Brittany Hoversten

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Tag: Marketing Technology

  • AI Search Optimization: A Practical Guide to Getting Found

    Ask ChatGPT about your organization. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

    If you’re like most of the leaders I talk with, the answer comes back close but not quite right. An old program name. A service you stopped offering. A description that sounds like your website from five years ago, because that’s the last time anyone wrote it down clearly.

    That gap is what AI search optimization is about. People are asking AI tools the questions they used to type into a search bar, and those tools answer by pulling from pages they can find, read and trust. If your best information isn’t on one of those pages, someone else’s version of you gets used instead.

    The good news is that most of the work is the same fundamentals good marketers already know. The bad news is that a lot of organizations skipped those fundamentals the first time around.

    What AI search optimization actually means

    AI search optimization is the practice of making your content easy for AI-powered search tools to find, understand and cite. That includes Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and whatever launches next quarter.

    You’ll see it called GEO, AEO, LLMO and a few other acronyms. I don’t much care what we call it. The job underneath is the same, and it has four parts:

    • Be reachable. The crawlers these tools rely on have to be allowed to read your site.
    • Be clear. Your pages need to state plainly who you are, what you do, where you do it and who it’s for.
    • Be consistent. What your site says should match what your profiles, directories and partners say about you.
    • Be worth citing. Specific, useful answers get pulled into responses. Vague brochure copy doesn’t.

    Notice what’s not on that list: tricks. There’s no secret file and no magic phrasing.

    What the platforms themselves say

    Before you buy a course or a new tool, read the source documentation. It’s short, and it cuts through a lot of noise.

    Google’s guidance on AI features and your website is refreshingly blunt. There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. The rest is ordinary SEO, done well.

    OpenAI’s crawler documentation adds one practical step for ChatGPT search: allow OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt. OpenAI says sites that opt out of that crawler won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers. It also keeps the search crawler separate from GPTBot, the one used for training, so you can allow one and block the other.

    That distinction matters for many of the nonprofits and small businesses I work with. Plenty of them blocked “AI bots” as a group at some point, sometimes through a hosting setting nobody remembers turning on. Reasonable instinct. But a blanket block can also take you out of the answers your audience is now reading.

    If you want a refresher on the foundation underneath all of this, start with the SEO basics every marketing leader should own. AI search sits on top of that foundation. It doesn’t replace it.

    Step 1: Make sure the machines can reach you

    This is the unglamorous part, and it’s where I find the most problems. Sit down with whoever manages your website and walk through this list together:

    1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and actually read it. Look for rules that block Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot. Decide on purpose which AI crawlers you allow and which you don’t.
    2. Check your host, CDN and security plugins. Some block bot traffic by default, and a friendly robots.txt can’t override a firewall that turns crawlers away.
    3. Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing’s index feeds Copilot and other tools, so Bing isn’t optional anymore.
    4. Hunt for accidental noindex tags, especially on pages that were staged, redesigned or migrated.
    5. Get important content out of PDFs and images. If your service list lives in a scanned brochure, assume nothing will read it. Put it on a real page in real text.
    6. Fix your internal links. A page nobody links to is hard for anyone, human or crawler, to find.

    None of this is new. That’s the point. A lot of AI search visibility comes down to technical hygiene that got pushed to “someday.”

    Step 2: Write pages that answer real questions

    AI tools answer questions. So the pages that show up in their answers tend to be the pages that answer questions directly.

    I use a simple test. For each important page, can a stranger read the first two sentences and know who this is for, what it is and why it matters? If not, rewrite those two sentences before you touch anything else.

    Structure your pages for answers

    • Use headings that match how people ask. “How much does respite care cost?” beats “Our Approach.”
    • Answer first, then explain. Put the short answer in the first sentence under the heading.
    • Be specific. Name the counties you serve, your hours, who qualifies and what it costs. Specifics are what get quoted.
    • Keep one main topic per page. A page that tries to cover six services usually explains none of them well.
    • Add a short FAQ where it genuinely helps, and make sure any structured data matches what’s visible on the page.

    Say who you are, plainly

    Your About page is doing more work than you think. It should state your full organization name, what you do, where you do it, how long you’ve done it and who leads it. Write it the way you’d want it summarized, because it will be.

    This is also where brand discipline pays off. If one program goes by three different names across your site, don’t be surprised when an AI answer invents a fourth.

    Step 3: Fix the facts about you everywhere else

    AI answers rarely come from your website alone. They draw on directories, review sites, news coverage, partner pages, LinkedIn and business profiles. When those sources disagree, the tools have to guess, and they don’t always guess in your favor.

    So do a consistency pass. Start here:

    • Google Business Profile: name, address, hours, categories, services and description.
    • Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and the major directories in your sector.
    • Your LinkedIn company page and your leaders’ profiles.
    • Partner, funder and chamber sites that describe you. Send them updated copy. Most are glad to get it.
    • Old press releases and event pages that still rank for your name.

    Anyone who has led a rebrand knows this kind of cleanup. It’s tedious. It’s also what makes everything after it work. If you’re curious what that looks like in practice, some of my brand and web work is in my portfolio.

    Step 4: Measure what you can, and be honest about the rest

    Measurement here is imperfect. Say that out loud to your leadership team, then measure what you can:

    • Search Console. Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the standard Performance report under the Web search type. It isn’t broken out on its own, so watch trends on the specific pages you’ve improved.
    • GA4 referrals. Build an exploration or a custom channel group for referral traffic from AI tools, such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and copilot.microsoft.com. The volume may be small. The visitors are often further along in their decision.
    • A monthly prompt audit. Keep a list of 10 to 20 questions people actually ask about your organization or category. Run them in two or three tools once a month. Log whether you’re mentioned, whether the facts are right and which sources get cited.

    That last one is low-tech, and it’s the most useful of the three. The cited sources tell you exactly which pages and profiles to fix next.

    One more opinion. Don’t respond to AI search by flooding your site with AI-written filler. Thin pages written to catch every possible question make you less trustworthy, not more. Ten clear, accurate, specific pages will do more for you than a hundred generic ones.

    Key takeaways

    • AI search optimization is mostly SEO fundamentals, done consistently and on purpose.
    • Decide which crawlers you allow. Opting out of OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers.
    • Write pages that answer real questions in the first sentence, with real specifics.
    • Make your facts match everywhere they appear, not only on your own site.
    • Run a monthly prompt audit and fix the sources the tools cite.

    FAQ

    Is AI search optimization different from SEO?

    Mostly, no. Google says there are no extra requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. The difference is emphasis: clear answers, consistent facts across the web and deliberate crawler access matter more than they used to.

    Do I need an llms.txt file or special schema for AI search?

