Do you need someone who's marketed in your industry before?
- Jo Evans
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Someone who's spent years in one industry can stop seeing it clearly. They know the jargon so well they forget the customer doesn't. They assume everyone already understands why the product matters, because it's obvious to them. Coming in from outside means I ask the basic questions again: why does this feature matter? What's the customer actually trying to solve? That's often exactly what shakes a bit of fresh thinking loose.
So when a new client asks whether I've worked in their industry before, my answer is always the same. Not necessarily. What matters more is whether I understand their product, their customer, and how the sale actually happens.
I've had this conversation more than once. A new client selling into a specialist market, a bit hesitant at first, wanting to know if I've done their patch before. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it's no. Either way, my process is the same: I sit down and learn the product properly, I ask to be included in sales training and product updates where possible, and I work out who the buyer actually is and what they care about. What stays constant, whether it's a widget, a service, or a piece of specialist equipment, is working out why someone buys it and saying that clearly.
There's a practical reason I keep some distance from naming which industries I work in too. I'm based locally and most of my clients are as well. If I started shouting about the specific sectors I've worked with, I'd risk pointing a competitor of an existing client straight at me. That would put me in the odd position of competing against myself, and it wouldn't be fair on the client I'm already working with. I don't actively target specific sectors for that reason.
Seventeen years of doing this properly counts for more than seventeen years in one industry. If you're weighing up whether to bring someone in who hasn't worked in your exact industry before, my suggestion is to look at how they approach the first few conversations rather than what's on their client list. Do they ask good questions? Do they want to understand your customer properly before they start writing anything? That tells you more than a shared industry ever will.
Jo Evans is founder of Emerald Frog Marketing, based in Ely. She provides outsourced marketing support, copywriting and consultancy to businesses across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
