[unknown_error]

The digital marketers I've known typically just configure ads in marketplaces not controlled by them, plus use questionable (both in terms of ethics and impact) SEO practices and dubious statistical analysis of poorly verified third party analytics to fool clients into thinking they're doing useful work. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors with a sheen of respectability because it's backed by household tech company names. But there's rarely with a sufficient look at the funnel or actual user/customer/market research or weeding out confounding variables. They mostly just do the sorta stuff you can do yourself after a few hours on LinkedIn Learning. IMO doing this the right way takes someone who both understands the tech stack of it, including tracking prevention nuances, and the marketing side of it, and the statistics side of it, and the business side of it. People like that are rare to come by and don't typically enjoy working for advertising firms for small time small business clients because it's mostly just tedium and limited room for innovation and growth. Like managing the back pages of a local magazine, I imagine.

I've spent years at the intersection of dev work, marketing, advertising, analytics, SEO, etc. for small businesses. Now the I know how terrible a job they usually do, I'd never pay a consultancy to do that work. I probably wouldn't even bother with it myself. It's mostly just faith based prayers to a few ad marketplaces who's interests are inherently in conflict with yours. It's a shitty marketplace all the way around.

Dev work has a higher barrier to entry, for now, so it's less easy to bullshit your way through with clients. The resulting software either does what it's supposed to (with bugs, of course) or not. Whereas the successful or failure of many digital marketing campaigns are largely matters of faith and not evidence.

[libertine]

You'll find bad professionals everywhere you'll look. The difference is that a marketers job is more visible then a devs, because most of it is to get in front of people's eyes balls.

That's why it's easy to perceive that marketing is mostly shit... because it is, and no wonder, it's not "hidden" in the backend or in some git repo.

Ads live in public scrutiny.

A lot of the dev work would probably just make you cringe just like many ads. You just don't see it.

With that said, you're right that the barrier of entry it's lower, and I don't think the hard part of marketing/advertising is the campaign setups - that's mostly being reduced to a step-by-step wizard. Thankfully! But that won't make marketing any good, in fact, you'll just see more of the bad stuff.

[unknown_error]

It's less about transparency and more about the culture. Developers sell deliverables and marketing consultants sell attempts. As the GP said very few are actually willing to charge based on conversions, because they know they won't make many. Smoke and mirrors.

[etempleton]

As someone in marketing. You are right. Many in the field only understand promotion. And that doesn’t make a good marketer. Sometimes it is intentional sliminess, but often it is just a lack of understanding how everything fits together. It is compounded because every client thinks marketing is advertising and advertising is 1:1. It rarely is, but no one wants to hear it. So agencies lie and say it is to get your business, because if they don’t the client will go to the person that tells them biggest lie most convincingly. No one can promise results. It is impossible to say an ad spend of X will lead to sales of Y unless they have already run a similar campaign with your business or product before. Even then it is merely an educated guess.