    Not for Google. Its documentation says you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup to appear in its AI features. Use structured data where it already fits your content, and keep it matched to what’s visible on the page.

    How do I know if AI tools are mentioning my brand?

    Combine three signals: AI referral traffic in GA4, page-level trends in Search Console and a monthly manual check of the questions your audience actually asks. The manual check also shows which sources get cited, which tells you what to fix first.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want to know how your brand shows up in AI answers?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • Marketing Technology Skills: Why Marketers Should Learn to Build Their Own Tools

    Every marketing team has a request sitting in someone else’s queue. A landing page waiting on IT. A report waiting on the data person. A form that needs one more field, which apparently takes three weeks. The work is small. The waiting is the expensive part. That’s why I think marketing technology skills are some of the most valuable things a marketer can pick up, and I don’t just mean knowing which buttons to push.

    I mean being able to build.

    My path into marketing ran through web design and development. I earned an A.A.S. in Web Design and Development, and back in 2013 I took first place for Best Web Design at Collegiate DECA Minnesota. Since then I’ve worked in WordPress, HTML, Figma, Salesforce, HubSpot, Power BI, Google Analytics and Search Console. None of that makes me an engineer. It does mean that when a marketing problem needs a tool, I can often make a working version myself, and that changes how fast a team moves.

    Using tools vs. building tools

    There’s a difference between a marketer who uses technology and one who can build with it.

    A user knows how to send an email campaign in HubSpot. A builder can set up the list logic, design the template, connect the form that feeds it and build the report that shows whether it worked.

    A user can find a number in Google Analytics. A builder can set up a dashboard in Power BI that answers the question leadership keeps asking, refreshed automatically.

    A user can make a graphic in Canva. A builder can create a template system that lets twenty non-designers make on-brand graphics without breaking anything.

    Both are useful. But builders remove bottlenecks. Users are often waiting on them.

    Why marketing technology skills matter more now

    A few things have shifted that make this more important, not less:

    • Teams are smaller. Plenty of marketing departments are one to three people. There is no separate web team or analytics team to hand things to.
    • The stack is bigger. Even a small organization might run a CRM, an email platform, a website, a design tool, social scheduling and an analytics setup. Someone has to make them work together.
    • The tools are friendlier. No-code and low-code platforms, templates and AI assistants mean you can build more with less technical background than ever.
    • Leaders want answers, not exports. Being able to turn raw data into a clear view is a leadership skill now.

    This is the heart of being a T-shaped marketer. Breadth across the stack, depth where it counts.

    The builder’s skill stack: where to start

    You don’t need to learn everything. Here’s the order I’d recommend, based on what pays off fastest for most marketers.

    1. Web fundamentals

    Learn enough HTML and CSS to read a page and fix what’s broken. Learn how your CMS actually works, not just how to type into it. In WordPress, that means understanding blocks, templates, menus and basic site settings. This alone will free you from a lot of waiting.

    2. Data and reporting

    Get comfortable with spreadsheets beyond the basics: lookups, pivot tables, cleaning messy data. Then learn one dashboard tool well, such as Power BI or Looker Studio. Pair that with a working knowledge of Google Analytics and Search Console so you understand where the numbers come from. I cover the search side in SEO basics for marketing leaders.

    3. CRM and automation logic

    Understand how your CRM stores people, relationships and activity. Learn how lists, segments, workflows and triggers work in your email or CRM platform. Plenty of “we need a developer for this” requests are really automation problems a marketer can solve.

    4. Design systems

    Know the basics of a design tool like Figma, and understand how to build templates other people can use. A good template is a tool. I’ve built branded Canva brand templates for exactly this reason: they let a whole organization create on-brand work without a designer in every loop.

    5. Systems thinking

    This is the skill that ties it together. How does data move from a form to a CRM to an email to a report? Where does it break? Who owns each step? You can learn this by drawing your own stack on a whiteboard and following one contact through it.

    How to build skills without a bootcamp

    You don’t need to quit your job or spend thousands of dollars. You need a real problem and some stubbornness.

    1. Pick one annoying, recurring task. The weekly report you build by hand. The form that sends results to an inbox nobody checks.
    2. Build a small fix. A template, a formula, an automation, a simple dashboard.
    3. Test it with one colleague. Watch them use it. Fix what confuses them.
    4. Document it in five lines. What it does, where it lives, how to update it, who owns it.
    5. Repeat with the next problem. Each build teaches you something the next one needs.

    Over a year, that’s a portfolio of real tools that solved real problems. That’s also the kind of thing hiring managers actually want to see.

    Know when not to build

    Building your own tools is powerful. It can also go wrong. A few guardrails:

    • Don’t build what you can’t maintain. If you’re the only one who understands it, document it or simplify it.
    • Don’t bypass security or data rules. Work within approved systems and talk to IT before connecting anything sensitive.
    • Don’t build when a standard feature already exists. Check the platform first. Often the tool you need is already there.
    • Do hand off to specialists for big jobs. Custom integrations, complex databases and anything with serious security requirements deserve experts.

    The goal isn’t to replace developers or IT. It’s to stop sending them small requests that a capable marketer can handle, so their time goes to the work only they can do.

    What this looks like for leaders who hire

    If you’re hiring marketers, look for evidence of building. Ask candidates about a tool, template, dashboard or automation they created and what problem it solved. Listen for how they thought about the people who’d use it. The answer tells you more about how they’ll work than a list of platforms on a resume.

    If you lead a team, give people time to build. A few hours a month spent fixing workflows pays off for years. The lesson I took from leading a company-wide digital asset management rollout at Buyers Edge Platform: the software matters less than building a system people will actually use.

    Key takeaways

    • Marketers who can build tools remove bottlenecks instead of waiting on them.
    • Start with web fundamentals, data and reporting, then CRM and automation logic.
    • Templates and design systems are tools, and they scale your brand.
    • Learn by solving one real, recurring problem at a time.
    • Build what you can maintain, and hand big or sensitive jobs to specialists.

    FAQ

    What marketing technology skills are most in demand?

    Commonly valued marketing technology skills include CMS and web basics, analytics and dashboard building, CRM and marketing automation, and design systems. Just as important is systems thinking: understanding how data and content move between tools.

    Do marketers need to learn to code?

    Not necessarily. Basic HTML and CSS help a lot, but most marketers get more value from mastering their CMS, spreadsheets, a dashboard tool and their CRM’s automation features. Learn code when a real problem calls for it.

    How can I build marketing technology skills on the job?

    Pick a recurring task that wastes time, build a small fix for it, test it with a colleague and document it. Repeat with the next problem. Each project builds skills and creates a portfolio of real results.

    Want to know more about the path that got me here? Read more about my background.

