Many of the skills that are needed to work in digital marketing are specific to individual disciplines, but there are a few core skills that I believe all digital marketers share to one degree or another. Not sure you agree with that statement? Let’s find out…
Data Analysis and Insight
The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably”. How can you be expected to identify and anticipate the requirements of your customer? That’s where data analysis and insight come in.
There are many methods/tools that allow us to gather data about our customers, including (but not limited to):
With access to data that shows us the current habits or opinions of customers, you can easily start to identify their needs. This can include easy wins, such as:
Data analysis and insight can also be used to help you to improve your current digital marketing efforts.
It’s not always enough just to have access to your data. You must also be able to react quickly to any opportunities that the data presents. That’s where the next core skill becomes useful.
It’s sometimes hard to work out exactly the best method of marketing to your desired customers. Let’s be honest, anyone can throw together a digital marketing campaign that indiscriminately targets users and delivers poor results.
Often, success in Digital Marketing is a balance between insight, luck and timing. Insight can be achieved through analysis (as covered above), but luck and timing are often much harder to find. Enter agility.
When working on Digital Marketing projects, opportunities for success can often be found in unexpected places:
A wise person once told me:
“It’s not always about creating a parade. Sometimes it’s about finding a parade and getting in front of it”
That’s never truer than in the case of digital marketing, and its agility that can help you to get in front of an existing parade.
Agility can help by allowing you to quickly react to an emerging trend with an approach of “Can I leverage this trend?”, followed by “Should I leverage this trend?”. If the answer is yes to both questions, you may have used agility to identify and anticipate the needs of a group of people who you may not have been able to market to previously.
Great examples of agility in digital marketing include:
So, we’ve covered data analysis and agility, but there is still one more incredibly important core skill that is required to best leverage digital marketing.
Content Writing
There are many aspects to content writing being an important core skill in digital marketing, including (but not limited to):
Imagine for a moment that you work for a company that organises children’s parties. Now think about the kind of words that you might use to get people to want to use your service. I’m guessing that you didn’t even vaguely consider words like “efficient”, “expertise” and “specialist” (which is good because I cherry picked them from a legal firm website!). The inverse is true too. You wouldn’t expect to see words like “exciting”, “entertaining” and “memorable” on the website of a legal company.
That’s why tone of voice is so important to get right when considering digital marketing. If your business deals with serious issues, where customers expect professionalism, you’re unlikely to make much headway by making your marketing humorous.
However, even though you may be comfortable with your tone of voice, it’s important to make your meaning clear and easily understood. A quick Google search resulted in the following sentence (which was taken from Statutory Instrument 1991 No 2680, The Public Works Contracts Regulations 1991, Part 1, 2.4, page 4 (catchy!):
“The revocation by these Regulations of a saving on the previous revocation of a provision does not affect the operation of the saving in so far as it is not specifically reproduced in these Regulations but remains capable of having effect.”
Understand it? Gain anything from it? No? I think I’ve made my point…
Finally, we have suitability for platform, which can really push the abilities of any content writer. I’m currently writing a blog, which gives me a lot of leeway on content length. But what if I had to advertise the article on different platforms:
Content writing isn’t just about how you connect with your audience, it’s also about having the skill to do it across a range of platforms without reducing the tone of voice or ease of understanding.
There you have it. Those are the three core skills that I consider to be vital for anyone working, or for anyone considering a career, in digital marketing. The next time you see a digital marketing campaign that you really like, why not check it against the skills above and see how many you think apply? Alternatively, if you think you need help from people who already have these skills, then get in touch with us and find out how our experts can help you.