You don’t have to be the most loved person among your colleagues and peers but as a marketer, you need to create lovable content.
You need to create content that generates interest, trigger positive emotions and most of all, content that gets to be shared and re-shared not just because some like your brand but because what you do is that good.
What are the skills every marketer should develop to be the best at what they do?
Well, in a recent interview I had with Andy Crestodina, for my podcast, we’ve managed to discuss this problem, share some opinions and thoughts and thus, we came to a conclusion.
Put into simple words, that conclusion focuses on three special skills: analytical, creative and friendly.
These three qualities are essential for a marketer and I will try to explain them all, one by one, along with the reasons I have chosen them.
Today’s marketers need to have more than inspiration to create attractive ads. They need more than ever to create strategies based on content and data. These strategies, however, do not end with the publishing step.
Data needs to be analytically analyzed.
And afterward, it should be analytically transposed into new sets of rules for the next steps of the campaign.
I think that an analytical analysis is important because there are a lot of things that matter besides the content itself. On one hand, you need to analyze your results and on the other hand, what the market wants from you.
Your first couple of content pieces may not deliver the greatest results but after a thorough analysis, you might find out why was it like this and what you need to do in order to better yourself.
Analytical analysis of data brings a lot of benefits. Out of them, maybe the most important benefit is that you get to know the audience and learn as you go, what to create.
Also, you get an insight into how you perform your work as well, and where/what to improve in order to create better content.
In my opinion, you can always trust your guts but you should never base your strategy on them only. You will develop an analytical approach to marketing through continuous work, through trial and error, through countless hours of analysis. Analyze sources, data, demographics, and analytics.
After talking to Andy, I concluded that creativity is the second most important skill or trait that a marketer should develop. Some of us are naturally born with creativity while others need to learn how to improve in this area. No need to worry, you can improve it but it will take some work on your behalf. And, sometimes, it will be hard work across time.
You need creativity in order to come up with something original and of good quality each time you publish something or share something on social media. And, originality is very important, since you need to attract attention and at the same time, create a community of followers around your marketed brand.
Creativity brings together a lot of benefits. The most important of these benefits stay in the fact that you can perform your work better than other marketers and thus, stay on top of your branch. Among other benefits comes the ability to create something new, something interesting with every piece of content you share online and, at the same time, the ability to do your job not only well but also fast, which clears a lot of time for other important tasks you need to perform as a marketer.
Exercise it. Exercise it as often as possible. Start with a blog, move on to a podcast, a video blog, share your thoughts on social media. Write as many texts as you can and try to create as many visuals as possible.
Because you need both of these skills for true creativity as a marketer. You need to know how to write the perfect pitch or the perfect article and at the same time, how to mix the perfect colors and shapes for the perfect banner or ad.
Also, you can study other people’s work, in-depth. See how they write, what they write about, what colors they mix, how they design their banners, ads and other visuals. Learn from the masters and try to apply what you learn for your own benefits.
I think that as a marketer, you need connections with your peers and with your audience. You need to be able to speak to them, listen to them, share perspectives and thoughts. In other words, you need to be friendly in order to not isolate yourself from the world because isolation can be one of the most powerful enemies of a marketer.
As I have already said, you cannot be isolated from the market if you want to achieve success as a marketer. You cannot be isolated from the audience; you cannot isolate yourself from your peers and colleagues. For this to happen, you need to harvest a friendly attitude and try, as much as possible, to become part of the community, whatever that community means.
A friendly attitude will help you communicate more easily with your audiences and at the same time, connect with them personally, so that you will be able to gather a lot more information than if you would have locked yourself inside your own shell. Communication is essential nowadays in every sector of the economy but it can be decisive in marketing since this branch is all about it. Everything you do is about the communication of data.
Everything you need to know, on the other hand, can be thought/acquired through communication. This is why an open and friendly attitude becomes essential.
Even if you are an absolute introvert, you should still be able to observe how other people connect. Observe how they talk, what they write, how they react to each other’s messages and thoughts. Learn from them. Stay open. Stay true to yourself.
Maintain open dialogues with the audience and your colleagues.
Try to reach out to new and interesting people and establish a mutually beneficial dialogue. It’s all it takes.
A marketer needs a lot of skills in order to be considered as a successful professional.
However, after carefully analyzing my work so far and what other people say in this matter, I got to the conclusion that three of these skills are essential. I’ve tried to explain to them the best I could with this article and pinpoint some of the most important benefits associated with each one of them.
What other skills do you consider to be essential for a marketer and why?
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