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Top 10 Skills to Become a Rockstar in Digital Marketing

Technology is continuously evolving, prompting marketers and entrepreneurs to dive into digital marketing to increase brand awareness, reach their target market, and ultimately drive sales and profit.

Unfortunately, not a lot of business owners or professionals have the right skills necessary to succeed in the craft. As a result, they fail to offer the best email marketing service and produce content that’s personalized to their specific market. In effect, their digital campaigns seem half-baked to their audience. Most leave the hard work to the professionals, like WHITEHAT, who know what they’re doing.

Fret not. Digital marketing skills can be learned with patience, hard work, and determination. You can train yourself to acquire the unique skills needed to launch effective digital marketing campaigns for your brand. There are places that can help give your the resources to you need to make your marketing a lot better, for example, you might be interested in trying something like these Free sales funnel templates as well as do your own research.

Here are the top 10 skills to help you become a digital marketing rockstar:

1. Data Analysis

Today, data analytics tools are widely available, giving marketers the information they need to understand customers and target them with the right messages.

Data analytics refers to the use of functional techniques and modern software to collect and process extensive collections of data from various online interactions of your target market. These interactions come in different forms such as online transactions, content consumed, search queries, and other online footprints relevant to your business.

Bear in mind that any form of consumer data is useless if you don’t know how to analyze it to study your customers and create marketing strategies to grow your business.

Along with data analysis comes data cleansing, which refers to the process of eliminating incorrect, duplicated, or incomplete data on the database. As a digital marketer, you need to periodically purge your database of outdated, useless data to avoid making ineffective marketing decisions.

2. Writing and Editing Skills

At the heart of digital marketing is content. Writing and editing are more than just producing articles for blog posts and landing pages. It’s about connecting with your target audience using relevant messages and convincing them to take your desired action.

Of course, having relevant and well-written copy and content is a must for every digital marketer. But, what can help optimize it is creatively incorporating SEO keywords into it. Keyword optimization will help your content rank on search engines so your audience can find it.

Make it a goal to produce articles that are considered evergreen. This means that when someone finds it the day after its publishing date or even two years after, the content is still relevant to their information needs.

3. SEO and SEM Skills

A well-written blog post or newsletter is useless if the right people don’t find it. Remember, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are the strategies responsible for driving traffic to your website. A deeper understanding of it translates to better execution of your marketing strategies.

Google’s algorithm is constantly upgrading, and the importance of using relevant and specific keywords have reached a new high. With the worldwide web becoming more crowded each day, it’s important to stay updated and be fully aware of the latest algorithm updates and factors that affect search ranking. At the same time, marketers need to strategically consider those algorithms in their content creation and distribution strategies to attract and engage people.

4. Listening Skills

One common error brands tend to make is focusing too much on creating and promoting content. As a result, they fail to establish a good relationship with their customers, who are supposed to be the evangelists or promoters of their business.

Effective content creation is founded on the data you gathered and analyzed to help you determine the information your target audience is looking for and how they want it delivered to them. If you want to be an excellent digital marketer, know that the design, the information, and the way you market your content are crucial.

So, how would you know the best way to convey your marketing message to consumers? By listening.

Hop on social media, and listen to the way your target audience talks about your brand, your products, and your services. Social listening will also allow you to gain insight about how your target market perceives your competitors.

5. Email Marketing Skills

Even if email marketing is considered as an old practice, it’s still one of the most effective ways to nurture a good relationship between you and your customers. So, think outside the box and provide the best email marketing service.

To be able to create a dynamic email marketing campaign, you must know and understand the right tools, metrics, and strategies. This includes analyzing click rates, identifying platform navigation, and running email campaigns.

6. CRM Skills

Customer Relationship Management involves strategies you can use to monitor and maximize customer experience. By understanding customer interactions and experience, you can connect with them on a personal and emotional level toward improving your business.

If you want your customers to promote your brand, you’ll need a set of skills to help you improve your Customer Service Management:

Empathy – Start asking yourself, if you were the customer, how would you want to be marketed to? How would you want to be reached and spoken to?

Good Communication Skills – Every client is different. How they do business is also different. But, when you know how to communicate well with different people, it’s easier to work out a good deal with them.

7. Social Media Skills

Nowadays, the world of social media has become one big arena for public conversations. In fact, 3.2 billion internet users are also social media users as of January 2018. As a digital marketer, you can use that advantage to engage people with your business and inform them about your product or service.

You may already be familiar with social media because you’ve been personally using it since it first emerged. But, an effective digital marketer knows that there’s more to social media than just posting regularly and consistently.

Because businesses are now using social media to reach their target consumers, the platforms have significantly evolved to accommodate digital marketing needs. There’s social media advertising, boosted posts, hashtags, business pages, groups, and more. Indeed, there’s a lot to learn.

Community management also goes hand-in-hand with social media skills because it’s about seizing every opportunity you have to develop a better relationship with your customers.

8. Paid Social Media Advertising Skills

Social media is no longer as simple as it used to be. Reaching your target market takes more than creating a business page, using the right hashtags, or regularly posting entertaining and relevant content.

Facebook Ads, for instance, provides marketers and advertisers with a comprehensive tool to create and manage advertisements. But, how do you make sure that you’re using it effectively? Without a proper understanding of how social media ads work, you may end up spending more than you need to and fail to reach the right audience.

Learn and develop skills in oCPM bidding, creative ad experimentation, granular targeting of custom audiences, and social media data analytics tools like Facebook Insights.

9. Basic Design Skills

In the world of marketing, it can’t be all about text. It also involves a well-designed visual appearance. That’s not to say that you need to be a Photoshop rockstar. But, when your graphic artist doesn’t get the changes you wish to make with your material’s visual appearance, it eats up too much time. hen you have basic knowledge of design principles, it’s easier to convey what you want your content to show.

10. Mobile Marketing

According to Hubspot’s marketing statistics, almost half of B2B buyers do product research on their mobile devices while at work while 51% of consumers have discovered a new company while searching on their smartphones.

Because there seems to be no end to the growth of mobile marketing, various businesses and social media platforms are now coming up with innovative ways to reach people on their mobile phones.

It’s now essential to determine how you can create mobile-friendly content, and how you can leverage consumers’ dependence on smartphones for your business.

Bottom Line

Digital Marketing isn’t for everyone. But, these skills can be learned. All the information and tools you need are at your fingertips. It’s all about dedicating time and energy to learning these ten essential skills and you will become a digital marketing rockstar. If you wanted to learn more about how you could develop your digital marketing skills, it might be a good idea to talk an agency similar to M8th (https://www.m8th.com/service/strategy/).

Want to know more about digital marketing? Contact us now!

Rob FitzGerald

Rob Fitzgerald is the Founder and CEO of Connext Digital. He has amassed a wealth of digital marketing experience since the late 90s. He is authentic in wanting to help businesses increase their bottom line through strategic customer acquisition efforts. Outside of work, Rob enjoys watching Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football and the Washington Redskins. He lives to watch his kids play sports and is very active in coaching youth athletics.