Marketing is a role where professionals are tasked with explaining and promoting a brand and the products and/or services that it offers to customers. To be successful as a marketer, you must understand and explain the interests, preferences, and needs of the target market to the company and the marketing team to ensure that the marketing materials that are put out are aligned with what customers want. Successful marketers can drive sales by improving customer relationships and subsequently achieving more sales and profits for the company. Advertising is one type of marketing that most people will be familiar with, however, there are various other fields today where marketing takes a key role, including market research, public relations, customer service, and support, and more.
Marketing has evolved and developed a lot over the years. In the past, marketing a company and the products or services that it offered was often heavily reliant on personal experience and intuition. However, modern marketing methods of today have evolved into positions that rely much more on data, which is collected, sorted, and analyzed in huge amounts to determine the best strategies for marketing products and services to customers in a way that they will respond best to, based on trends in consumer behavior. If you want to get into a career in marketing, these are just some of the top skills that many employers are looking for when seeking to hire their next marketing professional.
Communication Skills
A masters in communications can be an ideal choice of degree for those who want to get into marketing since communications skills are essential for any good marketing professional today. Marketing as a career path means that you need to be able to communicate information about brands, products, and services to the public in a way that will generate their interest and get their attention. Marketing is a form of professional communication and these professionals have a range of communication-related roles and responsibilities, whether it’s creating scripts for TV advertising or writing ad copy and press releases. Marketers get involved with communication tasks through a variety of different mediums including design, written communication, creating multimedia campaigns, and more, which requires them to have a solid understanding of the end-users and what they are looking for to be able to successfully communicate the message to them. Because this job is so communications-heavy, good communication and listening skills are extremely important for today’s marketers.
Public Speaking
While it may not be a requirement for every marketing role, many employers are seeking out marketing professionals who have excellent public speaking skills. Many marketers need to become good at and comfortable with public speaking. In this line of work, you may be expected to speak in front of an audience when coming up with a new marketing initiative or campaign, introducing a new product or service, and in many other situations. It’s often essential for marketers to be able to effectively pitch their ideas to employers, board members, colleagues, and clients through presentations. Some marketing positions might involve a lot of presentation hosting in front of large groups of potential customers and clients. Good public speaking skills allow marketing professionals to make the best first impression on clients and convince them to go ahead with the marketing services offered.
Analytical Skills
The job of a marketer is often just as analytical as it is creative. To work successfully in a marketing role today, it’s important to have a solid understanding of the importance of data in marketing and the ability to use data to drive marketing decisions for the future. Marketing today requires a lot of data analysis work based on the research that is conducted to determine the audience’s needs, wants, and preferences. Modern marketers are often required to be very analytically minded along with being able to come up with plans and strategies that are based on the facts that are presented within the data. Along with specific skills related to using data collection and analysis tools that are widespread in almost every industry today, marketing professionals need to have the ability to quickly change course based on new information that is presented to them within the data that they collect.
Creative Thinking
Despite being an increasingly analytical choice of career, marketing is still an ideal role for anybody who wants the chance to be more creative with the work that they do. Many marketing professionals are very creative thinking people who like to think outside the box and come up with new, fresh ideas that stand out from the crowd. With business competition higher than ever and many markets becoming increasingly saturated with marketing materials, the ability to come up with something new and different that makes a business stand out from the crowd has never been as important a skill as it is for professional marketers today. It’s important for marketing professionals to be skilled at coming up with new and exciting ideas that appeal to their target audience and existing customers, grab the attention of the right people, and encourage customers and audience members to spend their money with a certain brand over the others. This could involve coming up with new and interesting stories to grab the attention of the audience, thinking outside of the box when it comes to advertisement design or delivery, writing compelling ad copy, and more.
Negotiation
Negotiation is an important skill that many modern marketers will need to use on a regular basis within their role. In the role of a marketer, you might find yourself negotiating with your clients to manage their expectations for what your company can deliver, or to help them decide on a budget or timeline that is suitable for everybody involved. Marketers might also need to negotiate with others when they are working with other professionals on a campaign such as designers, vendors, venues, and more. Negotiation is a skill where good communication skills will come in handy. In addition to this, marketers who are good negotiators tend to be highly skilled when it comes to determining the worth of a campaign and making quick decisions on the spot.
Ability to Work Under Pressure
Many marketing campaigns are fast-paced and will often require working to a tight deadline. With the influx of marketing materials that we are seeing today, it’s often important for companies to be able to market new products and services as quickly as possible in order to have the desired impact on the audience and be the company that gets there first. Because of this, marketing can sometimes be a stressful career option and it’s never been more important for modern marketers to be professionals who have a strong ability to work under pressure. People who tend to thrive best when they are working towards tight deadlines or have limited time to finish and complete a project successfully might find that they are good at marketing in todays’ fast-paced and digital world. To achieve this, marketers need to be very skilled at organizing, time-management, problem-solving, delegating, and prioritizing tasks.
Adaptability
The world of modern marketing is forever changing. If you think back to just a few decades ago, many of the most common types of marketing that we use today such as social media marketing or influencer marketing were completely non-existent. If you want to get into a career as a marketing professional, it is important to understand that your role is likely to change a lot over the course of your career, as there will be new developments and advancements in marketing and marketing technology over time. In ten years, it’s likely that businesses are going to be marketing their products and services in vastly different ways compared to the main marketing methods that are used today. Because of this, the ability to adapt, learn new things and keep up with the latest development is a skill that is required of every marketing professional that wants to succeed today.
Technology Skills
Finally, a successful modern marketer will usually need to be highly skilled when it comes to technology, along with being open to learning new technologies especially when it comes to how they are applied to marketing. There are very few marketing roles left today where technology is not essential to success in this career path. Technology hardware and software often plays an integral role in coming up with marketing campaigns and getting the best results from them, meaning that it’s often the most tech-savvy marketing professionals who tend to get the best results and are able to go the furthest in their careers. When it comes to leveraging and making the most of technology, marketers have a vast and growing range of options to choose from.
Today, modern marketing requires a unique skill-set that enables these professionals to keep up with a rapidly changing market while working with the main needs and preferences of their target audience at the forefront of their minds.
