by
Yasi ZhangWith the fast development of technologies in marketing, data are more available in marketing activities. You know not only how many people visited your pages or clicked your links, but you also know where they are, what time, how long, and devices they used and so much more. Today let’s review what are the key hard skills for marketers in 2020–2021.
1. Data-driven Marketing
The greatest thing about having data available for your marketing efforts is to use the data and generate insights. So that you can evaluate your ROI, effectiveness, and learn more about your target audience. This part is often ignored by brand marketing people when they are caught in the middle of daily execution. Take a week to analyze your data from google analytics, your links, your traffic source, your user journeys, and so on, what does the data tell you? Where can you improve? Where should you channel more resources to?
A stereotype of a marketer is someone who is creative, who has many ideas, and make beautiful designs. That is not 100% true. For a good marketer (brand builder), the person needs to have strong data analysis skills. Can you imagine that with all the possibilities of knowing how your emailing effort, your social ads effort, your content creation effort are doing, but not using them? What a waste. Marketing is not only about designing beautiful ads, posting on social media, it is also about how to use data to generate user insights, and increase ROI. That is why Marketing is an Investment, Not an Expense. Data helps you to recognize how to increase your ROI, so don’t waste it.
2. Content Creation
Content in this sense means valuable content, content that brings useful information to the reader. When someone, ideally your target audience, finishes reading your content (blog, e-book, videos), he or she learns something new about a specific topic, then it is useful content to them. Content is not about making ads, is about educating people on a topic and then establish trust and build brand authority in the domain your business is in. There are plenty of advantages in generating useful contents:
- build brand authority
- build trust
- help with SEO and views
- supplement inbound marketing and generate leads
I think the key point here is about the USEFUL CONTENT. Don’t rush into making every piece of content as a sales pitch, then you totally lose it. Making every piece of content as a gift to the reader/viewer that helps them to understand a topic more, so that you, as a brand, establish trust and authority in the domain. When they are ready to buy this kind of service or product, they are most likely to buy from you.
3. Use Digital Tools/Platforms
Canva, Bitly, Mailchimp, Hootsuite, Trustsqaure, WIX, iMovie, Garageband… There are so many more digital tools and platforms for marketers to create websites, content, designs, emails. Those do not exist 5,10,20 years ago. In the past we might need a graphic designer, an HTML coder, a front-end developer to make an ad, to build an email marketing template, or to build a website. With the tools and platforms, you can do it all by yourself. Especially for startups and SMEs who do not have big resources to hire a team of people in the marketing department, marketers can now do most of the tasks themselves. If you are a one-person business, it is even more useful to know how to use the tools and make marketing communication materials.
Another tool that is essential for a marketer is the inbound marketing process. You need to know how to set up a user journey and create a workflow. So that the process is automated. Then you will have data to help you improve the workflow and engage visitors more, eventually convert them into customers. Since inbound marketing is created by the founder of Hubspot, you can learn more about it here. Naturally, this was not taught in school while you were pursuing your degree (at least not in my time), it is important to keep up with self-learning. I finished all inbound marketing courses at Hubspot years ago, it seems like they have updated the course, it is still available on the website.
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Of course, there are other skills that are essential to be an excellent marketer. Those three are relevant because they are really empowered by new platforms and technologies. Building a brand is like running a business, you not only need to know the operations but also need to understand the business side. Use the tools smartly and you can maximize your marketing ROI and help businesses to achieve topline growth.
We know how much work it requires to manage a social media channel, and the success is not always immediate. That is why we are at Promote and scale to help startups grow on social, and you can focus on business development and product. We have in-house expertise and a team of experts to support you, and you can grow fast. Book a free 30 minutes consultation call with us to learn more.
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We are Promote and Scale, an agency specialized in digital marketing and lead generation for early-stage tech and e-commerce start-ups.
It is our mission to help you stop wasting your time and money on ineffective and inconsistent marketing activities. It is our vision to offer you comprehensive, high-quality, and efficient marketing services, so you can focus on what really matters — building your product, business development, and acquiring new customers.