How to stand out in your marketing career?✅
It’s that time of the year again. The weather is good, and soon-to-be students are having a well-deserved break before heading off to university. It’s also a good time to start investing in your future by honing your skills and learning new ones. In my opinion, it's never too late to learn.
If you want to be a marketer, be ready to learn new skills for the rest of your career. The field of marketing is ever-changing – what’s relevant today might be obsolete tomorrow, and things you’ve never heard of can become the industry standard within a short period of time. The only way to stay relevant is to keep learning. So, here is your guide to a digital marketing career for beginners-
So, what does a marketing career demand? A marketing career fundamentally requires 2 types of skills -
Both hard skills and soft skills are equally important for succeeding in life. In some fields, soft skills cannot make up for a lack of technical knowledge of the craft, while some jobs solely depend on soft skills. It depends upon the industry you are working in but in marketing, it’s vital to have both types. I have curated a list of skills that you should develop so that you’re prepared for your marketing course.
Hard Skills
These are the skills that require a formal schooling or specialised training wherein knowing how to utilise a specific device, piece of software, or piece of equipment.
Disclaimer- The skills that I'm about to mention here, you don't need to be a master of each one but being familiar with will definitely help in making a mark in your marketing career.
Getting a deeper understanding of data from platforms like SEMrush and Google Analytics is key to interpreting performance and therefore optimising results.
Video is vital now. Simple video editing skills can be very useful and it's easy to learn those today. Adobe Premiere remains a great tool but not essential for everyone.
Understand the basics of SEO, and set up a website for yourself. Experiment with its content, fix the technical points, build links and run PR. Test and learn.
Get involved. Test out your images, videos, hashtags. Try new channels, be funny, engage with others, join groups, understand the metrics.
Google Ads is a great entry-level tool for learning advertising. You can pick up the basics from online tutorials but mastery takes time. And there are many other advertising channels to test.
Soft Skills
These are the skills that university won’t prepare you for. To master these skills, you will have to step out of your comfort zone and be open to changing a few things about yourself. Developing soft skills takes time and effort, but it will help you in both your professional and personal life.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Disclaimer- Developing soft skills takes time and effort. You'll be required to step out of your comfort zone and be open to changing yourself.
You must develop a strategic mindset for long-term planning. To develop strategic thinking, adopt a continuous learning mindset, keep an open mind and look long-term.
Put users' need first. Achieve this by using, as per The Interaction Design, empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test.
It captures the audience’s attention and keeps them engaged. A majority of the marketers storytelling to increase customer loyalty and drive sales.
You will have to communicate complicated information to your target audience on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it is the most underappreciated professional abilities.
The list of skills above might be overwhelming, but I would strongly suggest looking into each of them to understand the fundamentals. The process of learning these skills will also help you understand what you enjoy doing and what you don’t, which will make it easier for you to choose your specialisation – then, you will be able to spend more time developing them further and getting a head start in your marketing career.
If you need a more concrete resource to build your knowledge base, I recommend you read my best seller, Digital Marketing Strategy. As it is used by many universities around the world on their marketing courses so it will give you a head start. It provides an accessible, step-by-step framework for the planning, integration, and measurement of each technique on each digital platform with the focus of achieving overarching business objectives.
I’m sure your marketing course will help you develop many skills, and I wish you all the best for your journey ahead. I hope you have fantastic experience at university and a rewarding career in the future!
Read more about skills that a marketing career demands on my blog.
Get help 📧
If you need any support with your marketing strategy, my team and I can help! Get in touch to find out more about what we can do to help you!
Share ↪️
I hope you found this week’s newsletter insightful. If you did, I'd be really grateful if you could share it with your network and tag your friends & colleagues. I’d love to grow a community of MM readers so we can all learn from each other and deliver our best results.
ABOUT ME
I have been helping companies with their marketing from start-ups to global corporates for over 20 years and I’m also the author of 2 best-selling books in the field. Whether it’s growth, branding, performance, content marketing, SEO or many other areas, I have helped companies all over the world to deliver market-leading results. I’m also the CEO of a global marketing agency, and a regular keynote speaker, trainer, consultant and contributor to industry publications.