Talking about motivation 

What motivates you every morning when you go to "work". Since i go to an office and i understand those specific challenges, I'll speak directly to us. I'm pretty sure job satisfaction is a mega mix of different things and I'll be very surprised if money actually ranks very high up on that list. On a basic level on the maslow hierarchy of needs, after we have satisfied the lowest level of the pyramid, most of us strive to 3rd 4th level 



This is where it gets really tricky as a marketer in any company, how are you in your specific function able to impact the business to a point you feel you belong, am wanted and am esteemed. Unless you get paid as a direct equation of your efforts, most of us get the same pay month in and month out so why would we strive for excellence? If its for the above levels of needs then it's probably very hard to realise if your marketing efforts are not measured and valued in similar company language. Marketers speak about ROI , Finance folks will look at the bottomline, Engineers will look at throughput and Sales folks talk about targets (top line).  It's very hard for any function to achieve company wide recognition unless we are all using the same measures and are speaking the same language. 

So what can we do? Like any new language, the starting point will be to identify use cases or scenarios you can all start practising the words and jargon. Here are some simple steps you can take. 

1. Identify how your activity is being viewed by other functions. Why does the web engineer think it's a total waste of time? Has he/she ever been consulted or has the marketing funnel activity ever been shared? Do they know the impact product changes make on your marketing decisions and vice versa? 

2. Learn about their processes and language. It's easier for you to understand the marketing improvements you can also make so your decisions impact positively on other functions. In the case of finance for example, find out how forecasting can be more accurate from their point of view. It's likely that it will force you to explore a different method of spend tolerance before committing that 6 figure display campaign. 

3. Start talking to each other. This is probably the best thing you can start doing that will impact the way you feel valued. Once meetings happen where you are all talking in a similar language, your contributions and ideas will not impact harder but also be valued much more. 

Song of the week