One of my favorite shows is Gold Rush. It is a great metaphor for working through something to glean the nuggets of value within.
The sluice box is a long narrow box that water flows through. Dirt and water are mixed and run down the sluice box. The bottom of the box has ripples that catch the gold.
If there is no gold in the dirt then it doesn’t matter how good the sluice box is, no gold is going to be extracted. No value is created.
Marketing is similar to the sluice box. If the business contains nuggets (great products or services) a marketer helps to realize that value. The greater those nuggets the more value the marketing can create. The better the marketer, the more nuggets that can be found.
On the other hand, no matter how good the marketer is, they can only realize the value that is there.
There are two ways to become more valuable as a marketer.
One, become more skilled at extracting the nuggets and do this for companies that have large piles of dirt to go through. Extracting 10% more value in a 100 million dollar company is more valuable than extracting 25% more value in a million-dollar company.
Two, find companies that have bigger nuggets in their dirt pile. Extracting 10 nuggets worth a million each is more valuable than extracting 1000 nuggets with one hundred each.