What Makes A Good Marketer? 8 Key Skills And Tips For Success

What Does A Good Marketer Do?

This is a broad question with no definitive answer, as it depends on the industry and company’s needs. Some marketers may be required to focus heavily on B2B content marketing to increase a brand’s awareness and reach. Others may need to concentrate on social media and build a loyal and devoted following of like-minded professionals. To become a good marketer, you must develop certain soft and technical skills that help you tackle daily struggles and propel the business. Good marketing isn’t all about measuring results and creating graphs, though. It’s also about using your creativity to come up with content marketing ideas that will differentiate your brand from others. Therefore, soft skills may be more in demand than technical skills, as they show recruiters that you have the innate talent to get into marketing and succeed. It’s easier to learn marketing reporting than to master decision making.

Let’s see what skills a business marketer must possess to excel at their position and take a company out of obscurity. Keep in mind that many of these skills can’t be cultivated overnight but take years of experience to evolve.

8 Soft Skills To Become A Good Marketer

1. Communication

Communication is a multifaceted skill that encompasses various aspects, including persuasion, collaboration, empathy, honesty, active listening, and emotional intelligence. Apart from building a strategic marketing plan, marketers must communicate their ideas clearly, build connections with clients, collaborate closely with team members and offer direction, and create engaging experiences for audiences. You should be able to express yourself clearly and confidently to everyone you’re talking to, including coworkers, clients, and management. This refers to all forms of communication, meaning written, verbal, and listening.

The best marketers have impeccable social skills that help them connect with others easily. Whether you are focusing on lead generation, content marketing, or social media, try to communicate transparently. Listening to others helps you understand what customers need and how you can cater to those needs.

2. Adaptability And Flexibility

To become a good marketer, you have to adapt to the ever-changing landscape. Google’s algorithm is always changing, while consumer behaviors and preferences evolve at the same time. Not only that, but new technologies alter the way we used to do simple tasks. All that means that marketers must change their marketing tactics to generate new leads and stay relevant. For example, a simple algorithm change may take your article from the number one position to the third page. Therefore, you should quickly adapt to new realities and tackle them with resiliency. Just because your campaign optimization techniques worked well in the past doesn’t mean that you should stick to them when you have clear proof they are now irrelevant.

This brings us to flexibility. Problems, unforeseen changes, customer complaints, and campaign shifts happen all the time. Instead of panicking and staying still, you should embrace modifications and customize your customer acquisition strategy accordingly. It’s all about finding new solutions and tricks that will get you out of the pothole.

3. Problem Solving

If you’re wondering how to be good at marketing, problem solving is one of the most important soft skills. Why? Imagine creating a campaign that performs poorly. It’s an eLearning marketer’s skills that analyze the reasons behind the issue, create improvements, and drive growth. For that, you need to be agile, stay on top of things, and apply critical thinking to everything you do. Whether it’s technical issues, campaign optimization, or exploring new opportunities based on trending patterns, you should be able to overcome any struggle. So, one thing marketing requires is multitasking. You often have to analyze a situation, find creative solutions, collaborate with team members, and evaluate the outcomes. This means that you must know how to prioritize your tasks and delegate what you don’t have time to do.

Delegation is an important step as you have to find the right person for the job. It’s not that you accept defeat but realize that for everything to be done correctly, you have to ask for help. Overwhelming yourself with multiple tasks may lead to procrastination, which will impact your B2B lead generation strategy. So, create an organized list and color-code each task to locate it easily.

4. Creativity

What are other common skills possessed by successful marketers? Creativity is definitely up there. Competition is increasing rapidly, and old and reused lead generation techniques are losing their charm in such a saturated landscape. Therefore, professionals must optimize their marketing efforts and come up with innovative ideas and solutions. Fresh concepts, intriguing copy, and engaging visuals can set you apart from your competitors and make a splash in your industry. Widely used stock images and bland copywriting just don’t cut it. What can you do to increase your creativity, though? Don’t be afraid to brainstorm new ideas no matter how out there they may feel. Use tools like Canva to create visuals on your own. If not possible, commission a graphic designer to bring your idea to life.

Whatever you do, maintaining authenticity is crucial. Users prefer videos and photos they perceive as “real” instead of heavily edited and “plastic” imagery that is obviously fake. Lastly, ask for other people’s ideas and work on them.

5. Teamwork And Collaboration

You might say that this is a skill required in most professions, but for top marketers, it’s simply a mandatory skill. While you may work a lot on your own, you will probably have to communicate with other team members regularly. When you’re building a market penetration strategy and various campaigns, you collaborate with designers, developers, analysts, content creators, and social media managers. This means that you must be able to express your ideas clearly and listen to people’s feedback respectfully. Teamwork births innovation, creating transcending campaigns that accelerate business growth and elevate your brand.

Additionally, digital marketing optimization requires you to address your wrongdoings and own up to mistakes. You have to be honest not just with yourself but also with your colleagues, who may also be affected by your decisions. Honesty helps build strong relationships and makes people trust you.

6. Project Management

This is a complex skill because it includes time management, leadership skills, content marketing optimization, and marketing campaign optimization. Let’s stick to the first two for now. Digital marketing is a fast-paced world that requires swift actions and multitasking. This means that time management is essential to ensure everything is done on time and properly. You have to organize your workload, delegate tasks, and set realistic deadlines for yourself and others. Also, you have to allocate your resources wisely to maximize marketing performance and generate efficient results.

