Be A Pro- Marketer With Top Hard & Soft Skills To Learn in 2020
Hello Marketer! or maybe you are a business owner looking for marketing, or perhaps a digital marketing agency! Well, you must have been warmly welcomed by 2020.
We are at the finals of this year, which has been tremendously jaw-dropping especially from business and marketing perspectives.
You must have understood that 2020 is the start of our new decade and as a preset of instructions it has already told us that the coming decade is going to change everything, especially Marketing
Many digital marketing companies are coming up with their report for the next decade. Companies are figuring out ways to keep their graph’s nose upward. But the question is, Are you prepared?
Well, it is indeed a scary time for marketers across the world but at the same time, it’s equally exciting. Since we are planning for the future, our questions are inevitable and so are the challenges, but with Top Hard & Soft Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020, we can give it a good start! What do you say?
Let’s Have A Look At The Content To Save Your Time
- Internet: From A Marketer’s Perspective
- Ocean; literally Internet is Vast. That’s what everybody sees, but what a marketer sees is that the number of…
- Hard & Soft Skills: Difference
- To Learn the Top Hard & Soft Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020 we need to understand the…
- Top Hard-Skills For Marketers
- The reason why I mentioned Top Hard-Skills is that the number can not be limited when it comes…
- Top Soft Skills Set
- First, let’s understand why you need soft-skills for marketing. A few lines above you read…
Let’s Begin This
Internet: From A Marketer’s Perspectives
Ocean; literally Internet is Vast. That’s what everybody sees, but what a marketer sees is that the number of internet users is rapidly growing. Be it for online language courses, blogs, social media, or company profiles.
As per a report from Internet Live Stats, the world’s 40% population is online every day. That is 3.12 billion. Huge!
Let’s have a look at a few more statistics to understand this better.
75% Of Internet users read blogs, every day and 6 billion Google searches are happening all around the world even in the pandemic.
Here are some facts that every marketer should know:
- As of December 2019, China was ranked first among the countries with the most internet users. More than 854 million of the estimated 1.38 billion population in China are online
- Approximately 3.6 billion internet users are using social networks and these figures are still expected to grow.
- In 2019, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 3.53 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 6.54 trillion US dollars in 2022.
So where all this data is leading us? Don’t you think it’s the perfect time to:
- Increase your Customer Base Drastically
- Make Your Brand More Valuable
- Recruit Talented Professionals And Experts who can literally add wings to your business.
Well, you are about to learn the same in this article.
Welcome to the most-in-demand Hard and Soft Skills Every Marketer Should Learn In 2020; just before we do that you need to know the difference between them.
Hard & Soft Skills: Difference
To Learn the Top Hard & Soft Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020 we need to understand the difference between these two.
Let’s keep it simple;
Hard skills are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify. Some examples of these are SEO, Machine Learning, SEM;
Soft skills, on the other hand, are subjective skills that are much harder to quantify. Also known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills,” soft skills relate to the way you relate to and interact with other people as per the article The Difference between Hard Skills and Soft Skills by Dr. Medhat Shaaban
Top Hard-Skills For Marketers
The reason why I mentioned Top Hard-Skills is that the number cannot be limited when it comes to learning. However, considering the fact that we cannot learn everything overnight;
let’s focus on the top skills which are being considered as Paramount for the marketers.
1. Technological Proficiency:
In order to make it specific let’s think from a customer’s perspective. As a customer what do we expect from a business?
The answer is obvious; customer-centric, personalized experiences. Which is the reason why more and more customer experience practitioners are turning to technology solutions.
Gartner recently published a report on How to Leverage the Top 5 CX Trends in 2020, “It will be impossible to deliver a personalized customer experience without understanding how customers use and experience the different channels.”
It concludes technology is evolving rapidly. On average, 49% of companies are currently using marketing automation, with 55 percent of B2B companies adopting the technology.
Some Examples of Marketing Automation are web analytics, social media management tools, email marketing platforms, and many more.
So now you can understand why Technological Proficiency is one of the most required Hard Skills of the coming decade. As a professional, you should know how to use Technology alongside the work you do manually.
2. SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Businesses not using SEO are invisible, even if they are rocking at the offline level. Invisible because they could have aced the market with SEO.
It’s as simple as the well-known saying, ‘What’s visible, will be sold.’ SEO increases your business, your brand’s visibility and with the right tactics, the results could be jaw-dropping.
SEO is not a specialization to be fully managed by one person or a team nowadays, everybody should understand the basics of how Search Engines work. You may also learn it online through MOZ’s article on What Is SEO to get a brief overview.
3. E-Mail Marketing
To have a complete understanding of the Ins and Outs of E-mail marketing, understanding the basics of Content Creation, and writing is mandatory.
Email marketing skills are not just about sending proposals or advertising emails that sound more like spam, rather it is the ability to create valuable content that teaches your customers and creates excitement.
As per a strategy survey 2017 from Content Marketing Institute.
- 92% of marketers said their organization views content as a business asset.
- 72% of marketers have a content strategy in place.
- 94% of buyers confirm emails their number one channel for sharing.
You may like to read Content Marketing Statistics: The Ultimate List by Curata Blog
MailerLite allows you to create responsive emails and autoresponders with A/B testing capability built-in. You can also send targeted emails to specific subscribers.
