Young Entrepreneur Council October 27, 2020 As today’s digital landscape has shifted, with increased access to and advances in technology, and with more companies switching to online operations, marketers’ roles and responsibilities have shifted right along with it. Here are some of the skills and competencies that are now critical for marketers to succeed in today’s increasingly digitized world.
What’s one newer skill or competency that is now critical for a marketing role in today’s digital landscape, and why?
1. Creative Initiative
I always see it as a good sign when a marketer comes to me with ideas. There’s a serious lack of engagement between marketing teams and business owners. Instead of letting the orders come down, I like seeing team members think creatively and come up with suggestions for our weekly meeting. – John Turner, SeedProd LLC
2. Adaptability
The ability to adjust is essential. There are a lot of skills that help a marketer achieve set milestones. IT skills, people management and creativity are just a few of them. But one definitely stands out and that’s the ability to be nimble. The marketing industry is changing on a year-by-year basis. You have to stay in touch with where your target market’s attention goes if you want consistent success. – Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS
3. Voice Search Optimization Skills
Voice search optimization is one of the newer skills that is critical for the digital marketing role. More and more people are now opting for in-home smart speakers and voice-enabled devices like mobile phones, speakers, vehicles and more. Even the SEO strategy is now shifting toward a voice search-optimized result. Not knowing how to optimize your content for voice search can be a major disadvantage. – Josh Kohlbach, Wholesale Suite
4. AI Awareness
Marketers need to be aware of artificial intelligence in general. Today, we have numerous marketing activities like advertising relying on AI to help drive personalization. You need to be knowledgeable about what AI is, how it works and how to apply it to your business. It’s also critical to be aware of its drawbacks so that you don’t rely on it completely. – Blair Williams, MemberPress
5. Social Media Marketing Skills
Though not necessarily new, social media marketing has definitely taken over for most businesses in terms of their marketing. It’s no longer for younger generations to use for communication and swapping memes. Now, businesses use social media to market their products and services and build themselves from the ground up. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
6. An Omnichannel Focus
There’s no doubt that marketers need to know how to reach customers across multiple platforms. It’s no longer enough to get people’s attention on your website. Social media and email are both essential to the success of your marketing efforts. When I see someone who is versed in multiple platforms, I can tell that they are going to be a good fit for our company. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
7. The Ability to Nurture Leads
An essential skill is the ability to nurture leads. With hard selling and cold calling basically things of the past, lead nurturing is a must-have, especially in today’s digital landscape. It involves an understanding of what types of content need to be sent to someone, depending upon where they are in the buyer journey. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
8. An Understanding of Lead Attribution
It’s important to understand lead attribution and focus on cost per acquisition instead of just cost per click and cost per impression. If you can determine the cost to acquire a new client through an online marketing campaign and have proper attribution set up to determine which ad platform and actual ad resulted in the sale, you’re able to minimize marketing costs and increase scalability. – Bryan Citrin, Chiropractic Advertising
9. Data Science and Analytics
It’s common for many businesses to be sitting on a vast amount of data but not use it. However, data science and analytics are changing the digital marketing landscape by making it possible to process these vast data sets to generate powerful insights. As a marketer, you need to be aware of this new field and hire people to leverage it in your business. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
10. The Ability to Influence
The ability to influence is a very vital skill that every marketer should strive to develop. With the power of the internet, “one to many” is the quickest and most efficient way of communication that allows a brand, individual or company to harness the benefits of economies of scale. And those who can influence the masses can easily scale and grow their business with less investment of both time and money. – Kelly Richardson, Infobrandz
11. Content Writing Skills
Brilliant writing skills and content creation are one requirement that has become extremely important in today’s digital landscape. If you want people to know about your business, it’s important that you appear in the top search results of Google. While that is possible with good SEO skills, it’s important to note that good SEO isn’t possible without good content. – Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
12. An Understanding of Technology
Understanding technology is a must. Most marketers today aren’t going to be really effective unless they know how to place tracking pixels, do minor SEO, run online ads and even help build marketing tools with the engineering team. Technology gives marketers more scale, efficiency and insights than they ever had before — it’s foolish if you can’t use it. – Andy Karuza, LitPic
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