What Is A T-Shaped Marketer?
- Karthik Krishna
- Feb 16, 2021
- 4 min read
If you’ve never heard of a T-shaped marketer, you would possibly think we just made it up. But, we swear—it’s a thing. And it’s a reasonably big deal.
The reason being a T-shaped marketer is some things all expert marketers strive for is because it allows them to try and do more as a marketer. It gives them a basic understanding of all the required parts of selling (like SEO, funnels, social media, influencer campaigns, etc.) and creates a cohesive marketing strategy.
When your marketing strategy flows perfectly from somebody becoming newly conscious of your business (the first stage of the Customer Value Journey, Awareness) to ascending into your higher-tier products (in the sixth stage within the CVJ, Ascension)—that’s once you have a winner.
T-shaped marketers create and maintain that perfect flow between all of the various facets of selling. Here’s how you'll become one.
What is a T-Shaped Marketer?
A t-shaped marketer is somebody who has expertise in about 1-3 main marketing facets. For instance, you'll be great at content marketing. You have a proven diary of doing awesome things together with your content and organic strategies.
But they’re also savvy in other marketing facets like email marketing, pay-per-click ads, building communities, and SEO. They’re just not as savvy as they're at the primary two facets.
This is a T-shaped marketer.

The horizontal part of the “T” is that the broad knowledge about marketing. It’s all of the other facets that you’re familiar with—but not necessarily an absolute expert in.
Then, the vertical part of the “T” shows the singular depth of data on one subject. It’s the marketing facet that you simply are an absolute expert on. In this case, it might be content marketing.
T-shaped marketers aren’t specialists, they’re generalists with one specialty. they will check out a whole marketing strategy and understand each part of it, albeit they’ve only run a couple of PPC campaigns in their day.
And that’s what makes them so valuable.
What’s the advantage of Being a T-Shaped Marketer?
Being a T-shaped marketer means you'll help clients with their marketing strategy from A-Z. While you’ll have your bread and butter (like SEO, social media, paid ads, or community building), you’ll be ready to create winning strategies amongst other marketing facets by collaborating together with your marketing team.

This is what makes t-shaped marketers so valuable. They’re not getting to are available and make converting marketing strategies only from SEO—they’re getting to roll in the hay across the board. They’re getting to be ready to put together an SEO strategy that feeds into a content marketing strategy that feeds into an email marketing strategy.
Businesses need t-shaped marketers to steer the ship of all of their marketing strategies, from SEO to email. T-shaped marketers do that by using their expertise and their knowledge of other marketing strategies to steer that ship towards more traffic and more conversions.
How to Become a T-Shaped Marketer?
Starting to see why being a t-shaped marketer makes sense? At DigitalMarketer, all of our marketing team members have an understanding of each facet of selling. This isn’t simply because they’re living in a marketing world, it’s because we would like them to be ready to flow between SEO strategies and email marketing strategies.
That’s a winning team (and that’s why we love them).
To become a t-shaped marketer, you would like to start out with the basics:
You want to start out with a general understanding of basic marketing principles across the board. This doesn’t mean you would like to travel get a marketing degree, but a broad training or certification that provides you a touch little bit of everything may be a good way to start out.
THEN you would like to ask yourself:
What am I an expert in or what do I would like to become an expert in?
For example, you'll know the ins-and-outs of SEO, or of making a winning content strategy, or a killer email funnel. This list should have 1–3 facets of selling thereon that you’d call yourself a marketing specialist in.
If you aren’t already an expert (or you would like to tune up your skills), take a couple of courses on your core discipline. You would want to layer training, certifications, and continuous learning to form sure that your expertise keeps up with changes in the industry.
Once you recognize what you’re an expert in, or want to become an expert in, you'll ask yourself the second question:
What facets of selling am I weakest in?
For example, you would possibly be beyond savvy at SEO, but maybe you would like to brush abreast of your email marketing terms and methods. Or even the copywriting skills from the primary step just didn’t stick. You’ll want to travel over those again.
Remember, you don’t get to become an expert in everything, but you would like to understand enough to urge around, and enough to be ready to weave your marketing strategies together.
Becoming a t-shaped marketer is one of the foremost valuable things a marketer can do for your business and marketing skills. It gives you breadth across all disciplines and therefore the depth in your area of experience. It’s the simplest of both worlds while still being achievable.
T-shaped marketers are those who will gather a marketing strategy using their generalist database of data and are ready to collaborate with team members across all marketing facets to make a fantastic strategy.
Interested?
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