Why the best marketers doubt themselves, and the worst ones never do

I open LinkedIn and within two minutes I get an uncomfortable feeling. I am not exaggerating. It is a pattern I have recognised for more than ten years. In 2016, in 2022, today. Always the same feeling: people making grand statements about the profession, people celebrating themselves, people who once proved me right and now package that neatly in a post or ramble away on some podcast. They seem to shout that they have the best solution for everything. And I doubt myself. For a long time I thought that was a shortcoming. That it meant I did not really belong in marketing. Good fuel for imposter syndrome^*. I seemed like an imposter among the imposters on LinkedIn. Huh? I know better now. Doubt is not the opposite of competence. It is often the proof of it. See also the Dunning-Kruger effect^²

Self-doubt from the very beginning

I started as a student at an e-commerce company doing basic copy-paste work, without a degree, because my parents had rightly decided that if I still wanted to study, I could pay for it myself. I financed my own education through distance learning combined with working, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in business management. In the meantime I worked my way up to manager and right-hand to the managing director. Both at that first employer and the next place I ended up, where I took full or partial responsibility for marketing, we brought in marketing agencies several times over the years. For extra capacity, a fresh perspective, because a specific market required more specialised knowledge, or because I doubted whether I had enough capacity to handle it all myself. Every time I could see through the fairy tales, and often we eventually reached the conclusion that I had predicted the approach and the outcome. I do not want to bash marketing agencies too much, because it is not black and white. But they do seem to have too little time to truly understand the business model or product well enough to know what approach is actually needed. I genuinely find that a shame.

But still. LinkedIn, the podcasts, the thought leaders, the people who are always sure of themselves and build their own name as a brand, who respond to every trending topic with an opinion that makes no sense but looks good. The disruptors and the growth hackers. All those buzzwords give me a real aversion. I do believe in networking, but not in networking for the sake of networking, not in sharing every professional fart to show your connections who you are and who you associate with. That is not who I am. And because it is not who I am, I wondered whether I simply did not understand it, or whether there was something lacking in me. I felt like I had to choose between my integrity and becoming a successful marketer. At a certain point I thought: will I eventually be found out? Would I not be better off as a baker? Or which professions are actually safe from having to play the big shot on LinkedIn?

Career coaching gave me insight

In 2023 a lot came at me at once. New life, farewell to life, a new job in the chaos. I could not just sit there with those doom-laden thoughts in the back of my mind. So I started career coaching with Nathalie Vandelannoote, career counsellor, not because I necessarily wanted to leave the profession, but because I wanted to understand whether I belonged in it. Do my talents actually match what I do? Through aptitude tests and personality assessments we reached a conclusion I intellectually already knew but had never truly believed: analytical thinking, strategic thinking and language skills are my strongest traits. And that self-doubt, that tendency to never simply be certain of my own approach, is not a shortcoming. It is what sets me apart from the rest. Marketers are often seen outside their field as smooth talkers. A marketer who constantly echoes what everyone else is saying no longer seems to look critically at their own approach and focuses more on the feeling around their personal brand than on what is actually right. I struggle with that because it feels like it undermines my integrity.

What LinkedIn actually teaches me

I still go on LinkedIn sometimes. The feeling is always the same. LinkedIn is a good platform, especially for marketers: personal branding is a legitimate way to make your expertise visible, and people who are good at it deserve respect for that. But LinkedIn measures activity. Whoever posts regularly, engages and stays visible is rewarded by the algorithm, whoever is busy behind the scenes doing the actual work less so. For some people that visibility comes naturally, it fits who they are. For me it does not. I would rather do good work than post about it for attention. And that feeling of mismatch with what the platform expects made me think for a long time that there was something lacking in me. In the meantime I do now write about my experiences, because it can help my business. But playing the LinkedIn game is still a step too far for me right now. As long as that is not necessary, I will not do it. Thanks to this approach I hear from clients and potential clients that my honesty and straightforwardness is exactly what they value. I have never had a client say I lied or twisted the truth, and that is my anchor when the doubt returns.

Why self-doubt is useful in this profession

Marketing appears to be a field full of people claiming to have invented hot water, marketing agencies that treat industry benchmarks as sacred without understanding how your product or company actually works. Consultants who already have the answer before they have heard the question, and reports that look good but measure the wrong things. Marketing people who are essentially salespeople in disguise. Self-doubt forces you to be concrete, to show the data, to maintain nuance. When you doubt yourself you will not make empty promises. You are simply honest about what you expect.

What my father unknowingly taught me

My father had a muscle disease, overcame two cancers but unfortunately lost the third in 2023. Less than a year before he died he completed the pilgrimage to Compostela. Less than a month before he died he simply kept going to work. He did all of that without asking for sympathy. Those who want to read more can do so here. His life was of course more than all those setbacks, but the way he faced those setbacks taught me an enormous amount. Self-pity holds you back, it does not move you forward. I used to think I would maybe have my own company ‘one day’ but that moment taught me I had to go for it immediately. I am glad I decided to become self-employed without waiting until I felt certain enough. Otherwise I would still be waiting. And this marketer with the classic imposter syndrome turns out to be paradoxically standing firmly in his shoes because of it.