As per Optin Monster, “Email marketing is the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. Effective marketing emails convert prospects into customers, and turn one-time buyers into loyal, raving fans.” You can read their article on Email Marketing Made Simple: A Step by Step Guide [+ Examples]
4. Social Media:
Social Media has brought drastic changes in Marketing. Hence today it is considered as one of the most prominent and Top Hard Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020.
As per HubSpot Research, Global Survey, Nov-Dec 2019; 74% of global marketers continue to invest in social media marketing.
Also, According to HubSpot research, 80% of brands say their community-building efforts have resulted in increased traffic.
“If social media trends from 2019 taught us anything, it’s that personalized content is key for success. We also saw brands starting to listen more closely to their audience” – says CRYSTAL KING (Principal Inbound Professor, Hubspot Academy) in her article on Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2020
So, you can use social media to communicate with your audiences more effectively, to accomplish a number of goals you have set for lead generation and brand building.
5. Machine Learning:
Stepping into the next decade without getting comfortable with Artificial Intelligence and some Machine Learning could be really risky.
Machines may not write blogs for you or create appealing Ads, but they are capable enough, that you can confidently delegate some of your tasks to them. Companies like Google understand the importance of this.
You should also figure out a way where you can combine AI and Machine learning in your Marketing Tasks. For a thorough understanding, you may consider an article, 10 Ways Machine Learning Is Reshaping Marketing by Quicksprout.
Top Soft Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020
First, let’s understand why you need soft skills for marketing. A few lines above you read that a machine may not write blogs for you or create appealing ads, Why? Here comes something that is not going to be challenged for a few more decades. That is Human Intelligence.
With a proper set of Soft-Skills, you can master the language of Marketing. Let’s have a look at some of the best Soft-Skills for the coming decade.
1. Intuition:
Well, intuition is something that comes from inside. Unlike Hard-skills Intuition cannot be learned like a course but it can still be fine-tuned with experience.
Sometimes when Data does not just satisfy you or put you in a state of confusion, you need to depend on your Guts. Although Intuition is not just limited to this.
Intuition is a form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation – as described by Psychology Today
2. Creativity
Creativity is what makes you different. You may get inspired by other brands, but using your own creativity you can enhance that inspiration and add more value to your brand.
How do you address your clients, as customers or consumers? A marketer understands that customers are more like creators nowadays. They create content, develop ideas, and encounter challenges just like any business.
An example of Creativity in marketing is working with your customers and then utilizing your efforts to weave their experiences. Rachel Pewsey describes Creative Marketing as the generation and execution of communicating unique messages in an inventive way in one of her blogs Creativity in marketing – the secret ingredient you’ve probably not considered
3. Emotional Intelligence:
You probably have heard this word before. Although its name describes its meaning.
Emotional Intelligence in simple words is the ability or intelligence to recognize, understand, manage, and influence emotions.
Emotional Intelligence is responsible for 58% of your performance – states Travis Bradberry in one of his articles on Why You Need Emotional Intelligence to Succeed
If you really love to read about the stats, here are a few:
- 70% of the time, People with average scores on Traditional Intelligence can outperform those with high IQs.
- A 40-year study of PhDs at UC Berkeley found that EQ was 400% more powerful than IQ when predicting who would have success in their field – You may read the full article Emotional Intelligence — What Do the Numbers Mean? by Joanne Trotta.
- So, whensoever somebody talks about Top Hard & Soft Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020 Emotional Intelligence is never forgotten. With Emotional Intelligence you will find yourself able to empathize and relate to customers and make messaging even more impactful.
4. Flexible Attitude:
When it comes to something that keeps on changing or evolving being flexible becomes a must-have skill. With a new day come new challenges and responsibilities for modern marketers.
Being flexible with your approaches and the ability to adapt quickly are keys to maintaining your brands’ value in the constantly changing market.
However, this is not the case always, sometimes it becomes important to identify how flexible and how rigid a business should be in its marketing strategies. Confused? Well, it’s true! But with a little bit of research on your customers, you can literally ace the market. Flexible vs Rigid Marketing Strategy: Knowing Which Is Best for You is an article by Ubrik.com to help you with this.
5. Team-Work or CollaborationThis soft- skill is concluding our article here. Marketing is not something that’s done by one person neither is one type of effort.
Marketing is a team-play consisting of a series of actions carried out in a systematic manner in order to achieve the desired goals.
In order to be a Master of Marketing you need to:
- Discuss your team members’ ideas
- Assist when they are in need
- Collect Feedbacks; and
- Observe their methods
Your marketing success highly depends on collaboration and team-work. This has been beautifully explained by Bigeyeagency in one of their articles on Teamwork is an Essential Part in Marketing Communication They divide marketing into a 5 step process. These steps are Sender, Encoding, Transmission, Decoding, and Reciever.
Conclusion
If you are doing it, why don’t you do it with perfection? – One of the best-known quotes. Whether it’s marketing, sales, or any kind of business activity; having a thorough knowledge and then acting with complete preparation not just minimizes the risk but also makes the goals even more achievable.
Moreover, we are not drawing the line yet. Aside from the Top Hard & Soft Skills For Marketers To Learn In 2020, there are other Marketing Skills as well that you may require for being a successful marketer. So you would never regret searching for new techniques and going through the studies.
Try, learning these skills, and apply everything to make a difference. We’ll be more than happy to publish your Success Story
