What Are The Must-Have Skills For Marketing Experts?
Marketing has always been the backbone of any organization that has reached or aims to reach a global stage, providing an organization and brand with the exposure, the intimacy and the relatability that it needs to grow, and a popular name in their industry. This is doubly true in this modern internet age that we live in. Technology has made marketing easier and harder at the same time due to the fact that it has made the competition much more fierce because everybody is leveraging technology to market their product or service.
But if everybody is using the same technology, why are some organizations way more popular while others are obscure? Because marketing, even in this day and age, is not all about technology. It's about how skilled the marketing professionals or experts of an organization are. In order to reach the top, an organization needs marketing experts who are leaders in their fields, those who have all the requisite leadership skills to push their organization up to the peak of excellence. In this article, let's have a look at 7 optimal leadership skills.
1. Technology-Savvy
As mentioned before, technology closely influences modern-day marketing and will continue to do so well into the foreseeable future. Thus, it simply cannot be overstated how important it is for marketing experts to be technology-savvy. The lion’s share of marketing and client engagement these days happens online. In order to know what the customers want, and how best to deliver it, marketing experts need to be tech-savvy.
2. Communication
This is an obvious one. If you want to be a leader in marketing, you need to possess extraordinary communication skills. Communication skills include both verbal and non-verbal skills such as listening, speaking, writing as well as body language. Mastery in all these skills leads to mastery over the ability to communicate goals and intentions. This in turn not only grants you the ability to influence team members but also clients and customers. After all, what is marketing if not a way to influence people?
3. Initiative
A leader has to show initiative or else they will find it hard to get people to follow them. It is important to show initiative as a marketing leader too, as marketing is a creative field that is fueled by ideas. A good marketer must have the ability to generate ideas at a moment's notice and share them with their team. Also, they must be quick to grab opportunities, get outside their comfort zone, and convince people to go along with their ideas.
4. Critical Thinking
Of course, every marketer must have a sharp, critical mind because it is very easy to follow a seemingly good idea to catastrophic failure. Marketing leaders must be able to evaluate every aspect of their actions and predict likely outcomes, and weigh every possible consequence both good and bad. Thinking realistically is a big part of critical thinking. Critical thinking will also get you out of disasters quickly, and you’ll see a fair share of those in marketing!
5. Motivation
Marketing is all about motivation, and marketing leaders must have the ability to motivate their team members, their clients as well as their customers on a daily basis. But in order to motivate others, it is very important to stay motivated oneself. This requires a positive frame of mind at all times. It also means that you have to be a good example to your team members because everyone has eyes on a good leader and mimics what they do. Motivating others also requires that you have the ability to connect with people, which requires high emotional intelligence.
6. Sales Skills
This is where a number of marketers falter. Although most marketers have passable sales skills, “passable” does not make for great leaders—in any industry. Sales and marketing are more closely related than people may think, and even more so now when more and more customers are making purchases online. From generating leads to post-sales processes and everything in between, marketing experts who wish to be leaders in their niche and help their organization or brand excel need to sharpen their sales skills to a point.
7. Project Management
This is something every marketing expert today must have a good amount of knowledge about. Marketing is a dynamic and lightning-paced industry, where something new happens every day. Thus, marketing experts have to juggle multiple marketing projects at once and know how to connect all of them at a point where they all fit like pieces in a puzzle to reveal the big picture. Project Management is an essential skill to have if marketing experts wish to lead their organization into accomplishing its objectives.
