Back in the Middle Ages, the guilds (organizations of craftsmen) developed the apprenticeship system so master craftsmen could teach the new generation of practitioners the skills they’d need to carry on the trade. Those guilds are long gone, but there’s still a need to teach professionals the “secrets” they need to perform successfully.

Today, instead of masters, we call them mentors. While a less formal practice today, these mentors are just as important and influential in professions as their counterparts were in the guilds.

No matter what your age, if you’re new to marketing you’d be classified as an apprentice by the old guilds. And if you’ve been involved in marketing for a decade or more, even though you’re still learning yourself, you can probably consider yourself a mentor, a resource for the newbies.

If you’re lucky enough to have a mentor, you can learn a lot about the profession very quickly. As a copywriter, one of my best mentors was the speechwriter/publications editor at the insurance company where I worked many years ago.

Her background was fine arts writing and, typically, fine arts writing and writing for advertising don’t mix. After all, copywriters do grammatically “sinful” things like omit periods at the end of our headlines. But I learned sound, practical practices and techniques from my mentor.

Of course, to learn, you have to be open to learning. Don’t overlook the valuable insight a mentor can teach you. If you’re a mentor yourself, you have to understand your “apprentices” might be resistant to accepting the knowledge and insider information you have for them. Do what you can. It may take months or years for the ideas to sink in. (Unfortunately.)

The best situation is when people with advertising and marketing knowledge combine what they know and learn from each other.

Quite often, I see marketing professionals who rise through the ranks of the organization. They have no marketing training, but they’re promoted into a marketing job. (This isn’t restricted to financial services.) There are no mentors around who can teach them. What do you do if you’re in that situation?

Look for marketing seminars to attend. Every industry, banking included, holds conferences and seminars. There are plenty of general marketing conferences, too. Take what you learn there and adapt it to your job. Network with other marketers you meet and learn from their experiences and their past mistakes.

Our mentors make us better able to perform our jobs as marketing professionals. Find a mentor to help you. Share your knowledge with others.

Either way, you’ll be a better marketing professional yourself.