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6 Basic Skills Every Marketer Should Possess

This article is more than 8 years old.

In the wide world of marketing, there are a ton of things that you could learn how to do.

The explosion of digital marketing has left us with hundreds of specialized roles, skills, and niche areas for marketing professionals.

One marketer might know all there is to know about setting up a compelling SMS campaign. Another marketer could be a savant in the area of removing manual penalties. Even though these two marketers reside in the same general industry — marketing — their skills, tasks, knowledge base, and daily experience are vastly different.

It is necessary for every marketer to specialize. However, if you focus on only your area of knowledge, you exclude the wide world of marketing in general.

This lack of awareness might cause you to be short sighted or myopic.

You might develop incorrect solutions for a client’s problem. You might not see how your work contributes to a broader whole. Worse, you may find yourself facing job termination if your particular skill becomes outmoded.

By all means, stay specialized. It makes you a more valuable marketer. But at the same time, learn crucial cross skills that will make you not only valuable, but powerful and effective.

Here are six basic skills that will enable you to become a better marketer.

1. You should possess a working knowledge of content marketing.

Content marketing is at the core of today’s digital marketing revolution.

Think of it like this. There is no shortage of marketing techniques:  Start Pinterest.

Post to Twitter more often. Do Slideshares. Write LinkedIn content. Develop a YouTube library. Write longform blog posts. Host webinars.”

What do all those things, and about a million other marketing activities, have in common? They are all a form of content marketing.

Content marketing is nothing more than sharing content — text, video, SMS, PowerPoint, infographics, whatever — to get eyeballs, attention, and interest from your target audience.

No matter how you define it, content marketing is a core methodological strategy for marketing today. You may not be able to flesh out its every detail, but you should at least know how it works.

2.  You should grasp the tenets of conversion optimization.

Too few people know what conversion optimization is, let alone its vast significance in marketing.

The idea is simple:  Create the most compelling experience for your user in order to encourage them to take the right action on your website.

Conversion rate optimization is often referred to by its acronym, CRO. It can be applied to landing pages, email marketing, checkout processes, product pages, home pages, and even to the entire marketing funnel.

Conversion optimization is the end goal of much of marketing — getting users to do what you want them to do. The better you understand CRO’s importance and basics, the better you will become as a marketer.

3.  You should have the ability to read and interpret data.

There’s no such thing as effective marketing without data. Marketers live, breathe, and work in a sea of data. It’s how we do our thing.

W. Edwards Deming, a statistician of the last century, said it bluntly:

Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.

Marketing is awash acronyms and expressions that deal forth data in an unending supply. Bounce rate, CTR, monthly uniques, dwell time, load time, DA, impressions, page views, etc.

Marketers should know what these terms mean, but more importantly what do do as a result — interpretation.

4.  You should be able to work with and post on most social media platforms.

Businesses grow and thrive on the medium of conversation, sharing, personal recommendations, and referrals.

In other words, businesses thrive via social media.

You may not consider yourself the proverbial “social media guru” or “maven,” but this doesn’t mean you’re off the hook when it comes to the importance of social media skills.

Navigating a LinkedIn profile or scrolling through a Reddit feed are survival skills for any modern marketer.

Why is this important?

Because social media is the locus of social interaction today.

Obviously, it helps to know how to invite people to like a Facebook page or upload a picture onto Instagram. But more importantly, it’s important to know how to listen on these platforms.

By tapping into the collective social conversation, you will be able to gain huge strides forward in your understanding of what your audience needs and wants.

5.  You should have a basic understanding of SEO.

No, it’s not dead. And yes, it’s still important.

SEO has been the redheaded stepchild of marketing ever since it spun into the black-hat arenas of link farms, tier-linking, and keyword-stuffing.

Is SEO even a legitimate practice anymore?

I can answer that question with an unequivocal yes. Today, technical SEO is a crucial foundation to any type of marketing. Without it, your marketing efforts are a complete waste of time and effort.

I’ve seen startups spend millions of dollars on marketing and website development, thoughtlessly shoving aside “SEO,” and neglecting the expertise of technical SEO professionals.

The result? These startups, once flush with marketing cash, are now sitting on a massive liability — a site that is penalized, coded incorrectly, unoptimized from the ground up, or some other mistake that could have been corrected with a little bit of SEO savvy.

At the very least, familiarize yourself with the basics in three areas — 1) technical SEO, 2) Off-page SEO, and 3) on-page SEO.

6.  You should be able to synthesize and strategize your understanding of marketing.

Any marketing knowledge, general or specific, is useless unless integrated into actionable strategy.

  • So what if you know how to run a kick-ass PPC campaign?
  • Who cares if you can write a killer blog post article?
  • What does it matter if you’re able to optimized a LinkedIn company page?

All of these disparate marketing threads must be woven into an unbreakable cord. When you understand the separate parts, you can view the whole in masterful way.

Marketing isn’t about technical knowledge alone. It’s about broadening your technical understanding, bringing together all the various parts of marketing, and understanding how to advance your business’s marketing efforts.

Conclusion

What kind of marketer are you? In today’s marketing milieu, specialization is essential. But general knowledge is just as important. As you develop a deepening knowledge, pursue a broad awareness as well.

As you do, you will become an invaluable team-member, sought out for your cross-functionality, breadth of skills, and mastery of the trade.

What skills do you consider to be important for every marketer?