So What Do You Actually Do in Marketing?

Catherine Williams
Mar 20
3 min read

You know that question you get at every networking event: “So, what do you do?”

It has always been a hard one for me to answer.

Because if I give the high-level version, “I work in marketing,” it barely scratches the surface. But if I go into the details, people tend to check out somewhere between templates, email campaigns, and platforms.

And honestly, what does “marketing” even mean anymore?

So here it is. The version you did not ask for. What working in marketing in the commercial real estate world actually looks like.

By the Numbers

In the past four weeks:

382 emails sent
730 emails read, not including the ones I immediately delete
215 Teams chats and calls

That is roughly 92 hours spent just communicating.

Add in:

34 plus hours of meetings
Collaboration with 77 team members across the country

And that is with one week offline thanks to pneumonia. On a typical month, those numbers are likely even higher.

Which leaves about 34 hours in a four-week period to actually do the work. The designing, building, creating, strategizing, and problem solving.

That breaks down to about 8.5 hours a week.

Eight and a half hours to execute everything that falls under “marketing.”

So What Do I Actually Do?

Technically, my role is to "support brokerage efforts and execute strategic marketing initiatives across Cincinnati, Dayton, Louisville, and Cleveland."

In reality, it is organized chaos.

Mondays usually start with a reset. I review everything that came in late Friday or over the weekend:

New marketing requests
Business development opportunities
Long-term projects that quietly rolled into another week

Priorities shift quickly. What felt urgent last week can be replaced within hours.

From there, it becomes a mix of meetings, checklists, and constant recalibration. Some days I am in Cincinnati, other days I am in Dayton giving the team in-person time, but every day requires adjusting in real time.

A Snapshot From This Week

Just this week, I:

Researched marketing strategies for distressed and receivership properties
Designed a new template for a Cleveland industrial report
Uploaded Affordable Housing newsletters to the website
Built an industrial services brochure for the Louisville team
Redesigned a prospecting template for Cleveland
Created a site matrix for Dayton
Developed an activity report template highlighting marketing efforts, prospects, and comps
Started a new multifamily report template
Updated website content with recent media mentions
Helped create and send out the Cincinnati multifamily newsletter
Designed an 11x17 BOV placemat

And that does not include answering questions, troubleshooting issues, or stepping in wherever needed.

This is not a brag. It is just the reality.

Marketing, especially in commercial real estate, is not one lane. It is all of them.

The Part People Do Not See

The in-between moments never make the list, but they are constant:

Quick questions that turn into 30 minute conversations
Small edits that become full redesigns
Last minute collaborations to pull something together quickly

And honestly, some of the best parts of the job happen here.

What Marketing Really Means

It means being fluent in a lot of things at once.

Designing in Adobe.
Building presentations in PowerPoint.
Formatting documents in Word, which usually looks like clicking around until it works.
Managing email campaigns, social media, and website updates.
Understanding SEO and now AI optimization.

Learning and training on 15 to 20 different platforms at any given time.

It also means understanding workflows, prioritization, and how to support teams that are constantly moving.

While tools may be labeled user-friendly, but more often than not, marketing becomes the translator, the problem solver, and the one making it all actually work.

What People Get Wrong

Marketing is often seen as a support function... The team that makes things look good at the end.

But in reality, we sit much closer to the middle of everything.

We see the deals before they happen.
We understand the strategy behind the pursuit.
We help shape how opportunities are positioned, communicated, and ultimately won.

We are part creative, part operational, part strategic.

And a lot of the time, we are the connective tissue that keeps everything moving forward.

What I Have Learned

Commercial real estate marketing is not just about creating materials. It is about being adaptable, detail-oriented, and solutions-focused at all times.

It is fast-paced, unpredictable, and rarely perfect.

But that is also what makes it interesting.

If you work in this space, you probably already get it.

And if you do not, just know there is a lot more happening behind the scenes than “marketing” might suggest... I promise you we don't have magic wands.

-CC