📣 Marketing yourself as a data scientist is not evil 📣

And why you should market yourself

Marketing is not an evil thing, yet most data scientist I know frown upon marketing and marketing themselves.

While I agree that some of this flack is deserved thanks to our current hyper-digital society with an endless barrage of irrelevant ads. In reality, marketing is not inherently evil. Allow me to explain why.

Marketing is about connecting

Let’s start off by defining exactly what marketing actually is. Without a proper definition of marketing we can never figure out whether marketing is a good thing or a bad thing.

In the book Soft Skills written by John Somnez (a book I highly recommend) marketing is defined as connecting a need or a want with someone that can fulfil that.

“Good marketing connects a need or want with a product or service that can fulfil that desire. It seeks to give value first before asking for anything in return.”

In other words, marketing is nothing more than connecting a product or service (supply) with someone who wants or needs this product service (demand).

There is nothing inherently good or evil about this, it just is.

B-but Google doesn’t advertise!

And this is where you’re wrong. Let’s single out the Google example (from the olden days, eh).

Google is not a counterexample to this. Google is, in fact, one of the best examples of good and trustworthy marketing. They had the best kind of marketing: word of mouth. Their product was so good that people just spontaneously started telling their friends about it. That, my friend, is also marketing.

You’re worth it

And why does this matter to you? Because you’re worth it.

Assuming that you are a highly skilled knowledge worker, like a data scientist or software engineer, then you have something valuable to sell, whether you realise this yourself or not.

This is either a service you provide or a product that you’re selling which fulfils a real need or want. Marketing is then just about connecting the person that needs or wants this (your employer, future employer, or even future clients and customers!) with those who can fulfil their desires (you!!!).

That’s it. Basta. Finito.

If you are able to effectively market yourself this will translate into higher salaries, more interesting work, and more opportunities to showcase and hone your skills. Despite it’s bad reputation, there is nothing wrong with marketing yourself if you are able to do it in an honest and trustworthy way.

Up next

For my next post, I will dive into how you can exactly market yourself in an effective, but more importantly, honest manner.

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