It is no surprise that the world of marketing is radically evolving. That makes our careers as marketers all the more interesting. No time could be better than today when we can experiment, innovate, and fire our creativity.
However, the new-age marketing industry and the growth rate demand that the modern marketer has skill sets that are different from traditional marketers. The desire to keep learning, acquiring, and adding new skills needs to be an integral part of the growth process for marketers.
In this article, we highlight five such skills that marketing professionals must add to their arsenal in 2022 and onwards.
Storytelling
One of the core areas of work for a marketing professional revolves around content because every brand, every product needs a story, a narrative. How can you tell your potential customers or clients a story that is relatable to them? How do you ensure that your brand feels familiar? Through right storytelling!
The end-to-end gamut of storytelling also includes the creation and publication of this content with the use of multiple strategies involving social media, outdoor, advertising, paid promotions, search engine marketing (SEM), Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), etc.
As a marketing professional, you must be able to draft the right story and tell it to your customers in the right way and in ways that you are heard.
Here are a few tools that we can recommend to you:
Content Management platforms - WordPress, HubSpot, Wix, and SquareSpace
Content proofreading - Grammarly, Hemingway Editor
Website optimization- Google Optimize
Analytical Skills
Marketing today has progressed to being a blend of creativity and technicality. A key weapon in your marketing arsenal is the skill to comprehend the humongous amount of data available at your tips.
Even if you are naturally not quite analytical, investing your time to understand key metrics and make data-informed decisions is important. Thankfully, a lot of tools these days give ready reports that are easily consumable. Even then, as a marketing professional, it is important to understand what metrics to look at. Else, you might get lost in a sea of data and insights that are irrelevant to your business.
Here are a few suggestions for you:
Technology & Automation
Today's marketers are expected to be technically savvy. The entire digital landscape is dotted with hundreds of marketing automation tools, be it email marketing, website, SMS marketing, landing and product pages, UX & UI, content management, design and graphics, analytics, video marketing, online ads, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, etc. The list is endless.
As a contemporary marketer, you need to be able to find your way around different marketing automation platforms. Anything that helps you offer memorable and engaging customer services and personalize the buyer's journey is great to have as part of your skill set.
Our suggested automation tool sets include:
Unbounce, ConvertFlow for lead generation, capture and conversion
Facebook Events and Eventbrite for Event Marketing
Google Keyword Planner and AdStage for online advertising
MailChimp for email marketing
Collaboration and Communication
These two skills have been an integral part of a conventional marketer too. However, in the modern age, you need to ensure that your tools allow seamless, agile, and secure communication. Since most marketing efforts today are about teamwork, digital tools need to be leveraged for optimal results.
Our suggestions for power-driven team communication and collab are:
Project Management Skills
There is so much happening in a marketing team that you can easily lose track. Ideas get thrown around. Different elements of a campaign are being managed by different individuals and teams. If not careful, this can tip towards unmanageable chaos. So how do you deal with that?
Tap into your project management skills. Or even, choose one of the tools from below.
To summarize, as a marketer, you must be open to learning and evolving just like the industry to remain at the top of your professional competency.