The Marketer's Life - Society Status & Comparison with others

[Kumar Palani]

I am a Marketer: SEO, SMO & Brand builder, I am not sure what I am saying is the view of just my society and nation.

Here in India, developers & designers (Talking about IT alone) and so on get most of the respect, while Marketers and Sales people are never respected equally, in fact most in the society consider marketing & sales as an under rated profession. To me there is no comparison, each and every profession is equally important and valuable.

Personally I feel proud about my profession, just like mother feeds her baby even if the baby don't want to eat. I consider marketing just as much as a mother's job of feeding her baby. But what about the same in your society or nation?

[vangogh]

There's nothing wrong with marketing or sales or SEO, however they often have a poor reputation in every country. The problem is when people are too aggressive in how they market and sell. At the very least it can be annoying. I spend the first hour of my day cleaning out spam from aggressive SEO's and marketers. Sadly the majority of what I clean up every morning originates in your country. That doesn't mean every SEO is bad or everyone from India is bad, but it does leave an impression on people that leads to the poor reputation.

[Harold Mansfield]

People in tech may have a different view of sales and marketers, but many people who are not tech savvy or in any tech related business see people like us ( who work on a computer all day) as nerds, geeks and think we're all working on billion dollar start ups.

SEO's are seen as used car salesman to many people and there's nothing we can do about it. Too many people ruined the industry with BS and empty promises. The same with web designers. The bad people make everyone leery that we're all over priced hucksters.

I agree with VG, the opinion of those professions in your country from people in this country, is not favorable.

Of course it's not fair. I know India is one of the most educated countries per capita and there are some really innovative companies coming from there, but the scams and spam coming from there targeting the U.S. is relentless and it overshadows the good that may be coming from there.

[billbenson]

I've said this before but everything you do is sales or marketing. That includes everything from picking up girls to selling a product or service. And it is a learned skill. Some people will tell you need to be aggressive or have a hard sell personality to sell. That's a perception of people that don't know how to sell. It's also product dependent. Different techniques work for different products.

[Kumar Palani]

There's nothing wrong with marketing or sales or SEO, however they often have a poor reputation in every country. The problem is when people are too aggressive in how they market and sell. At the very least it can be annoying. I spend the first hour of my day cleaning out spam from aggressive SEO's and marketers. Sadly the majority of what I clean up every morning originates in your country. That doesn't mean every SEO is bad or everyone from India is bad, but it does leave an impression on people that leads to the poor reputation.

Well said, I think one of the worst thing to do is to visit a .edu site and find a blog where comments are accepted without approval and leave tons of comments (regardless of logic or basic understanding of what the blog is all about).

And I complete agree with you on SEO Spams from India, it's a shame for sure and I personally I address it as "Copy Paste - SEO". And frankly there are few SEOs who even know to how to write a content, edit meta data and how to use Google Analytics & Web Masters tool, all they know is to spam like hell for Link.

However my question is more and more focused on Society (with non-IT professionals, refer Harold Mansfield's Response), can you ad more on those lines? I will be pleased to know more about it.

[Kumar Palani]

People in tech may have a different view of sales and marketers, but many people who are not tech savvy or in any tech related business see people like us ( who work on a computer all day) as nerds, geeks and think we're all working on billion dollar start ups.

SEO's are seen as used car salesman to many people and there's nothing we can do about it. Too many people ruined the industry with BS and empty promises. The same with web designers. The bad people make everyone leery that we're all over priced hucksters.

I agree with VG, the opinion of those professions in your country from people in this country, is not favorable.

Of course it's not fair. I know India is one of the most educated countries per capita and there are some really innovative companies coming from there, but the scams and spam coming from there targeting the U.S. is relentless and it overshadows the good that may be coming from there.


Thanks for your time and information, I am actually planning to write a research article about it.

I completely agree with you, here in India, people assume that IT is more and more into a life of luxury and so on, yet our pay checks are far too less when compared to a local Bakery Tea Maker (Cook). Here in India, SEO is not even known among most non-IT people, and the closest we can get is "Marketer", an Industry every business owner needs most, but still respects the least.

I completely agree with your collective view on spamming and troubles from India (targeted towards US, UK or Australia) but for most part there are growing ethics and business moral recently. But frankly there are growing spams from other south eastern countries and China as well.

[Harold Mansfield]

Thanks for your time and information, I am actually planning to write a research article about it.

I completely agree with you, here in India, people assume that IT is more and more into a life of luxury and so on, yet our pay checks are far too less when compared to a local Bakery Tea Maker (Cook). Here in India, SEO is not even known among most non-IT people, and the closest we can get is "Marketer", an Industry every business owner needs most, but still respects the least.

I completely agree with your collective view on spamming and troubles from India (targeted towards US, UK or Australia) but for most part there are growing ethics and business moral recently. But frankly there are growing spams from other south eastern countries and China as well.

You have to go through the growing pains. We pretty much had a 10 year head start on the rest of the world. The issues you're having we had to go through them too.

The web is still the wild west, but it used to be open season here. Then we started coming up with spam laws, crackdowns on identity theft, new rules for hardware makers and ISP's, international agreements, adjustments to trademark and copyright laws and so on. It all happened over time, although fairly quickly, but we're still catching up.
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As for your original question...not sure I know what kind of answer you're looking for. Social status is subjective to who is doing the comparison and to what. Money is the true social separator.

If you have it, most people don't care how you got it. Maybe old money looks down on new money, but it's all still money. The doors open for you no matter how you got it. Even crooks and ponzi scheme guys live the high life for a while because no one ever asks questions even when a certain persons perceived wealth doesn't make logical sense. We're blinded by what is perceived to be the success of others and automatically deem people with "more than us" credible.

You may be the prince in your particular industry or social circle based on what you do, but perception of what makes money in this country is off kilter mainly because most people don't have any. And by don't have any I mean that Americans spend a lot of time comparing themselves to 1% of the population, so they aren't happy with what they have.

When I was a bartender status in the industry was perceived by where you worked, and how much you were thought to make there. In the front of the house Bartenders had a higher perceived status higher than everyone else in the place. Even though technically you can train a monkey to pour drinks.

When I was a Limo driver status was perceived by what kind of limo you drove, what size it was, how new it was, what kind of suits you wore, and the company you worked for.

Even when I was a teenager there was a certain amount of status based on which crappy fast food joint or restaurant you worked in.

In this business "status" depends on who you're asking. People who aren't tech savvy may think what we do is awesome. Amongst ourselves, it's just a business or a job like any other.

Do coders look down on designers? Do marketers look down on coders? Do graphic designers look down on programmers? It's all subjective.

What you asked is a big question. Ultimately status or what people perceive as status doesn't matter when it comes to how you feel about yourself.
No matter what you do in life there's always going to be someone who raises themselves up, by looking down on you. Even high priced corporate lawyers look down on personal injury lawyers.

Even The President of the United States, a Constitutional scholar, Noble Peace Prize winner, author of 2 best selling books, with a decent number of Presidential accomplishments gets certain level of disrespect from certain people. People who have nothing, have accomplished nothing, have no money and no education. But they still look down on him.

So status is subjective. With some people you'll never had it no matter what you do. However, money is the best equalizer and overall that trumps any perceived lower status based on your job. A millionaire porn producer, a millionaire garbage disposal business owner, and a millionaire doctor all live in the same neighborhood.