In response to new technology and shifting buyer expectations, the discipline of digital marketing is fast growing. Because digital marketing is such a broad field, the skills required to thrive are numerous and diverse.
A successful digital marketer will be able to adapt rapidly and learn on their own, as well as pivot into various digital occupations. As a marketer you will be working with a variety of teams and clients, so you will need to be able to communicate well and form great teams.
If you are thinking about a career in marketing, you might be wondering if your abilities and professional qualities are a good match. Here are some important marketing skills and techniques offered by marketing experts to assist career-minded marketers.
1. Justin Herring – YEAH! Local
1. A Marketing Strategy Based on Data Analysis
Marketers nowadays are swamped with data, and the most effective marketers understand how to distinguish between vanity and useful indicators and how to utilize data to inform their decisions. Unfortunately, 66 percent of marketing executives claim their employees lack data literacy, making analytical marketers more important than ever.
Successful marketers can utilize data generated by marketing automation software and other analytics tools to guide choices about all elements of their strategy and campaigns.
Marketers must comprehend the key performance indicators (KPIs) that lead to the results they seek and be able to utilize data to better their output, whether they’re in a specialized function, such as writing or design, or a more general role.
2. Understanding of Conversion Rate Optimization
Marketers must deliver outcomes and consistently enhance those results. In the end, boosting conversion rates is the goal. The idea is to engage buyers sufficiently so they convert, whether it’s on a landing page, in an ad campaign, or in an email workflow. Conversion rates below 3% suggest underperforming efforts, thus marketers who can steadily enhance conversion rates can offer value to their clients’ businesses.
Matthew Schmidt – Diabetes Life Solutions
What I’d share with any marketer is the following:
Be creative, and think outside the box whenever possible. Your competitors are constantly trying to innovate so you better do the same. Thinking of ways you can do things, or how to outwork others will ultimately lead to you landing more business, or slowly losing business and possibly going out of business.
You truly need to focus on what your consumers ‘want and need’ from your business and then think of creative ways to deliver solutions. Also, you’ll want to create a different sales funnel or sales path for the consumers that’s unique, and a complete 180 from competitors. Most consumers like creative ideas and solutions, so don’t be afraid to get uncomfortable and stray from the norm.
Vinitha Agarwal – Burial Insurance Pro
The key skill that I feel every Marketer should absolutely master is COMMUNICATION. Having communication skills is a must in the present, and in the future. Consumers and your clients are evolving and being able to communicate with them using their preferences will be the difference in closing a sale or losing a client.
What I mean is that everyone has different preferences on how they choose to communicate. Some like emails, others like text messages, and some may prefer to speak over the phone or on Zoom. Being able to meet your clients’ needs has never been more important.
Once you can establish how a client wants to be dealt with, you also need to make sure you’re communicating with them in terms that they understand. It’s extremely important to tailor the conversation around the personality of whom you’re communicating with. If you aren’t doing these types of things, I guarantee that your competitors are.
Amanda Thomas – Konstruct Digital
As someone that’s worked with hundreds of marketers through my career, here are the skills and tools I believe all marketers should master:
Skills:
(1) Presentation Skills – you’ll often have to “sell” your ideas or pitch them to get funding. Being able to clearly communicate your strategy, how it will work, and the potential ROI is key.
(2) Data Analysis – what separates good marketers from excellent ones is their ability to analyze data, dig in, and use data to tell a story.
(3) Communication Skills – being able to “manage up” in your communication makes a big difference not only in your career but also in your ability to get work approved. Also, become adept at understanding the question-behind-the-question. Those that can figure out the root question and solve it are often the ones that move up in their careers.
Tools:
(1) Analytics and BI Tools – Tying into my recommended skills above, being able to adeptly use various analytics and BI tools without having to rely on other teams can make a big difference. Tools like this might include Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, Power BI, and Others. It will depend on the tech stack of your company. Being able to independently use these tools means you’ll have the ability to dig in and understand the drivers behind those numbers better.
(2) Project Management Tools – executing marketing campaigns successfully often means a lot of moving parts.
Carlos Obregon – Bloom Digital Marketing
As a marketer, there are a number of tools and skills that will make you more efficient and will save you time and stress!
