Over the past decade, marketing has changed a lot. With the growth of digital marketing, businesses have developed new ways to advertise their products and services.

In order for you to be a successful marketer in today’s world, you will have to master not just all the old skills needed for the job, but also all the new mechanisms which represent the basics of how modern marketing functions these days.

There is one small thing which complicates everything a bit. And that is competition. As digital marketing has developed, more and more people recognize the benefits of learning about it and trying to get their piece of the cake.

On a global scale, competition is a good thing. Higher competition stabilizes the price of products and services.

But when we look at things from a perspective of an individual marketer, higher competition means that you, as a marketer, will have to be much better in what you do than everyone else, in order for you to stand out of the crowd.

That itself is not a bad thing, it pushes high-quality people to their edge and helps them become the best versions of themselves.

In this text, we will help you become that person. We will list some of the most important qualities every marketer should have. After that, who knows. You might end up becoming one yourself. Let’s start then!

1. Data Analysis

Being a successful marketer means exploring different options on the market and picking the right ones which would contribute the most to the increase of sales or reputation, depending on goals set by the company.

But how can we distinguish what is right and what is wrong among so many options? The answer is the correct information.

Nowadays the information travels across the entire world in a matter of seconds. Thus, there is a large amount of information circulating all the time, so it can be a bit hard to know which information is correct, which one is useful, and which ones are just a distraction.

That’s why it is very important for you as a marketer to be able to choose the right information. And to do it, you need to think, but not to limit yourself on one area, but observe the entire market and analyze the signals coming from several different areas which could be important for your business.

Then, by using your intellect and some software, you can process those signals and get a general idea of what is happening on the market, which would allow you to make a proper marketing strategy.

As mentioned, there are several software packages and tools that can help with data analysis, so let us mention some of them.

Mixpanel

This is a very useful tool, which can be used to track data that shows how clients use your product or service. It is very handy and can be used for tracking data about the website and app users.

What is really good about this tool is that it does not require you to be a programmer. You can use it without knowing any of the programming languages because it has a pretty simple interface.

AdWords Performance Grader

This tool is used to measure how good is your GoogleAds profile in around a minute. It shows both your strong and weak points and with that data, you can work on your profile and improve it.

It is very useful, especially if you are new to GoogleAds. This way you can learn how the tool works, check what are mistakes you made and help you correct them with useful tips.

Formisimo

If you are using a lot of web forms, then this tool is for you. Formisimo is a handy little tool, used for monitoring activities on the web forms.

It can be used to analyze the reasons why people didn’t manage to finish the web form on your website. That way you can see what went wrong and try to correct the forms to make them more accessible to everyone.

BuzzSumo

Managing social media profiles is crucial in today’s marketing. That is why you need a good tool, which would help you with that.

BuzzSumo can be used for analysis across several social media platforms. It allows you to see what posts were popular and viewed the most. It also allows you to transfer data to spreadsheets and perform a more detailed analysis there.

Crowdbooster

This is another tool which is used for analyzing how well your social media profiles perform. One of the most important features this tool has is a real-time report delivery, which allows you to track the information continuously.

Apart from that, it allows you to recognize the most faithful fans and analyze their profiles so you could find out more people similar to them, who might be interested in what you have to offer.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Usually, when you search something in your browser, you expect to find the answer on the first page. So, for example, if you are looking for a recipe to cook something, you type it and click on the first few results on the result page.

Have you ever wondered why you were able to find what you need right at the beginning? Of course, you must have thought it works like that because of people giving money so their websites are shown first.

Well, sometimes it is the case, but the main reason is not the money, but successful search engine optimization or SEO.

You probably wonder what exactly is SEO. Let us get into it then, shall we?

Search Engine Optimization is a technique which is used to bring your website to the top of the result page. In other words, you want that your website is shown among the first websites listed in the result page when people are searching for what they need.

This is one of the most important processes in digital marketing since it is crucial to be seen online. And despite social media marketing is in rising, SEO is still very important because even social media pages appear in search engine results.

That said, there are several basic concepts on which search engine optimization resides.