    / Work with Brittany

    Need a marketer who can build the tool, not just request it?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • How to Write a Five-Year Technology Plan That Finds Savings

    Most organizations don’t have a technology strategy. They have a stack of renewals. A software contract auto-renews in March, a laptop dies in June, someone signs up for a new tool with a credit card in September, and by December nobody can say what you’re paying for or why. A five-year technology plan is how you trade that pile of surprises for a set of decisions.

    At Tri-County Action Program, I served as Director of Communications, Technology and Data and built a five-year technology plan that identified $350K in savings. It also set up a move to outsourced IT. I’m a marketer by trade, which is exactly why I think marketers and communicators should be in the room for this work. A tech plan is a persuasion document as much as a technical one.

    Here’s how I’d approach it again.

    Why a five-year technology plan beats yearly budgeting

    Annual budgets ask, “What do we need to spend next year?” A five-year plan asks a better question: “What do we want to be true in five years, and what’s the cheapest responsible path there?”

    That shift matters because technology costs are lumpy. Hardware ages out in waves. Contracts lock you in for multiple years. A system migration costs more in year one and saves money in years two through five. If you only look one year ahead, every good long-term move looks expensive.

    A multi-year view also gives leaders something they rarely get from IT conversations: a story. Here’s where we are, here’s where we’re going, here’s what it costs, and here’s what it saves.

    Step 1: Inventory everything (yes, everything)

    You can’t find savings in spending you can’t see. Start with a full inventory, and expect it to take longer than you think.

    • Software and subscriptions. Every license, seat, plan and add-on. Check credit card statements and expense reports, not just the IT budget line.
    • Hardware. Laptops, desktops, phones, printers, network gear, with purchase dates.
    • Services and contracts. IT support, hosting, phone systems, copier leases, with renewal dates and cancellation terms.
    • Data systems. CRM, finance, HR, case management, email marketing. Note who owns each and how they connect, or don’t.
    • People time. Who spends hours each week keeping systems running or moving data by hand?

    That last category is the one most plans skip. Staff time spent re-entering data between systems is a real cost. It just doesn’t show up on an invoice.

    Ask the people who use the tools

    Spreadsheets tell you what you pay for. Conversations tell you what people actually use. A short staff survey plus a handful of interviews will surface the tool everyone works around, the shared password nobody should be sharing and the report that takes two days to build by hand. I’ve written about how to design a stakeholder survey that gets to decisions, and it applies here too.

    Step 2: Find where the money is hiding

    Once the inventory is done, patterns jump out. In most organizations, savings tend to come from a few familiar places:

    • Overlap. Three file-sharing tools, two project management platforms, a design tool bought by two different departments.
    • Unused seats. Licenses for former staff, or tiers that include features nobody touches.
    • Bad contract timing. Renewals that roll over automatically because no one had the date on a calendar.
    • Reactive hardware spending. Emergency replacements at full price instead of planned refresh cycles.
    • Support models that don’t fit. An in-house setup that’s stretched thin, or an outside arrangement that doesn’t match how you work.

    Savings aren’t always about cutting. Sometimes the right call is to spend more on one platform so you can retire three others. The plan should show the net effect over five years, not just the year-one bill.

    Look hard at your support model

    At Tri-CAP, the plan included moving to outsourced IT. That isn’t the right answer everywhere. But every organization should ask the question honestly: given our size, risk and needs, what support model gives us reliable coverage at a sustainable cost? Compare options on response times, security practices, coverage hours and total cost, not just the monthly fee.

    Step 3: Sequence the changes

    A five-year plan isn’t a list of everything you want. It’s an order of operations.

    1. Year 1: Stabilize. Fix security gaps, cancel obvious waste, get every renewal date on a shared calendar, and settle your support model.
    2. Year 2: Consolidate. Retire overlapping tools and move people onto the core platforms you’ve chosen.
    3. Year 3: Connect. Integrate systems so data flows between them, especially CRM, finance and communications.
    4. Year 4: Improve. Build better reporting, automate repetitive work and train staff more deeply.
    5. Year 5: Review and refresh. Reassess the whole stack and start the next plan.

    Sequencing matters because change fatigue is real. If you ask staff to learn four new systems in one year, they’ll learn none of them well. When I think about CRM rollouts, the same lesson holds. I cover it in more detail in CRM implementation best practices.

    Step 4: Write it for the board, then keep it alive

    This is where a communications background earns its keep. A technology plan has to be approved by people who don’t want to read about firewalls.

    Advising an executive team and a board taught me to structure the document around decisions and outcomes:

    • One-page summary. Current state, recommended direction, five-year cost, five-year savings and the top three risks of doing nothing.
    • The case for change. Plain language, real examples from staff, and what the mission gains.
    • The roadmap. One table by year: what changes, what it costs, what it saves.
    • Risks and mitigations. Security, staff capacity, vendor dependence.
    • Appendix. The full inventory and detailed numbers.

    Lead with the mission, support with the money. “This frees up staff hours for client work” lands differently than “This reduces administrative overhead,” even when they mean the same thing. If you want more on how boards read numbers, see my post on marketing metrics for a board of directors.

    Keep the plan alive after approval

    A plan that sits in a folder is just an expensive document. Build in a few habits:

    • Review progress quarterly with leadership, with a short update against the roadmap.
    • Keep the inventory current. Assign an owner, and update it whenever you add or cancel something.
    • Track savings as they happen, so you can show the board real results, not projections.
    • Revisit priorities every year. Five years is long enough for the tool market to change a lot.

    Key takeaways

    • A five-year technology plan turns surprise renewals into deliberate decisions.
    • A complete inventory, including staff time, is where savings start.
    • Look for overlap, unused seats, bad contract timing and reactive spending.
    • Sequence changes over years so staff can actually adopt them.
    • Write for the board: mission first, money close behind, details in the appendix.

    FAQ

    What should a five-year technology plan include?

    A five-year technology plan should include a full inventory of software, hardware, contracts and data systems, a clear picture of current costs, a year-by-year roadmap of changes, projected costs and savings, key risks and an owner for keeping the plan updated.

    Who should write an organization’s technology plan?

    Ideally a cross-functional leader who understands operations, budgets and communication, working with IT support and department heads. The plan needs technical accuracy, but it also has to persuade leadership and staff.

    How often should a technology plan be updated?

    Review progress quarterly and update the plan at least once a year. Keep the inventory current all the time, since every new tool or canceled contract changes the picture.

    If you’d like to see more of the strategy, technology and communications work behind this, browse my portfolio.

    / Work with Brittany

    Need a technology plan your board will actually read and approve?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • Using Responsible AI in Marketing: A Guardrails Checklist

    Somebody on your team is already using AI. Maybe it’s drafting social captions. Maybe it’s summarizing meeting notes or cleaning up a grant narrative at 10 p.m. The question isn’t whether AI is in your marketing work. It’s whether anyone has set the rules. Responsible AI in marketing starts with admitting that the tools showed up before the policy did.

