You're probably underestimating your experience
You know more than you think you do.
That's something I see constantly in coaching conversations with experienced marketers. It came up again in my Unearth Your Story sessions recently, where we looked at the strengths and experience people have built up over their careers, much of which they'd quietly stopped noticing.
There's a reason for that. The more experienced you get, the less aware you become of how much you actually know. Things that once took research and careful thought eventually become instinctive. You can spot what's missing in a marketing problem, tell when the positioning isn't right, or know a campaign won't work before it's launched, all without quite realising that's a skill. It just feels obvious.
It isn't.
"The more natural something becomes, the easier it is to underestimate it."
Experience has a funny way of hiding itself
Earlier in your career, you noticed your learning. You could see yourself getting better at campaigns, platforms, writing, presenting to stakeholders.
As you get more experienced, that learning stops being visible. You start drawing on hundreds of experiences without consciously thinking about them - campaigns that worked and didn't, difficult stakeholders, restructures, mistakes, moments with no playbook where you had to figure it out anyway.
All of that builds judgement. And judgement is hard to put on a CV.
You don't just know more, you see things differently
An experienced marketer isn't necessarily the one who knows every new tool or tactic. They might know fewer of them than someone earlier in their career. But they ask better questions - who are we actually trying to reach, is this really the problem, are we measuring what matters.
Those questions come from pattern recognition. You've likely seen a version of this problem before, so you're not starting from scratch.
The catch
The more natural something feels, the easier it is to think "anyone could do that." They might be able to do the task. They may not have the context to know which task to do in the first place, and that's the real difference.
Anyone can write a LinkedIn post. The expertise is knowing whether LinkedIn is the right channel and what you want the reader to do next. Anyone can use AI to produce a marketing plan. The expertise is knowing whether the plan makes sense. As the tools get easier to access, the thinking behind them becomes more valuable, not less.
Your experience is more than your job titles
We tend to reduce our experience to a list of titles. But your experience isn't the jobs you've had, it's everything you learned getting there - the industries, the customers, the mistakes, the people, the judgement built from all of it.
"Your experience isn't the list of jobs you've had. It's everything you've learned along the way."
This gets harder when the industry keeps changing, as it is right now with AI. Watching someone talk confidently about the latest tool can make you feel like you're falling behind. But knowing every new tool isn't the same as being a good marketer. As AI makes execution easier, what comes from experience, judgement, prioritisation, knowing when not to do something, becomes more valuable. That's not something you can download.
Start recognising it
A few questions worth sitting with: what do people come to you for? What do you notice that others don't? What mistakes have you learned not to make anymore? What do you know now that you wish you'd known ten years ago?
There's probably more there than you realise.
Your experience isn't the thing you need to leave behind. It's the thing you need to understand, articulate and build on. The goal isn't to be the marketer you were ten years ago, or someone younger who knows every new tool. It's to be the marketer you are now, with everything you've learned. Sometimes that just takes a little time to unearth your story.
FAQs
Why do experienced marketers underestimate their own knowledge? Because expertise becomes instinctive over time. Once something stops feeling effortful, it stops registering as a skill.
Is experience less valuable now that AI can do so much execution? No, it's more valuable. AI can produce output, but it can't tell you whether that output is right for the situation. That's judgement.
How can I start articulating my own experience? Notice what you do without thinking, what people come to you for, and what advice you're regularly asked to give.
I'm Debbie Gainsford, a marketing advisor, mentor and coach with over 25 years of experience helping businesses and marketers grow. I've built and led marketing teams, launched products, developed strategies and worked across technology, SaaS, media and global organisations. Today, I help growing businesses make smarter marketing decisions and support marketers to build confidence, develop their skills and navigate change, bringing practical experience, honest perspective and a focus on what actually drives results.
I offer one to one coaching sessions with marketers. You can find out more and book a discovery call here.