Website Links

Ever since the very start of SEO, the usage of links has been crucial. The main idea is to have as many links which are important for the topic at hand because the search engine analyzes both links and content and according to that, it ranks your website and puts it in the right place amongst search results.

That is why it is crucial not to put too many random links, unrelated to the topic, because first, it looks unprofessional, and second, more relevant links help you to get seen in the search results.

Content

Before you find important links, you need to have good content. In order to have good content, you need to be versatile with your writing, depending on the subject and the form of writing.

Sometimes you need to write straight and short, sometimes long and engaging. In cases of scientific texts you need to be a bit more serious, and use the right terminology.

But, some things should be same no matter what type of text you are writing.

First of all, titles must be appealing to the reader. That is why you need to have a catchy title, which would at the same time look professional and pique the reader’s interest.

Second, you should determine the keywords and use them, because they should represent the core of the content.

And third, the text itself needs to be both interesting and professional, so you need to be able to offer engaging lines to the readers, while at the same time they can feel relaxed while reading it.

User Experience

Although content and links are the core of a successful SEO, it is also important to have everything run smoothly, so the users would have a pleasant experience when they visit your website.

That includes having an optimized website with an interesting and professional structure, where people can easily navigate and find what they need.

Mobile Platform

Nowadays you can do almost everything on your mobile phones. From simple news reading or browsing products to paying bills and managing a website.

To you as a marketer, it is important to recognize this and act accordingly. When optimizing your website you should consider optimizing it to work on mobile phones too. That is additional job, that is true, but eventually, it pays off since a lot of internet traffic goes through the internet nowadays, which makes mobile marketing even more important.

Voice Search

Though it is not as important as text search, voice search trend is rising. More and more people are using it.

The process is the same, you need to identify keywords, but in this case, try using a bit clearer and longer keywords, which would most likely be used in an every-day voice search.

3. Search Engine Marketing

In the last part, we mentioned that there is a way to increase the visibility of your website by paying. Well, this process is part of the search engine marketing.

It is often mixed with search engine optimization, and there is a good reason why it is the case. SEO is part of search engine marketing or SEM.

Search engine marketing can be done in two ways. First one is SEO and the second one is PPC or Pay Per Click. Since we have already explained the basics of SEO in the last part, now we will focus on what is PPC and how it can be used to increase the visibility of your website.

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a form of a paid search marketing where you pay for the number of clicks your website gets.

This process puts your website to the top of search results, but it has to be used carefully because you are paying for the number of clicks you get, which can often be more than you sell.

The most important tools you can use for PPC advertising are GoogleAds and FacebookAds. There are speculations that right now FacebookAds are more effective than GoogleAds because Facebook is still the largest social media platform out there.

That said, be mindful when using these tools and make sure to use them the right way, unless you want to end up losing some money.

4. Social Media Marketing

Well, we all knew this would have to come eventually. There is no talking about digital marketing and important marketing skills without mentioning the usage of social media for marketing purposes.

Ever since the rise of social media platforms, social media marketing popularity has greatly increased. That combined with the increasing appearance of new social media platforms, we can only expect that it will grow even more.

Currently, the biggest social media platform is Facebook. Therefore it is the most lucrative one for business practices. Apart from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are also used.

Also, with the growing interest in Instagram and with more and more options added to it, we can see companies using it for their business purposes. What was earlier known as just social media for pictures, now is used for so much more.

So what is social media marketing and why people use it?

Social media marketing is used to create a marketing campaign which is used to create and promote a brand on social media platforms.

Spamming promotional material on your social media pages is not what the core of social media marketing is. Instead, you need to be able to analyze the market, see what clients want and then create a meaningful marketing strategy, which would help you boost your business results.

There are several benefits and goals for which you can use social media marketing.

Create and Promote Your Brand

Having a popular brand which would last for a long time is one of the key goals of not just social media marketing, but of marketing in general.

The idea is not just to offer promotional material via the social media platform, but instead create a valid strategy which would picture your brand in the best way.

That way you can build a strong brand which would be easily recognized everywhere.

Increasing the Quality of Sales

By using social media marketing you can easily target the group you need, by analyzing the data flowing from your social media profiles. You can see what people like, what they dislike and then decide what would be the best course of action.