    I work with AI every week. Analytics, strategic communications and AI are the deep end of what I do, so I’m not writing this as a skeptic. I’m writing it as someone who has seen how fast a helpful shortcut turns into a brand problem when nobody owns the guardrails.

    Good guardrails don’t slow a team down. They let people move faster because they know where the edges are.

    Why responsible AI in marketing is a leadership job

    It’s tempting to treat AI as an individual productivity choice. One person likes it, another doesn’t, everybody does their own thing.

    That works right up until:

    • Someone pastes donor or client details into a free tool with unclear data terms.
    • A generated statistic ends up in a press release, and nobody can find where it came from.
    • An AI image of “a family we served” runs in a campaign, and the family doesn’t exist.
    • Your newsletter starts sounding like everyone else’s newsletter.

    Every one of those is a trust problem, and trust is the asset marketing is supposed to protect. That makes AI governance a leadership responsibility, not a tech-support ticket. If you lead a team, the rules are yours to write, even if you write them in an afternoon.

    The guardrails checklist

    Here’s the checklist I’d hand any marketing team, from a solo nonprofit communicator to a department of twenty. Adjust the details. Keep the categories.

    1. Data: what never goes in

    • No personal information about clients, donors, patients, students or employees in any tool your organization hasn’t approved.
    • No confidential financials, contracts, legal matters or unreleased plans.
    • Know each approved tool’s data terms: does it store prompts, and can it train on them?
    • When in doubt, anonymize or summarize before you paste.

    2. Truth: what always gets checked

    • Every fact, number, name, date and quote gets verified against a real source before it’s published.
    • AI-suggested statistics are treated as leads, not facts. If you can’t find the original source, the number doesn’t run.
    • Summaries of long documents get spot-checked against the original, especially anything you’ll repeat to leadership.

    3. People: who stays in charge

    • A named human reviews and approves anything that goes public.
    • Sensitive communications (crisis statements, layoffs, condolences, anything about a specific person) are written by people. AI can help you outline. It shouldn’t hold the pen.
    • Final judgment calls on tone and timing stay with the communicator who knows the audience.

    4. Images and likeness: no synthetic “real people”

    • Never generate an image that implies a real client, donor, employee or event.
    • Don’t alter real photos in ways that change what happened.
    • If you use generated visuals for illustration, make sure they read as illustration.

    This one matters a lot in mission-driven work. I’ve written about ethical storytelling with consent and dignity, and the same principle applies here. A made-up face standing in for a real person’s story isn’t a shortcut. It’s a misrepresentation.

    5. Brand: does it still sound like you?

    • Keep a short voice guide that people can paste into a prompt or check drafts against.
    • Read AI-assisted drafts out loud. If it sounds like a brochure for nobody in particular, rewrite it.
    • Hold AI output to the same brand standards as anything else. Templates, colors and messaging rules still apply.

    6. Disclosure: when do you say AI helped?

    There isn’t one universal rule here, so decide yours and write it down. A reasonable starting point: disclose when AI generated a substantial part of an image, a voice or content presented as someone’s personal words. Don’t put a quote in a leader’s mouth that they didn’t write and approve.

    7. Tools: who decides what’s approved

    • Keep a short list of approved tools and what each is approved for.
    • Assign one person to review new tools before they’re used with real work.
    • Revisit the list a couple of times a year, since terms and features change.

    How to roll it out without a 40-page policy

    You don’t need a committee and six months. You need a page people will actually read.

    1. Inventory what’s already happening. Ask your team, without judgment, which tools they use and for what. You’ll learn more in a 20-minute conversation than in a formal audit.
    2. Draft a one-page guide. Use the seven categories above. Plain language, short bullets.
    3. Get a quick review from whoever owns risk. In a small nonprofit, that might be the executive director. In a larger organization, legal, HR or IT.
    4. Train with real examples. Show a good use and a bad use for each category. Examples stick better than rules.
    5. Make it easy to ask. A shared channel or a named person for “is this okay?” questions prevents a lot of quiet guessing.
    6. Review it twice a year. The tools will change. Your principles probably won’t, but the details will.

    If you want a deeper framework to borrow from, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework is a solid, free reference. You don’t need to adopt the whole thing to get value from its way of thinking about risk.

    Where AI genuinely helps (and where I keep it out)

    Guardrails are only half the picture. The other half is using AI where it actually earns its keep.

    Good fits

    • First drafts of routine content you’ll heavily edit, like event recaps or internal updates.
    • Brainstorming angles, headlines and subject lines to react to.
    • Summarizing survey comments or long reports so you can find themes faster, followed by your own read.
    • Repurposing approved content into different formats and lengths.
    • Helping with formulas, scripts and small automations when you’re building your own tools.

    Where I keep it out

    • Anything that requires knowing a specific person’s story.
    • Final messaging for sensitive or high-stakes moments.
    • Strategy itself. AI can help you pressure-test a plan, but it doesn’t know your board, your community or your history.

    AI is one tool among many. The marketers who’ll do best with it are the ones who already have strong judgment about audience, message and brand. The tool speeds up the work. It doesn’t replace knowing what good looks like.

    What to do this week

    If you have nothing in place yet, start small:

    • Send your team a three-line note: no personal data in unapproved tools, verify every fact, a human approves anything public.
    • Book 20 minutes to ask what tools people are using.
    • Draft the one-page guide using the checklist above.
    • Add AI review to your existing approval process, so nothing new needs to be invented.

    Those four steps cover most of the real risk. Everything else is refinement.

    If your team already uses brand templates, put the AI guide right next to them. Guardrails work best when they live where the work happens, a lesson I’ve learned building Canva brand templates for teams who aren’t designers.

    Key takeaways

    • AI is already in your team’s workflow, so the real question is who sets the rules.
    • Protect data, verify facts and keep a named human in charge of anything public.
    • Never use generated images or words to stand in for real people.
    • A one-page guide people read beats a long policy nobody opens.
    • Use AI where it saves time on routine work, and keep strategy and sensitive stories human.

    FAQ

    What does responsible AI in marketing mean?

    Responsible AI in marketing means using AI tools in ways that protect people’s data, keep content accurate, stay honest about what’s real and keep humans accountable for what gets published. It’s a set of team guardrails, not a single tool or setting.

    Do small marketing teams need an AI policy?

    Yes, but it can be one page. Small teams often carry the most risk because one person handles sensitive data, public content and approvals at once. A short written guide gives that person clear rules and protects the organization.

    Should marketers disclose when they use AI?

