “build belief” is easy to say and hard to operationalize. Here are the operations I have found, over twenty years, that actually build the asset.

The first operation is the workshop. I have written about this before, in the context of the workshop-to-close motion. The workshop is the operation in which the customer meets the institution in a context that is not a sales conversation. The workshop is where the institution has the opportunity to demonstrate, in real time, that it understands the customer’s problem. The workshop is, in the precise language of belief-building, the most expensive operation in the marketing function. It is also, in the precise language of the result, the operation that produces the most belief per rupiah spent.

The second operation is the community. The community is the operation in which the customer meets other customers, in a context that is not mediated by the institution. The community is where belief is built horizontally, in the conversations between people who have made the choice and people who are considering it. The community is, in the precise language of belief-building, the operation that produces the most sustainable belief. It is also the operation that most marketing functions, in the optimization of the funnel, have quietly abandoned.

The third operation is the custom response. The custom response is the operation in which the institution demonstrates, in the artifact it produces, that it has understood the customer’s specific problem. The custom response is, in the precise language of belief-building, the operation that produces the highest-quality belief per customer. It is also, in the precise language of the operations, the most expensive. The optimization of the operations has, in most marketing functions, gradually eliminated the custom response in favor of the templated response. The elimination has, in the precise language of the result, gradually eroded the belief the institution is able to produce.

The fourth operation is the long arc. The long arc is the operation in which the institution is willing to invest in a customer relationship across a time horizon longer than the sales cycle. The long arc is, in the precise language of belief-building, the operation that produces the most durable belief. It is also the operation that most quarterly-reporting structures make almost impossible. The marketing director who wants to build belief has to defend the long arc against the quarterly reporting cycle, in language the leadership can hear, with data the organization can verify.

What This Means for the Marketing Director

If the job of the marketing director is to build belief, then the job description changes. The marketing director is not a campaign manager. The marketing director is not a demand generation specialist. The marketing director is not a brand steward. The marketing director is the person in the organization who is responsible for the condition under which the organization’s customers, employees, and partners are willing to act.

The responsibilities that follow from this are different from the responsibilities in the standard job description.

The marketing director is responsible for the workshop motion. Not the webinar. Not the automated email sequence. The workshop — the in-person, in-the-room, facilitated-with-a-real-customer motion. The marketing director is the person who defends the budget for the workshop motion, against the operations that want to replace it with the funnel.

The marketing director is responsible for the community. Not the social media following. Not the email list. The community — the place where the institution’s customers meet each other, in a context that the institution facilitates but does not own. The marketing director is the person who defends the investment in the community, against the operations that want to measure it by the metrics of the funnel.

The marketing director is responsible for the custom response. Not the template. Not the automated drip. The custom response — the proposal, the workshop design, the partnership offer, the artifact that responds to the specific customer the institution is trying to serve. The marketing director is the person who defends the capacity to produce the custom response, against the operations that want to scale it away.

The marketing director is responsible for the long arc. Not the quarterly report. Not the campaign ROI. The long arc — the multi-year, multi-touchpoint, multi-channel relationship that the institution is willing to invest in, in the patient knowledge that the return will not appear in the next quarter’s dashboard. The marketing director is the person who defends the long arc, in language the leadership can hear, with data the organization can verify.

The marketing director who does these four things is, in the precise language of the profession, doing the work. The marketing director who does not do these four things is, in the precise language of the profession, optimizing the wrong machine.

The Job Description I Would Write

If I were writing a job description for a marketing director role today, it would not include the standard list of campaign management, lead generation, brand stewardship, and agency coordination. It would include the following.

You will be responsible for the condition under which our customers, employees, and partners are willing to act. You will build this condition through workshops, communities, custom responses, and long-arc relationships. You will defend the investment in these operations against the quarterly reporting cycle, in language the leadership can hear, with data the organization can verify. You will be measured on the cost per outcome the organization exists to produce, not on the cost per transaction the funnel is designed to optimize. You will be asked, in the first six months, to identify the operations that are producing the appearance of activity but not the asset of belief, and to propose their replacement. You will be supported, in this work, by a leadership that understands the difference between the operations and the asset.

This is the job description I have been working toward, in every role I have taken since that 2017 posting. It is also the job description I have not yet seen posted by any organization I have worked with.

The marketing director’s job is not to spend money. The marketing director’s job is to build belief.

The spending is the operations. The belief is the asset. The job is the asset.