As 2014 quickly approaches, marketers like us are ready to nail down the final details of next year’s marketing plan. It’s time to get out of the planning stages and into execution. As that transition starts, we all need to take a step back and say “how will I get those goals accomplished, and what skills do I need to do so?”
Marketing doesn’t look much like what it used to. We’ve gone from the days of Mad Men to the days of content creators and Youtility businesses. The skills required to be a great marketer are changing as well as expanding and becoming more varied.
In the early days of social media marketing, who would have assumed a social marketer needed to have graphic design skills?
But now a lot more falls under the umbrella of marketing. Marketers need to know about offline marketing, word of mouth, social media, email, design, SEO, lead generation and more. They also need to know how to plan and measure each. It’s not an easy gig.
Some call this new way of marketing “fullstack marketing.” Some call it “evolved marketing.” It doesn’t matter much what you call it, as long as you can do it. And if there’s something that you don’t do, your team needs to have someone else that does. That’s why you increasingly see marketing teams with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. Marketing needs to bring more to the table, so a diverse team makes it a potluck (Tweet this).
So, how does the modern marketer survive and thrive?
- The modern marketer is agile and adaptive (Tweet this). – The online world moves fast, so your marketing needs to, as well. Laura Ramos of Forrester Research uses the acronym A.D.A.P.T. – accept change, dare the status quo, act continuously, participate personally, and tear down boundaries.
- Modern marketers know that only valuable and relevant content is king now (Tweet this). – “Content is king” has been thrown at us constantly for years, to the point that people think any old content will do. But what good is putting out content that no one wants to read? It’s worse than nothing at all, because it can damage your reputation.
- Modern marketers know that marketing is a combination of creativity and science (Tweet this). – There’s a reason “big data” is one of the biggest marketing buzzwords of the year. People are perplexed about how to turn numbers into decisions, because so many marketers emphasize the creativity aspect more than the science.
Click for image source. Infographic via Lemonly.
What marketing skills are you going to add to your tool belt and resume in 2014? Share in the comments below or tweet them to @eZangaInc!
Read more: 11 Skills Modern Marketers Need to Possess