    Decide on a clear internal rule and apply it consistently. A sensible baseline is to disclose when AI substantially created an image, a voice or words presented as a real person’s, and to never publish AI-written quotes as if someone said them.

    Curious how I approach marketing, analytics and AI together? You can read more about my background.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want AI to save your team time without costing you trust?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • How to Roll Out a CRM Without Losing Your Team: CRM Implementation Best Practices

    A CRM rollout rarely fails on go-live day. It fails quietly, six months later, when half the team is back to tracking contacts in personal spreadsheets and the expensive new system holds a partial, outdated picture nobody trusts. I’ve seen enough technology projects to know the software is almost never the problem. People are. More precisely, the way we ask people to change is the problem. That’s why the CRM implementation best practices that matter most have very little to do with features.

    I helped shape a Salesforce CRM rollout at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Cloud, and before that I built a five-year technology plan at Tri-CAP that identified $350K in savings. Both taught me the same lesson: technology projects are change management projects with a software budget attached.

    Start with the problem, not the platform

    Before anyone books a demo, get leadership to agree on what’s broken. Not “we need a CRM,” but the specific pain:

    • “We can’t see every interaction a donor has had with us.”
    • “Program and development teams keep contacting the same people without knowing it.”
    • “Reporting to the board takes a week of spreadsheet work.”
    • “When a staff member leaves, their relationships leave with them.”

    Write down the three to five problems the CRM must solve. Those become your success criteria, your training priorities and your answer every time someone asks, “Why are we doing this?”

    Only then compare platforms, and score each one against your list. Ask vendors to demo your actual scenarios, not their favorite features. Ask about total cost, including licenses, implementation help, integrations and the staff time to run it. A cheaper system your team can manage often beats a powerful one nobody has time to maintain. That same lens is how a good technology plan finds savings: you stop paying for capability you’ll never use.

    CRM implementation best practices: plan the people side first

    Name a real owner and a sponsor

    A CRM needs two people: an executive sponsor who clears obstacles and protects the budget, and a day-to-day owner who knows the system inside and out. If the owner is “IT” or “everyone,” it’s no one.

    Map how work actually happens

    Sit with the people who will use the system and watch how they work today. Where do they write things down? What do they hate re-entering? What reports do they dread? You’ll find the shadow systems, the sticky notes and the spreadsheet tabs nobody admits to. The CRM has to be easier than those, or it won’t replace them.

    Recruit champions in every team

    Pick one respected person from each department to help test, give feedback and answer their colleagues’ questions. Peer champions carry more weight than any memo from leadership, and they spot workflow problems before launch instead of after.

    Get the data right before you migrate it

    Bad data is the fastest way to destroy trust in a new system. If the first thing a fundraiser sees is three duplicate records for their biggest donor, they’ll decide the CRM is broken and go back to their spreadsheet.

    A practical data checklist:

    1. Inventory every source: spreadsheets, email lists, old databases, event sign-ups and paper files.
    2. Decide what not to bring over. Old, incomplete or unusable records can be archived instead of migrated.
    3. Define required fields and standard formats for names, addresses, phone numbers and dates.
    4. De-duplicate before import, not after.
    5. Agree on definitions. What counts as an “active donor” or a “client served”? Write it down.
    6. Test with a sample and have real users check it before the full migration.

    That fifth item matters more than it looks. If two departments define the same word differently, your reports will contradict each other, and leadership will stop trusting the numbers. Clean definitions are the foundation for the metrics your board actually cares about.

    Launch in phases and train for the job

    The temptation is to configure everything, migrate everything and turn it all on at once. Resist it. Phased rollouts give people time to learn and give you time to fix what breaks.

    A phased approach that works

    • Phase 1: Core records. Contacts, organizations and basic interaction tracking for one or two teams.
    • Phase 2: Key workflows. Donations, program enrollment, event registration or sales pipeline, depending on your organization.
    • Phase 3: Reporting and dashboards. Built on data people have been entering consistently.
    • Phase 4: Automation and integrations. Email tools, forms, websites and finance systems.

    Automation comes last on purpose. Automating a process before people trust the data just spreads bad information faster.

    Train for the job, not the software

    Generic CRM training is where good intentions go to die. People don’t need a tour of every menu. They need to know how to do their five most common tasks.

    • Build short, role-based training: one session for fundraisers, one for program staff, one for managers.
    • Record each session and keep the recordings next to the CRM login, not buried in a shared drive.
    • Create one-page quick guides for the most common tasks.
    • Hold weekly open office hours for the first two months.
    • Make the CRM part of regular meetings. If the weekly pipeline review runs from the system, people will keep it current.

    That last point is the quiet secret of CRM adoption. When leaders use the system to run meetings, it becomes the source of truth. When they ask for a separate spreadsheet “just this once,” the rollout starts to slip.

    Measure adoption and keep improving

    Go-live is the start of the project, not the end. Track a few signals for the first six months:

    • Logins and active users by team.
    • Record completeness for required fields.
    • Duplicate rate over time.
    • Report usage: are leaders actually opening the dashboards?
    • User feedback: a short survey at 30, 90 and 180 days.

    When adoption lags in one team, go sit with them. Usually there’s a real workflow reason, like a missing field or a process that takes too many clicks, and fixing it earns more goodwill than any reminder email.

    This is where marketers with technical range help a lot. You don’t have to be a developer, but understanding how the system works, how data flows and how to build a simple report changes the conversation. It’s a big part of why I believe in being a T-shaped marketer.

    Key takeaways

    • CRM rollouts fail because of people and process far more often than software.
    • Define the specific problems the CRM must solve before you choose a platform.
    • Name a sponsor and an owner, and recruit champions in every team.
    • Clean, de-duplicate and define your data before migration.
    • Launch in phases, train by role and run real meetings from the system.

    FAQ

    What are the most important CRM implementation best practices?

    The most important practices are defining clear goals before choosing software, naming an executive sponsor and a system owner, cleaning data before migration, launching in phases, training by role and measuring adoption for at least six months after go-live.

    Why do CRM implementations fail?

    CRM implementations usually fail because staff don’t adopt them. Common causes include poor data quality, unclear ownership, generic training and leaders who keep asking for separate spreadsheets instead of using the system.

    How long does a CRM implementation take?

    It depends on size and complexity. A small organization with clean data can launch core features in a few months, while a larger rollout with migrations and integrations can take much longer. Plan for at least six months of adoption work after launch.

    If you’re weighing a CRM project and want a partner who speaks both marketing and technology, learn more about my background.

