Essential Digital Skills for Savvy Marketers
Do you have what it takes to be a digital marketer?
Known as a volatile platform, digital marketing lives in the constant state of evolution. New trends and innovation emerge on a daily basis and practically transform the way business operates and interacts with their target audience. Still, one thing is left for certain: modern digital marketers need to be able to adapt and improve. As traditional skills and techniques become less relevant, today’s marketers must adjust their strategies in order to remain successful in a modern business landscape.
When it comes to marketing, the constant change of consumer behavior puts focal emphasize on dynamic user-experience as well as a variety of information and knowledge readily accessible on digital space. Whether you’re trying to build a diverse team or simply looking for the perfect hire, let’s take a look at what we think of as the most essential skills that digital marketers must have in the current marketing landscape.
Digital Marketing Hard Skills
What are the skills that a digital marketer should possess in the current market scenario?
Content Creation
There is no doubt, content marketing is a fundamental element of effective digital marketing. 91% marketers said they use content marketing as their overall strategy with 84% of people expect brands to produce new content regularly. No wonder, most marketers identified content creation and curation as their most desired skills.
Obviously, content of extreme value helps attracting leads and increases the chance to convert them into clients. Although one can argue that not all marketers are content creators, still, digital marketers must be able to effectively communicate their ideas to customers and business partners, which essentially requires good if not excellent content writing skill.
Data Analytics
As data-driven marketing becomes an integral part of business growth, the importance of analytics also rises. Naturally, with the amount of data being created in the digital space every day, skills to understand and analyze the data are obviously on demand.
Data analysis helps brands assess the performance of their campaigns, control the costs per result, evaluate what strategies to apply based on user-interaction as well as determine the optimal digital platforms to use for their campaigns.
Social Media Marketing
Another vital component in digital marketing is social media. Social media has transformed the way people interact with brands online. Today, marketers use social media to accomplish a number of goals, from brand building to lead generation and increase profits.
Another reason is to stay connected with the audience and nurture them into a loyal community. Brands can keep them engaged by sending personalized message and content via various social media channels. While proficiency to effectively understand and use social media might not be a necessity yet, but it’s also no longer acceptable for modern marketers to be oblivious to the power of social media.
Digital Marketing Soft Skills
Unlike hard skills, soft skills are harder to measure. Soft skills might be less specific and (sometimes) harder to master than hard skills, but they represent how a marketer will perform.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is one of the most intangible, yet important skills sought by digital marketers. Marketers with high emotional intelligence can recognize what interests a customer, what delights or frustrates them, and ultimately what influences them to make a purchase. Moreover, marketers with this skill are also able to relate to customers, which translates to a more powerful brand messaging.
Team Player
Marketing success relies on team members who work in unison to achieve common goals and overall business growth. That’s why it’s imperative for digital marketers to have close professional bonds with their colleagues. Marketers with strong collaboration skills understand how their role fits into the team. After all, the best campaigns are created through team effort by a group of people with different expertise.
Flexibility
Modern marketers must constantly take on new responsibilities in regards to the eruptive nature of digital market. Growth is critical and that’s why marketers should have the ability to evolve. Flexibility is important for digital marketers to quickly adapt themselves to unpredictable development.
Bottom Line
As people around the world are spending more time online, marketers must also adjust their skills accordingly. It is no longer enough to just know how to design billboards, leaflets, and handouts, since modern world demands a modern marketing approach.
It is also important to consider improving both hard and soft marketing skills. Granted, experience and abilities are important, but it’s often the personal qualities that separate a decent marketer from an exceptional one.