My most used tool by a wide margin is Google Analytics. The amount of actionable data you can extract and act upon is enormous. Google analytics can be customized to include only the data points that matter to you. Whether that is Ecommerce sales, subscriptions, downloads or any other metric you can be sure it can be tracked by GA.
Among some interesting metrics that I have set up are store visits and calls to the business. With store visits you can actually track how many people went to your place of business, you just need to make sure you have your Google my business account verified and connected to GA.
Omar Sayyed – Ties
You should know Analytics in and out. You can’t grow your company or site without having the correct data. Make sure you master the basics first.
Tyler Cooper – Socratik
Every marketer should master keyword research. The ability to know exactly how your target audience is searching for your product or services is extremely powerful. Having this data at your fingertips allows marketers to make informed decisions about their marketing strategy. This is especially true for efforts like content marketing where you’re able to directly address your target audience’s biggest pain points.
Keyword research is not only important for SEO and content marketing. It can also help marketers understand the latest trends. Google maintains historical search volume trends in their database, so one can easily understand if interest in their product or service is growing or shrinking.
Some keyword research tools that I find extremely useful and worth mastering are SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Keywords Everywhere. You can also find keyword data directly from the Google Ads Keyword Planner; however, an active ad campaign is required in order to see search volume numbers.
Bill Widmer – Adventures On The Rocks
The most important skills for a marketer to master in 2022 are pretty obvious; SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing.
However, every single one of these disciplines can take a LONG time to truly master. In my opinion, it’s best to become good at all of them and master one or two.
It really depends on your goals.
Are you looking to be a freelancer who gains clients? Pick one thing and get really good at it.
Are you a marketer for a company? Learn a bit of everything and utilize your team (if you have one) to master individual parts of it.
Ultimately, the skills that matter are knowing how to get your company in front of the eyeballs of as many ideal customers as possible. There are lots of ways to do that.
As for tools, some of the most important tools for marketers are Ahrefs, Surfer SEO, and any of the email marketing tools like ConvertKit. Also, AI is becoming very prevalent in the online content world, so learning a tool like Jarvis can be helpful.
Chris Castillo – Propel Digital Media Solutions
In the world of marketing, understanding your customers and the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the people you are marketing to is probably the single most important skill to master. For decades, the companies that could empathize and connect most with the consumer or target audience have always been the most successful. This includes being user-centric when creating content, regardless of what medium that content is being published to.
When it comes to tools, I think really understanding whatever tool you use to track traffic and user engagement is really important. For most, that tool is Google Analytics. What I see a lot of people struggle with is implementing accurate attribution to marketing efforts.
Without proper attribution, in place, it’s nearly impossible to make data-driven decisions about marketing efforts in place. When you can implement accurate attribution, and you have behavioral event-based tracking in place, you can really get a ton of insights from your analytics.
Another tool that I think is highly underutilized is Google Search Console. Google provides you with so much data that you can use to improve your marketing and expand your reach and visibility – you just have to know how to look for that data. So mastering Google Search Console and how to extract very specific data is a highly practical skill.
Lastly, I think every marketer should understand how social media remarketing works because remarketing can be used in combination with virtually any other marketing effort to improve business outcomes.
Kevin Dam – Aemorph.com
If you’re a b2b business looking to grow your business then spending your time effectively is an important decision you need to think about and strategise properly on.
For B2B marketers you need to master LinkedIn Social Selling. This is a completely overlooked area for most businesses because it’s seen as a professional network and “expensive” to advertise on, however, the quality of the audience is much higher since they’re on the platform for professional reasons.
Some use it for changing careers and roles, while others are looking for services (at least could be open to it). Spend time updating your profile to showcase what you can do and engage potential readers by treating it like your sales page.
Another area you should master is developing relationships & partnerships with other businesses that are complementary to yours. As an example, one of the areas I spend time on is SEO training.
I was fortunate at the time to connect with a training academy that was looking for a trainer so I put my hand up to take on the challenge. After taking 9 months to get my certification I now train once a month in front of 20+ individuals and this increases my company’s visibility and generates warm enquiries.