    / Work with Brittany

    Rolling out a CRM and want your team to actually use it?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • Digital Asset Management for Marketing Teams: Stop Losing Your Best Photos

    It’s 4:45 on a Thursday. The annual report goes to print tomorrow, and someone needs “that great photo from the volunteer day.” Everyone remembers it. Nobody can find it. It might be on a former coordinator’s phone, in a Google Drive folder called “Misc FINAL,” or on a hard drive in a drawer. So you use the stock photo instead, and a little bit of your story dies. That is the problem digital asset management for marketing teams solves. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s the difference between a team that reuses its best work and a team that keeps paying for it twice.

    I’ve led a company-wide digital asset management (DAM) rollout at Buyers Edge Platform, and I’ve organized an image repository from scratch at a nonprofit. The tools were different. The lessons were almost identical.

    What digital asset management for marketing teams actually means

    Strip away the vendor language and a DAM is a single, trusted home for your finished creative: photos, video, logos, templates, graphics, audio and brand documents. It’s trusted because three things are true about it:

    • Everything has a home. One place, not five.
    • Everything can be found. By someone who didn’t upload it, months later.
    • Everything is safe to use. You know it’s the current version and you have permission to publish it.

    That third point gets skipped, and it’s the one that matters most. A folder full of photos is storage. A folder full of photos where you know who is in them, whether they consented and which ones are approved for print is an asset library.

    You don’t need an enterprise platform to get there. Plenty of small teams run a solid DAM on a shared drive with good rules. The rules are the system. The software just enforces them.

    Signs your team needs a DAM yesterday

    If two or more of these sound familiar, you’re losing time and money every week:

    • People ask in Slack or email, “Does anyone have the logo?” more than once a month.
    • You have three versions of the logo, and at least one is a screenshot.
    • Great photos live on personal phones and leave when people do.
    • You’ve re-shot something you already had because nobody could find the original.
    • Nobody can answer, “Did this person agree to be on our billboard?”
    • Your designer spends real hours searching instead of designing.

    That last one is the quiet budget leak. Search time never shows up as a line item, but it’s paid for at a designer’s rate.

    Build the structure before you buy anything

    The most common DAM mistake I see is shopping for software first. A great tool with no structure just gives you a faster way to make a mess. Do this work on paper first.

    Start with how people search, not how you file

    Ask your team how they look for things. Usually it’s by program or campaign, by year or event, by content type (headshot, event, B-roll, logo) and by usage (print-ready, social, internal only). Your folder structure and your tags should mirror those questions.

    Keep folders shallow. Three levels is plenty. Let tags (metadata) do the heavy lifting, because a photo can live in only one folder but can carry many tags.

    Write a naming convention people will actually follow

    Here’s a pattern that works for most teams:

    YYYY-MM-DD_program-or-campaign_description_photographer_##

    So a file becomes 2026-04-02_food-shelf_volunteer-packing_bhoversten_014.jpg. It sorts by date automatically, it’s readable without opening it and it tells you who to ask. Write the convention on one page, pin it everywhere and keep it boring. Clever conventions die.

    Define the metadata that matters

    You don’t need 40 fields. You need the handful that answer real questions:

    1. Keywords: who, what, where, and the program it represents.
    2. Creator: photographer or designer, for credit and follow-up.
    3. Usage rights: owned, licensed (with terms and expiration) or restricted.
    4. Consent status: signed release on file, verbal only, or no release.
    5. Approval status: draft, approved or retired.

    Consent deserves its own spotlight. When you tell client stories, the release form can’t live in a filing cabinet across town from the photo. I wrote more about this in how to tell client stories with consent and dignity. Your DAM is where that promise gets kept or broken.

    How to roll out a DAM without a revolt

    The technology is the easy part. The hard part is changing habits that have worked “well enough” for years. Here’s the sequence I use.

    1. Pick one owner

    Not a committee. One person who owns the taxonomy, approves new tags and is allowed to say no. Shared ownership is how you end up with tags like “event,” “events,” “Event 2025” and “EVENTS-old.”

    2. Migrate the best, not the rest

    Resist the urge to import every file you’ve ever made. Start with the last two years of approved, high-use assets: the logo suite, current headshots, your top campaign photos and templates. Archive the rest in a read-only “legacy” folder. If nobody asks for it in a year, you have your answer.

    3. Make the right way the easy way

    If uploading correctly takes ten clicks and dropping a file on the desktop takes one, the desktop wins. Build upload presets, metadata templates and a short intake checklist. That was the principle behind the rollout I led at Buyers Edge: make the DAM the fastest way to get an approved file, not just the “correct” way.

    4. Train in 20 minutes, not two hours

    Show people how to find something, how to download the right version and how to add a new asset. That’s it. Record it, and put the recording inside the DAM.

    5. Retire the old places

    This is the step teams skip. If the old shared folder still works, people will use it. Set a date, announce it twice and then make it read-only.

    Keep it clean: the monthly 30-minute audit

    A DAM decays like a garden. Put a recurring 30 minutes on the owner’s calendar and run this checklist:

    • Review everything uploaded this month for naming and required tags.
    • Merge duplicate or near-duplicate tags.
    • Check licensed assets for upcoming expirations and pull anything expired.
    • Retire outdated logos, old headshots and superseded templates.
    • Look at what people searched for and didn’t find. That’s your next shoot list.

    That last item is my favorite. Your DAM tells you what content your organization wants and doesn’t have. It quietly becomes a planning tool for your content calendar.

    Choosing a tool: what to look for

    Once the structure exists, picking software gets much easier because you know what you need. Whether it’s a dedicated DAM platform or a well-governed shared drive, I look for:

    • Search that uses metadata, not just file names.
    • Permissions so internal-only or restricted assets stay put.
    • Version control so “final_v7” stops being a thing.
    • Easy sharing with outside partners, printers and press.
    • Integrations with the tools your team already lives in, like your design platform or CMS.
    • Exportable metadata, so you’re never locked in if you switch later.

    For a team of one to five people, a shared drive with strict conventions can carry you a long way. Once you’re coordinating multiple departments, contractors or locations, a dedicated platform usually pays for itself in search time alone.

    Key takeaways

    • A DAM is a single trusted home where assets can be found and are safe to use.
    • Design your folders, naming and metadata before you shop for software.
    • Track consent and usage rights next to the asset, not in a separate filing system.
    • Give the system one owner, migrate only your best work and retire the old folders.
    • Spend 30 minutes a month on cleanup, and treat failed searches as your next shoot list.

    FAQ

    What is digital asset management for marketing teams?

    Digital asset management for marketing teams is a system for storing, organizing, finding and governing creative files like photos, video, logos and templates. It combines one central library with naming rules, metadata, permissions and usage rights so anyone can find the approved version quickly.

    Do small teams need dedicated DAM software?

    Not always. A team of one to five can run an effective DAM on a shared drive with a clear naming convention, consistent tags and one owner. Dedicated software becomes worth it when multiple departments, contractors or locations share assets.

