8 Skills Every Digital Marketer Must Have
For its 2018 Digital Marketing Trends report, General Assembly surveyed 10,000 marketing professionals and found that Digital-native marketers outscored corporate marketers on average by 73%.
Here’s how the company defined both sets of marketers:
I. Corporate marketers are those who work at longstanding corporations; think brand manager at an established CPG company, who has deep experience in traditional channels like television and print.
Ii. Digital-native marketers are those who work at young companies born in the digital era; think email marketing at a venture capital-backed startup, who has never managed a television campaign.
General Assembly’s report shows that there is a skill gap between corporate marketers and digital-native marketers. If you’re looking to be a digital marketer, here are non-technical skills that make them tick.
1. Communication Skills
Digital marketing is essentially a subset of communications. Whether you write emails, design graphics, create videos or write ads, you’re communicating an idea to a group of people. To improve this skill, practice getting thoughts out of your head by writing them down or telling another person. Avoid lacing your words with too much jargon or buzzwords when you share ideas.
2. Creativity
Digital marketers are required to have some level of creativity. Creativity is needed because consumers today can easily spot adverts from a mile away. Consumers can tell when they’re being sold to and tend to ignore ads(read: Ad blindness). It’s important to constantly come up with new ways to sell ideas to your target audience — especially if you’re working at a young company and are working with a small budget
3. Complex Problem Solving
A digital marketer must be able to tackle problems, think critically and come up with practical solutions to solve those problems. Selling products and services online is a problem in itself and you’re required to come up with innovative ways to solve such problems. Several problems could also arise when you manage campaigns and you’ll be required to provide on-the-go solutions for them.
4. Trendspotting
Trendspotting is one of the most important skills in the social media age. Digital marketers must have a keen eye to spot trends either by analysing data or by looking at social feeds. Trendspotting is important because taking advantage of the right trend at the right time could give your brand and online visibility a massive boost.
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5. Learning
Learning is perhaps the most important skill on this list. Marketers in the digital age must be willing to unlearn what they know and learn new things. As digital platforms make rapid changes to algorithms and content types, digital marketers are required to adapt to these changes. We must also adapt to consumers as they develop new content consumption habits.
6. Open-Mindedness
Be open. Technology has allowed the world to change rapidly, faster than we can sometimes predict or image. Digital Marketers must be willing to try new tools, new methods of doing things and new mediums of sharing ideas. A closed-minded marketer will miss new channels he/she could take advantage of and cause losses to their companies.
7. Writing Skills
Writing is one of the most important skills of the digital age. Every digital marketer at some point needs to learn how to convey thoughts through writing. Captions, descriptions, blog posts, titles are just some of the things digital marketers might need to write. It’s very important to be able to express yourself via text.
8. Design
A good digital marketer should have an eye for design. You don’t need to be a design guru or an expert. However, you should be able to spot and include elements of design when you create content or sell ideas — especially because visual content is at the core of social media platforms today.
Conclusion:
These are the unique skills that digital marketers have that give them an edge over corporate marketers. Anybody can learn these skills and acquiring them will definitely make you a better marketer.
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