According to an ADMA study, 59% of marketers feel they have gaps in their field. Rich in innovation and constantly in motion, the marketing sector requires constant training. Especially since companies don't necessarily want to increase their budgets every year. Instead, they ask their experts to develop their skills, to optimize the established budget.
To successfully generate business value and stay relevant, here are 10 marketing skills that are essential in 2021.
1. Know how to tell a story
Stories are 22x more memorable than facts. Storytelling is one of the most important skills in marketing. It allows you to evoke emotion in the audience, thus creating a sense of ownership.
Compelling, authentic, and credible messages build and strengthen customer relationships
In the age of commoditization, it is important for marketers to be able to produce compelling stories. These must match the market sentiment, customer priority, and brand message.
2. Be able to analyze data
Brands no longer rely solely on intuition to create and execute marketing strategies. Data acquisition and management tools are becoming more and more powerful, offering valuable insights to marketers. Marketers need to master these tools to track and measure the data that adds real value to their bottom line.
This skill goes beyond knowing how a Google Analytics dashboard works. Interpreting the numbers to understand your audience and implement the right actions is essential. A good marketer must be able, from there, to determine the contents to be favored but also suggest possible optimizations, based on the existing.
In 2021, we will have to :
- Know how to properly structure and store unique data points.
- Classify data by stage of the buying journey.
- Understand how to integrate cross-platform event tracking tools when measuring conversion goals.
- Master data visualization tools.
- Master languages such as SQL.
3. Know your industry inside out
Today, marketers are expected to have a good knowledge of their industry and market. Knowing only the company's products or services is no longer enough.
This type of knowledge is built by actively listening to competitors, customers, and research organizations. Regular monitoring is essential to know the latest technological developments, but also the new needs of its audience.
Our advice
Regularly attending conferences or webinars that highlight the specificities of a market is a resolution that every marketing expert must make in 2021.
The goal is to then adapt the content and distribution strategy to maximize the return on investment.
4. Be able to manage a project
SEO, SEA, social media, content marketing, emailing... marketing is a tree with many branches.
In 2021, marketers must be able to manage a digital project from start to finish. For each branch to work, they need to have a common thread and serve the main objective.
This requires knowing how to communicate with technical teams, as well as with sales.
5. Have a creative mind
As a marketer, creativity is required in every campaign you run. Especially now! The health crisis has shown us the importance of thinking outside the box to better connect with your customers.
Creativity is not only about how you produce content, it is also about presenting solutions to solve a problem, live better every day, respond to a trend or deal with a bad buzz, for example.
6. Know how to manage automated processes
Marketers need to be able to define and document the requirements for running automated campaigns. This includes how to create, deploy, manage, track and measure.
In addition to creating automated campaigns, they need to be able to refine complex workflows, such as lead qualification, lead distribution, drip marketing campaigns... These processes have a significant impact on the customer experience and customer journey, and they are becoming more important every year.
The reason? To save time and improve performance in the customer conversion strategy.
7. Be able to create a coherent digital strategy
We often hear that irregularity and guesswork have no place in web marketing, and it's true! The 2021 version of the marketer is able to create a relevant editorial plan for each media with specific objectives for each.
Based on the knowledge of his audience and the analysis of data, he can determine which content to propose to the company's target.
More than that, he is expected to propose creative content that also meets SEO best practices. Generally speaking, SEO techniques are an integral part of his skills.
The mastery of graphic design, video editing, or photography can represent important skills. If they are not mandatory, they are nevertheless very appreciated and are part of the marketer's plurality.
Think about it
If you lack these skills, you can always turn to freelance professionals!
8. Master the social networks at the fingertips
Social networks are essential in building a brand image.
They are not only used to make yourself known but also to build loyalty among your audience and to get to know them better. For the marketer, this implies knowing how to remain very attentive and observant around the exchanges generated by publications, shares, etc.
Moreover, he must be able to adapt his content to each media to optimize the visibility of the company. This requires a great deal of creativity as well as a fine knowledge of the best practices and trends of each channel. An Instagram feed is not fed in the same way as a Facebook page or a TikTok account for example.
As a direct consequence of this knowledge, it is also expected to manage the advertising budget intelligently.
To stay on top of social networks, find all the social media, influencer marketing, and video trends of the year!
9. Adapt your mobile marketing
In constant growth, the use of the cell phone leads to rethinking the way to design a site or content. The marketer must be aware of these constant evolutions to propose an optimal customer journey.
In the same way, studies have shown that the information gathering before the purchase is essentially done on mobile, but that the act of purchase is most often done on the desktop. The marketer must be able to juggle with these data to provoke the decision to buy on mobile and build bridges between social networks and sales platforms or appointment setting.
10. Understand the e-commerce
Online commerce is booming. It goes without saying that web marketing has a special role to play.
To do this, the marketer must understand online buying behavior. To do this, he can implement various actions, including hot and cold reviews, email campaigns, etc.
He also has to constantly discover new practices in order to find the most promising channels. The mastery of sales on social networks is also expected.
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