    How long does a DAM rollout take?

    For a small or midsize team, plan on four to eight weeks: one to two weeks to design structure and metadata, two to four weeks to migrate priority assets and a week or two to train people and retire old folders.

    If you want to see what organized creative looks like in practice, take a look at my photo and video work.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want your best photos to be findable, approved and ready to use?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • The One-Person Marketing Department Playbook for Nonprofits

    You’re the marketing department. You’re also the social media manager, the photographer, the web person, the newsletter writer and the person who gets asked to “just make a quick flyer” at 4:45 on a Friday. If you work at a nonprofit, there’s a good chance that description fits.

    A one-person marketing department isn’t a failure of planning. For many nonprofits and small organizations, it’s the budget reality. What makes or breaks the role is whether that one person has a system or just a longer to-do list. I’ve lived the small-team, wear-every-hat version of this work, and this is the playbook I’d hand anyone stepping into it.

    The hard truth about a one-person marketing department

    You can’t do everything. You can do the right things well and the rest on purpose.

    The trap is trying to match what bigger organizations do: daily posts on every platform, a weekly blog, a monthly newsletter, a video series, an annual report and full event support. Spread that across one person and everything ends up mediocre and late.

    Your job isn’t to do more. It’s to decide what matters, protect time for it and make everything else easier.

    Set direction: outcomes first, then channels

    Decide what marketing is for this year

    Before you touch a calendar, get leadership to agree on two or three outcomes marketing is responsible for. Not tactics. Outcomes. For example:

    • Increase volunteer sign-ups for a specific program
    • Grow the monthly donor base
    • Raise awareness of a service within a specific community
    • Support a capital campaign with consistent stories

    Then write down what you’re not responsible for, or what gets a lighter touch. This conversation is uncomfortable once and saves you from a hundred uncomfortable conversations later.

    If your organization blurs marketing and communications (most do), it helps to name which hat you’re wearing for which work. I break that down in strategic communications vs. marketing.

    Pick two or three channels and cut the rest

    A one-person shop should run two or three core channels well. Usually that’s:

    1. Your website. It’s the one channel you fully own. Keep it accurate, fast and clear about how to give, get help or get involved.
    2. Email. Your most direct line to supporters. A consistent, well-written email often does more than sporadic social posting.
    3. One or two social platforms. Choose where your audience actually is, based on your own data, not on what’s new.

    Everything else is optional. Keep other profiles accurate, with a clear bio and a link, but don’t feed them daily. A quiet, tidy profile beats an abandoned, messy one.

    Build systems that do the work for you

    This is where breadth pays off. Systems are what let one person work like three.

    Templates

    Build branded templates for the things you make most: social graphics, flyers, event signage, email headers and one-pagers. At Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Cloud, I built branded Canva templates so staff could create materials without starting from scratch or breaking the brand. Good templates turn “Can you make this for me?” into “Here’s the template. Have at it.”

    An organized image library

    Lost photos cost you hours. Set up a simple shared library with a clear folder structure (year, program, event) and a naming convention. Record consent status for any photo of a person. I organized an image repository in my current role for exactly this reason, and earlier led a company-wide digital asset management rollout at Buyers Edge Platform. Big team or tiny one, the principle holds: if you can’t find it, you don’t have it.

    A front door for requests

    Create one way to request marketing help: a short form that asks for the goal, audience, deadline and key details. It does two things. It stops requests from arriving by hallway, text and sticky note. And it gives you data on where your time actually goes, which you’ll want later.

    Repeatable content formats

    Pick three or four formats you can produce on repeat: a monthly client or volunteer story, a “by the numbers” update, a staff spotlight and an event recap. Formats cut decision fatigue and make planning almost automatic.

    Protect your time like it’s budget

    Because it is. A few rules I’d recommend:

    • Set a request lead time. Two weeks for standard requests, longer for print and video. Publish it. Hold to it kindly.
    • Batch your work. Write a month of social posts in one sitting. Edit photos in one block. Constant context switching quietly eats small teams alive.
    • Block focus time. Put two or three recurring blocks on your calendar for strategy and deep work. Treat them like meetings with your CEO.
    • Say “yes, and here’s the tradeoff.” When a new request lands, name what moves to make room for it. Leaders usually respond well to that, because it shows them the real cost.

    Show your impact and know when to get help

    Report monthly, on one page

    The one-person department is easy to undervalue because the work is spread so thin. Fix that with a short monthly report to leadership: three or four numbers tied to your agreed outcomes, one story that shows impact and one decision you need from them.

    Keep it short. A one-page report they read beats a 20-page deck they skim. I’ll go deeper on the metrics leaders actually care about in my next post.

    Bring in help with clear briefs

    You don’t have to do it all yourself, even as the only marketing staff member. Smart help includes:

    • Volunteers or interns for photography, event coverage or social scheduling, with clear guidelines and templates
    • Freelancers for specialized, high-stakes work like a major video or a website rebuild
    • Board members or partners with professional skills who can review or advise
    • AI tools for first drafts, transcription and resizing assets, with a human reviewing anything that goes public

    Outsourcing works best when you can write a good brief. That’s another reason the solo marketer needs range. You don’t have to be an expert in everything, but you need to know enough to direct the work. That’s the heart of being a t-shaped marketer.

    Key takeaways

    • A one-person marketing department needs a system, not a longer to-do list.
    • Agree on two or three outcomes with leadership, and name what you won’t do.
    • Run two or three core channels well instead of every channel poorly.
    • Templates, an organized image library, a request form and repeatable formats multiply your capacity.
    • Protect your time, report impact monthly and bring in help with clear briefs.

    Frequently asked questions

    How do you run a one-person marketing department?

    Agree on a few outcomes with leadership, focus on two or three core channels and build systems such as templates, a request form and an organized asset library. Batch your work and report results monthly on one page.

    What should a nonprofit marketer prioritize first?

    Prioritize the website, email and one or two social platforms where your audience is most active. Tie that work to the outcomes leadership agreed on, such as donations, volunteers or program awareness.

    When should a one-person marketing department ask for more help?

    Ask when important work is consistently late or skipped, when requests regularly exceed capacity or when a high-stakes project like a rebrand or website rebuild needs specialized skills. Request-form data makes that case far easier to prove.

    / Work with Brittany

    Running marketing solo and ready for a system that actually holds up?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • The T-Shaped Marketer: Why Breadth Plus Depth Wins

    Most marketing job descriptions I read are really three jobs stapled together. Brand, social, video, web, analytics and maybe “some CRM work.” Hiring managers know it’s a lot. They post it anyway, because that’s the work.