Apart from that, you can track your most loyal followers and award them from time to time, which would increase the relations and boost the popularity of your customer care.

Managing the Client Base

With some user-generated tools available on social media platforms, you can easily create range of different client bases depending on the people’s preferences. That would make it easier for you to target the specific group and make diverse products to fit different tastes.

All that makes your clients happy and tells them you care for your customers, which, in return, makes them be more loyal to your company.

Increase ROI

One of the basic goals of any business is to earn more than you have invested. It is not different in social media marketing.

It is really important to measure the weight of investing in your marketing campaign and see if your investment has paid off.

Get to Know Your Competitors

Social media platforms are good place to keep track of your competitors and see how they conduct their own marketing strategies.

You can learn a lot from their work, see what they do right, what they do wrong and what could you do in order to improve your own marketing strategy.

5. Marketing Technology

Ever since the dawn of men, new inventions have continued to change both small and big things in our every-day routine as well as the way we conduct business. Thanks to the internet, information can travel from one side of the world to another in a matter of seconds.

The amount of data which is constantly circling inside the system is huge and that is why it would be hard to process all that information without the use of some kind of technology.

Of course, this applies to marketing too. Without some kind of software, it would be impossible to keep track of everything that is happening around us. That is why it is very important for you as a marketer to get to know the technology which is being used for marketing purposes.

Nowadays the best way for marketers to get to know their clients, reach specific groups and advertise and boost their brand popularity is by being present on the internet. Like we have already mentioned above, digital marketing is on the rise and it will continue to walk that path.

That is why successful digital marketers have to be familiar with all the strengths and weaknesses of the most relevant social media platforms.

Of course, digital marketing is not just about social media. There are a lot of other software and tools that can be used for a similar purpose. Successful marketers need to be able to reach their customers by conducting a different form of marketing strategies, like reaching people over emails, placing successful advertisements on the internet, by using some sort of tools for ads like FacebookAds and GoogleAds.

Then there are all those tools we have mentioned earlier, which are used to help marketers track and process data across all available channels.

Nowadays, there are a lot of marketing technologies out there, so marketers have to decide which ones are the most important for their work. In other words, they have to find the best combination of all available marketing technology, which would maximize the output and efficiency of marketing strategies.

They tend to do that by forming a martech stack. Martech stack is a selected group of marketing technology used to help marketers with their work. Most martech stacks are created to fit a specific brand, but there are several factors which should be included in every martech stack.

Synthesis

Martech shouldn’t be viewed just as a group of tools or software which are all used for specific tasks. True, all those tools are useful for completing some tasks, but more importantly, they should be in the same package not just for their individual usefulness, but because they are all in a type of synthesis, they should work well together.

Simple Data Flow

When you have a lot of tools, it is important not to spread sources too much. Try to minimize the number of sources you use for each tool.

The ideal way is to have them all connected to one source, but that is just not possible. Instead, try to find the most relevant sources and then decide which tools you can use for them, while at the same time, you need to measure the usefulness of each tool.

Real-Time Data Flow

In forever changing business environment it is crucial to get all the relevant information as fast as possible, so you could act in time.

That is why it is important to find the tools that can deliver all the relevant data in real time.

Stay Close to the Customer

To build healthy customer relations it is important to be able to reach out to your clients at any given time, wherever you are.

That is why when creating a martech stack, you should look for the tools over which you can easily reach the customers, so you could solve their problems and see their preferences, thus correcting your marketing strategy to fit any goals you might set.

FINAL WORD

Now that we have presented the most in-demand marketing skills every marketer should have, are you ready to begin with your career as a marketer? Or are you perhaps afraid because of the amount of knowledge you might need in order to do it?

There is no reason to be afraid. There are a lot of people who dropped out of their jobs, learned the basics and started their own marketing agency. It doesn’t require you to have Ph.D. or to be too smart.

All it requires is a will to learn and build yourself as a person. So don’t hold back just because you think you cannot do it.

Marketing is a field in rise, so if you are interested in becoming a marketer, go for it! After reading this text, all which is left is to get out there and try it!

The Most In-Demand Marketing Skills

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