While you may begin your journey from a junior role, one day you may become a marketing leader. Apart from building your team’s marketing plan template, you must know how to motivate and inspire others. It’s you who sets a unified direction and boosts everyone’s engagement. You have to solve team members’ problems quickly and increase their confidence.

7. Persuasion

Successful content marketing strategy examples show how important persuasion is when promoting a product or service. You are creating a campaign, wishing to attract leads and convert them into buying customers. To become a good marketer, your copy and campaign must be engaging, fun, and intriguing. You have to align your work with organizational goals without compromising any of your beliefs regarding your brand image and culture. Your campaigns should grab people’s attention from the get-go and explain your product’s properties and unique features comprehensively. Keep checking marketing analytics reports to see how your campaign performs and what people are saying online.

Don’t make a mistake and lie to your audience by overpromising, as they will find out at some point, and you will lose credibility. Optimization in digital marketing is also essential since campaigns don’t always go as planned. If you’re missing flair, add it, and you will notice how much easier clients will pour in.

8. Analytical Skills

You may be the most intuitive and persuasive marketer out there. However, you must be able to back everything you’re saying with data. For example, if you’re suggesting product listing ads to increase conversions, you should master search engine marketing intelligence to convince company stakeholders. Also, you should use an SEO competitor analysis to suggest powerful content topics that will make you competitive and address popular subjects among your audience. But that’s not all when we’re talking about analytical skills. You must be able to use content marketing reporting tools, understand the output of social media campaigns, use Google Analytics, and identify marketing industry trends. Therefore, you can create successful modifications, suggest on-point corrections, and make informed decisions.

Using the best marketing reporting tools doesn’t make you a great marketer by default, though. You should be able to interpret analytic reports and put them to good use. Moreover, you must create reports highlighting your campaigns’ success and share them with clients and stakeholders.

4 Practical Responsibilities Of A Good Marketer

1. Optimize Marketing Performance

To become a good marketer, you must first create engaging and relevant marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience. However, things don’t always go as planned, and your performance isn’t optimal. That’s why you should continuously measure content marketing performance to identify areas for improvement. You should monitor your website ranking through platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush and check keywords that perform well for your competitors. Additionally, create content based on the future of digital marketing and target low-volume but high-intent keywords.

Also, take a look at your social media. What works well with your audience? What are they engaging with? Maybe they prefer short-form videos instead of static images with heavy text. You may even ask them what they prefer and work to satisfy them. Internet marketing optimization requires organized efforts from all team members. As a marketing manager, you should know how to strategize with each person.

2. Manage Budgets

Yes, soft skills for digital marketers are crucial. However, managing budgets is technical knowledge you get as you gain experience. You are responsible for evaluating marketing initiatives’ Return On Investment (ROI) and choosing campaigns and tactics that have the highest possible return. This doesn’t mean that you take shortcuts or implement strategies you don’t believe in just because they are cost-effective. You still have to follow the path you believe in. Moreover, you should forecast future budgets based on historical data and market trends. For instance, if you want to create a new lead generation campaign, you can look at the SaaS metrics of past campaigns to make an accurate calculation.

Lastly, when you have made your budget predictions and have received funding, it’s time to allocate that money to each initiative. You have to make the best of the situation you are in, no matter how limited your budget is. For example, you may invest more in banner advertising if it has proven successful in the past.

3. Spot And Fix Issues

Now, this isn’t a responsibility all marketing professionals have. It depends on your job title and the size of your company. Smaller businesses with few employees may require this from you. New website additions and features often require close monitoring in case bugs or other issues arise. To stay on top of things, you can combine quantitative and qualitative data analysis using trustworthy marketing optimization software. Additionally, you have to offer visitors a few options on how to report an issue. Upon noticing the problem, report it to the IT team and let them fix it swiftly. Report these issues to other team members who are communicating with clients, like sales reps.

Another tip is to monitor conversion and traffic funnels to understand where you lose users. If you’re losing too many people at checkout, maybe there is an issue that doesn’t let them purchase your marketing solutions. Lastly, rage clicks are a good indication that something isn’t right. They refer to when someone clicks repeatedly on the same button during one session.

4. Strategize New Activities

Have you heard of growth hacking? A business marketer never stays complacent and always tries to find new avenues to grow and increase revenue. To fully understand what your ideal buyer personas want and need, you must conduct a market intelligence report. It will offer you a pretty clear picture of who your target buyers are, what preferences they have, and how your competitors reach them. Also, you will find out who your direct competitors are and how you compare. To perform effective market research, you can follow various methods. First, you may conduct individual interviews with potential buyers, who are members of your industry. Then, you should craft a customer journey map to identify the steps they take before making a purchase. By that moment, you are ready to put your ideas into action and measure results.

Key Takeaway

Working for a B2B content marketing agency requires a lot of determination and resilience. Soft and technical skills are all crucial for good marketing, but soft skills take longer to evolve and master. For example, someone may be born with innate communication, adaptability, and problem-solving skills, while someone else may struggle to cultivate them. However, this doesn’t mean that you should throw in the towel. Keep working on your creative juices, your teamwork, and your persuasion skills. When the time comes, you have to show that you can manage both your schedule and other team members. Let’s not forget about analytical skills, too. Everyone can check stats and metrics and how well gated content performs. It all comes down to being able to use these stats to drive growth.

Keep in mind that you should also master social media marketing and use tools and software to gather insights and make improvements. At the same time, you have to think of new, innovative ideas that will grow your brand and attract new leads. All this while staying within budget and making ROI predictions based on past data.