    The people who thrive in those roles aren’t generalists who dabble, and they aren’t specialists who refuse to touch anything outside their lane. They’re t-shaped marketers: broad enough to do the work across channels, deep enough in one or two areas to set direction. After 10+ years in marketing, I’m convinced the t-shaped marketer is the most useful person on a modern team, especially a small one.

    Here’s what that shape looks like, why it works, and how to build it or hire for it.

    What a t-shaped marketer actually is

    Picture the letter T. The horizontal bar is breadth: the range of skills you can pick up and use competently. The vertical bar is depth: the one or two disciplines where you’re the person others come to for judgment, not just execution.

    The idea isn’t new. Versions of it have floated around management and design circles for decades. But marketing has changed enough that it deserves a fresh look.

    A few distinctions matter:

    • Breadth is not dabbling. You should be able to ship real work across the bar, not just talk about it. If video is on your resume, you should be able to plan a shoot and cut a usable piece.
    • Depth is not a job title. It’s where your judgment is trusted when the stakes are high and the answer isn’t obvious.
    • The bars connect. The value lives in the overlap. A strategist who understands how a video gets made writes better briefs. An analyst who has built a website asks better questions about traffic.

    Why breadth matters on small teams

    On a small team, nobody hands you a tidy lane. Monday is a board report. Tuesday is a broken donation form. Wednesday is a photo shoot. Thursday someone needs a flyer by noon, and Friday you’re explaining to leadership why the newsletter open rate dipped.

    Breadth is what keeps that week from falling apart. Three practical reasons:

    1. Fewer handoffs. Every handoff is a chance for the idea to get diluted, delayed or lost. When one person can write the copy, design the graphic and schedule the post, the work stays coherent.
    2. Better briefs when you do outsource. You don’t have to be the best videographer in the state to hire one well. But you do need to know what a shot list is, how long editing really takes and what “make it pop” will cost you.
    3. Fewer vendor surprises. If you understand how a website is built, nobody can tell you a simple change requires a six-week project without you raising an eyebrow.

    I learned this early. My web design and development background means I don’t just use tools like WordPress, HTML and Figma. I can build with them. That changes the conversation with developers, agencies and IT teams. I’m not asking for magic. I’m asking for specific things.

    Why depth keeps breadth from turning into chaos

    Here’s the hard truth about pure generalists: they get busy, not better. Without a deep core, a broad marketer ends up as the department’s order-taker. Lots of output. Very little direction.

    Depth is what gives breadth a point of view. It’s the part of the T that asks “Should we do this at all?” before anyone asks “How fast can we do this?”

    Depth shows up in moments like these:

    • Leadership wants to post a reaction to a news story, and you know whether that helps or hurts the organization’s reputation.
    • The dashboard says traffic is up, and you know whether that traffic actually matters.
    • Someone wants AI to write every social post, and you know where it saves time and where it creates risk.

    Breadth gets the work done. Depth makes sure it’s the right work.

    My T, as a working example

    I’ll use myself here, because it’s the example I know best and it shows how the shape plays out in real jobs.

    The horizontal bar

    Content creation, branding, design, digital assets, social media, photography, videography, web and marketing technology. I’ve used all of these across nonprofit, agency and corporate roles. At Buyers Edge Platform, that breadth let me launch a corporate videography service line that brought in more than $60K in its first year, and lead a company-wide digital asset management rollout. Neither was purely a “video person” project or a “systems person” project. They were both.

    The vertical bar

    Strategic communications, analytics and AI. This is where I set direction. At Tri-County Action Program, I advised the executive team and the Board, built a five-year technology plan that identified $350K in savings, led a six-month transition to outsourced IT and finished a rebrand already underway. That’s depth doing its job: deciding what matters, then using breadth to deliver it.

    AI sits in my vertical bar, but I treat it as one tool among many. It’s useful when you know what good looks like. It’s risky when you don’t. That’s exactly why depth matters.

    If you want the longer version, my background and experience are on the About page.

    How to build (or hire) a t-shaped marketer

    If you’re building your own T

    You don’t build a T by collecting certifications at random. You build it on purpose. Here’s what I’d recommend to any marketer five or ten years in:

    1. Map your current shape honestly. List every skill you use. Mark each one “I can teach this,” “I can ship this” or “I can talk about this.” Only the first two count.
    2. Pick your vertical bar. Choose one or two disciplines where you want leaders to trust your judgment. Pick based on what you love and what organizations struggle to find, not what’s trendy this quarter.
    3. Fill the gaps that slow you down. Look at your last six months. Where did you wait on someone else, or ship something weaker because you didn’t know the craft? That’s your next horizontal skill.
    4. Build, don’t just use. Make a landing page. Set up a dashboard. Edit a short video start to finish. Building teaches you where the real constraints are.
    5. Back your depth with formal learning where it counts. I’m working toward a B.A. in Integrated Studies at St. Cloud State University (online, expected spring 2028), focused on strategic communications, business economics and marketing, because I wanted my vertical bar backed by more than experience.
    6. Show the connections. In interviews and reviews, don’t just list skills. Explain how one made you better at another.

    If you’re hiring one

    A resume full of tool names won’t tell you much. Ask questions that reveal both bars:

    • “Walk me through a project where you did the strategy and the execution. What would have gone differently if you’d only owned one of those?”
    • “What’s something you can build yourself that most marketers have to outsource?”
    • “Where do people come to you for a judgment call, not a deliverable?”
    • “Tell me about a time you told leadership not to do something. What happened?”

    Look for people who can show you the work, explain the reasoning and admit what they’d hand off. A good t-shaped marketer knows where their bar ends. You can see how that looks in practice in my portfolio of marketing work.

    Key takeaways

    • A t-shaped marketer pairs real breadth across channels with deep expertise in one or two areas.
    • Breadth cuts handoffs, improves briefs and protects you from vendor surprises.
    • Depth gives the work direction, so a broad marketer doesn’t become an order-taker.
    • Build your T on purpose: map it, pick your depth, fill the gaps that slow you down and build things.
    • When hiring, ask for judgment calls, not just tool lists.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is a t-shaped marketer?

    A t-shaped marketer has working skills across many marketing disciplines, such as content, design, social, video and web, plus deep expertise in one or two areas, such as strategy or analytics. The breadth handles execution. The depth sets direction.

    Is it better to be a specialist or a generalist in marketing?

    For most small and mid-sized teams, neither extreme is ideal. Specialists can struggle when the job spans many channels, and pure generalists can lack the judgment to set direction. The t-shaped model combines both.

    How do I become a t-shaped marketer?

    Map the skills you can actually ship, choose one or two areas to go deep in, and add new skills based on where you get stuck most often. Building real projects teaches faster than collecting certificates.

    / Work with Brittany

    Need a marketer who can set the strategy and still build the thing?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.