Perhaps, every business owner acquires customers online these days. And it is for a good reason. Online business allows embracing a wide audience from all around the world.
However, it is not as simple as it may seem.
To help your business skyrocket on the web, you should implement digital marketing.
But what digital marketing skills any marketer should have today?
In this post, you will get familiar with 10 digital marketing skills every marketer must possess.
Let’s start!
- Understanding the data
Digital marketing revolves around data all the time. Marketers research data, make a decision based on data, predict the results with the help of data, and analyze the overall marketing campaign according to the data.
Data collection is a first-to-go skill that digital marketers should be armed with.
What exact data must marketers be able to work with?
All forms of data like – trends, graphs, metrics, stats, and predictive analytics. It is critically important to understand due to the following reasons:
- Create reports based on the previous experience of the company (calculate the conversion rate from trial sign-ups to paid subscriptions)
- Run the analysis of the present progress (calculate the lifetime value of existing customers)
- Build predictions of the future results (how to optimize your newsletter sign-up form to get more subscribers)
- Competitor analysis (compare what new referring domains your competitors have acquired and you have not)
You might be impressed with the number of things digital marketers must know. Likely, a marketer shouldn’t be a true scientist for this role. It would be enough to understand the basics. In other words, a marketer needs to know how to collect, read, understand, and communicate data.
How to build this skill?
Self-education will help a lot. Marketers should take courses to lift up their skills. If marketers don’t work with data and don’t solve the problems, they won’t be good at this part of digital marketing.
- Ability to work with various marketing channels
Marketing channels vary. And it doesn’t mean that the marketing specialist will have to work with every channel. Nope. It depends on the specification of the project the marketer runs.
Despite this fact, the aspects of working with these channels are important to know.
Here are four reasons for this:
- Practice shows that marketers deal with several channels at once
- The target audience hangs out across different sites, platforms, and social media channels
- It helps improve communication with the other members of a marketing team
- Marketers can make a better decision on what channels it makes sense to focus on the most
How does it work in practice?
For example, a digital marketing specialist creates a strategy that helps reach out to your target audience on search engines. This strategy is based on SEO and the marketer estimates the progress using SEO metrics – search volume, keyword difficulty, power of backlink profile, etc.
However, your marketing specialist decided to repurpose outdated content. And publish it across other marketing channels. It leads to operating with such metrics as post engagements, zero-click content, number of shares, etc.
How to improve this skill?
Marketers should start consuming content that covers tips and tricks on how to work with marketing channels. But it is not enough to read. It is critically important to analyze it and implement it in a daily marketing activity.
Some marketers share their own secrets and how they overcome difficulties.
- Copywriting skill
Content is a driving force in a business promotion online. Every marketer knows about it. Therefore, if the digital marketing specialist can’t write a blog post, you can avoid hiring this candidate.
Instead, ask your HR manager to install an applicant tracking system that would detect potential candidates for a marketing specialist role who don’t have copywriting skills.
Likely, most digital marketers can create written content. But it doesn’t mean that their copywriting skill is ideal.
How to make it better?
Copywriting is not about writing bestsellers. It is about having the ability to write clearly and convince people to act. Plus, copywriting for digital marketers have a few surprises to remember:
- Grammar is not an issue anymore; there are a number of tools that can help fix it on the fly
- No need to take care about perfection; the online world is fine with imperfection
- Design skills
Design is not just colors and pictures. It is a visual language that marketers use to explain to users where to click and what to pay attention to.
Marketers share their pieces of advice on how to improve website design. The designers turn these suggestions into reality.
Nevertheless, if the marketer works in a small team, it is quite important to know the details of a design.
How to be better at this?
First and foremost, the digital marketing specialist should understand the basics of web design. Explore the tips and tricks on how to improve UX with design. And experiment with design services and tools (starting from content-, web-design instruments, ending with additional tools like document creator as example.)
- Know how to work with digital marketing tools
There is an observation among digital marketing position requirements – a potential candidate must be able to work with a range of digital marketing tools.
The required tools depend on what exact duties a marketing specialist candidate will have.
For example, if the position is more SEO-focused, then the marketer must know how to use such services as Ahrefs, DeepCrawl, Moz, etc.
On the other hand, if the role is limited to link building, then apart from SEO tools it is important to know how to work with outreach tools, like Respona, Buzzstream, email finder, and email verifier tools.
How to get familiar with all these digital marketing tools?
Many tools have free trials that can help test them. Moreover, some of them offer educational materials that marketers can explore by themselves.
For instance, Ahrefs is one of the leading SEO toolkits in the market. Marketers need to know how to work with it. Yes, a paid version of the service is expensive. However, there is an opportunity to learn how to use this service by exploring their Ahrefs Academy free of charge.
Digital marketers can get a solid experience in terms of using tools by grasping the free ones. The thing is that all tools are similar when it comes to their functionality. Thus, it won’t be hard to understand how to work with paid tools.
- Insistency
Insistency helps marketers be more resultative. It happens by expressing their opinion and defending their point of view. When you hire a digital marketing specialist, you should pay attention to a few things:
- If the marketer can admit mistakes
- If the marketer can say “no” in the workplace
The success of your company’s marketing side of work depends on how well a digital marketing candidate satisfies your expectations. Plus, it affects the overall level of employee engagement within the company.
How can marketers become more insistent?
The best way to do it is by teaching themselves to be more hard-driving and be able to say “no” when needed.
- Critical thinking
Digital marketing is rich in pieces of advice. Some of them are worth attention, the others – no. Hence, a digital marketer must feel the difference and implement only those tactics that are actionable.
Unlikely, the marketer won’t be able to define this without critical thinking.
Critical thinking is a healthy skepticism that can save a brand from unforeseen consequences.
How to be better at critical thinking?
A digital marketing specialist shouldn’t hurry up with making a decision. This expert should collect arguments and facts that would support the idea. Then, think about what will be the results when this idea is put into action.
- Work ethic
The position of a digital marketing manager requires following a strong work ethic. Otherwise, nobody wants to work with a marketing manager who doesn’t have any respect for other members of the team.
How to perceive work ethic?
There is no concrete advice on this. The only thing a marketer must be aware of is that every action or word may lead to certain consequences.
- Self-education
Digital marketer evolves constantly. Google releases new algorithm updates. Marketers suggest brand-new strategies and tactics. In a nutshell, there is always something new to learn.
When a marketing specialist becomes a part of your team, you can lean this person toward self-education.
How?
Here are suggestions that will help:
- Ask to read books on general marketing (you can buy these books and make them available for reading in your company)
- Demand marketers to share with you the latest digital marketing trends (it forces them to explore fresh blog posts on digital marketing and analyze them)
- Motivate marketers to take courses and get certificated
- Allocate a budget for attending digital marketing conferences
All these actions from your end will help your marketing team upskill their level of professionalism.
- Coding
Don’t be surprised but digital marketers need to know the basics of coding. However, the level of skill depends on task specifications.
For example, a digital marketer may need to insert a tracking tag or edit something in a WordPress template. Some other tasks may require marketers to analyze data using Python or SQL.
How to get better at this?
The most resultative way is by completing courses. Here are some of them:
- Python for Marketers
- MySQL Tutorial for Beginners
To Sum Up
Digital marketing is a complicated craft. There is no way to learn it from A to Z in a blink of an eye. It is something that marketers have to grasp constantly. This ongoing process demands finding alternative sources of information.
But for business owners, it would be enough to know the exact digital marketing skills to draw attention.
If you think this post lacks some skills, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
