The marketing landscape is ever-changing, with technology advancements and trends opening new marketing channels and marketers developing innovative ways to interact with and engage their audiences. Today, marketing encompasses digital marketing, mobile marketing, and traditional marketing, among others, along with the many subsets of those broad categories such as content marketing, social media marketing, YouTube marketing, and more. Not only do today’s marketers need to have an understanding of each facet of marketing, but specialized skills are often required to succeed in certain industries or in a specific marketing niche.
Fortunately, there are many digital marketing courses that can help beginning marketers master everything from guerilla marketing to marketing analytics and marketing automation. The question is, where should you begin? What skills should you master first, and what skills should you focus on most? To learn more about the most essential marketing skills for young marketers in today’s competitive landscape, we reached out to a panel of marketing professionals and asked them to answer this question:
“What marketing skills are the most important for young marketers to acquire?”
Meet Our Panel of Marketing Pros:
Keep reading to learn what our panel had to say about the most essential marketing skills new marketers need to succeed in today’s marketing landscape.
Chris Campbell
Chris Campbell is the Founder and CEO at ReviewTrackers.
“One important skill for young marketers is being able to create content that provides value and attracts and engages the audience. This ties into developing strong research skills in order to do deep dives into the product, service, or brand’s value in the marketplace. Understanding what a customer truly thinks and feels about the product is what makes for a great marketing skill.”
Jason Ball
Jason Ball is the founder of Considered Content, a business marketing consultancy that works with clients across technology, professional services, and manufacturing.
“The challenge for young marketers is that tactics and techniques change constantly. So, while we’ve seen the growth of the ‘digital marketer,’ today almost all marketing is digital. Likewise, specializing in a tactic like TikTok or ‘growth hacking’ will have a limited lifespan and be replaced with something else in time.
Ultimately, there are two skills that are important: having an innate curiosity about people (why they behave the way they do, how they get information, what influences them, etc.) and how marketing can help grow a business in a way that the CEO and shareholders value (increased revenue, higher profits, greater customer retention, etc.). Together, these two will make you a more valuable asset for any business and stand you in good stead for anything the changing marketing landscape will throw at you.”
Brice Gump
Brice is the Founder and Digital Marketing Expert at Major Impact Media.
“One marketing skill that marketers should definitely acquire is leadership. Although your first marketing role probably wouldn’t be in management, you’ll still need to display leadership characteristics to grow in this role.
Depending on your exact role, leadership could mean acting as the go-to person for a vendor or client, taking complete charge of a critical marketing project or helping junior members of your team with their work.”
Charlie Worrall
Charlie Worrall is a Digital Marketing Executive at Imaginaire Digital.
“There are a number of skills that make up a good marketer and these often differ for different roles and even companies. However, one thing that acts as an ubiquitous skill is the ability to step back and see the bigger picture. Pinpoint and specific skills are great to have, but many people get their head in the work and never look up. It’s important to take a step back and reassess your strategy in order to evaluate its success. In doing this, you’ll be able to better understand where you should be focusing your efforts and how best to proceed. Many people think it’s all about the hours that you work and being seen doing so, but I’d much rather see the positive result that you create in an hour with a better process than the same result you create over two days with a drawn-out process.
Within this, there is a level of self-evaluation that helps to identify any issues or bottlenecks too. Having some form of self-awareness in this way means that you can better yourself and the process that you use within a strategy to achieve the best results.”
Jon Torres
Jon Torres is the Founder of Jon Torres. He is a digital marketing consultant who helps entrepreneurs create purpose-driven businesses.
“The most important skill for young marketers to acquire is consistency. A business cannot grow without offering regular, useful, immediately actionable, and even entertaining services. For instance, when subscribers know they can expect new content from you weekly, you’ll keep them engaged. Despite all the digital noise these days, they won’t forget about you. Being consistent as a young marketer not only enables you to deliver your services profitably but also helps boost business awareness, thus building trust for your brand.”
Patrick Casey
Patrick Casey is the Director of Growth Marketing at Felix Health.
“The most important marketing skill for young marketers to acquire is search engine optimization. Marketing is more than the simple promotion of a product or service. Marketing is all about making a lasting impression on your audience with informative, valuable, and insightful content. You need to think about the kinds of things that your audience might be searching for and asking about and, subsequently, to create content centered around those questions and phrases. In doing so, you’ll match the search intent of your target audience. As a result, search engine algorithms will reward your efforts with better rankings for your website.
For this reason, one of the most important marketing skills for young marketers to acquire is an understanding of SEO. By including search engine optimization as part of your marketing strategy, you’ll rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and improve your online visibility. This means that when a potential customer looks up a keyword relating to your industry, they’ll see your website before they see your competitors’ sites. SEO is essential in every young marketer’s tool belt, and the inclusion of a proper SEO strategy can greatly expand your reach and authority online.”
Ralph Chua
Ralph Chua is the Owner of The Funnel Brother.
“The most important marketing skills for young marketers to acquire are social media, blogging, and paid advertising. Young marketers need to know how to use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
They also need to know about blogging. Blogging is an essential part of any business strategy. It allows people who are interested in your company or product to find you on the internet. You also need to learn about paid advertising on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Paid advertising allows you to pay for ads that show up in search results when people are looking for your type of product or service.
Young marketers need to possess these skills in order to gain a firm understanding of how marketing works and to be effective at their jobs. Not only will these skills help them in their career when they start out, but they will also help them to build a stable business over the long term.”
Lydia German
Lydia German is the Marketing and Outreach Coordinator at Tao Digital Marketing, focusing on in-house marketing as well as PR for clients.
“There are many different areas within marketing that you can become a specialist in, but it’s crucial to have at least a basic understanding of content marketing. This revolves primarily around building effective content strategies. To do so, it is vital that you possess skills that allow you to guide your content with detailed, well-structured briefs and data-driven research.
The ability to identify new content opportunities is so important – content writers will rely on you to provide them with tasks that are purposeful, relevant and statistically more likely to produce great results. Identifying these opportunities takes an analytical mind to dissect complex information, compile technical search data and incorporate creativity to formulate a winning strategy. This can be done by monitoring trending topics on social media or using data-driven software such as Ahrefs and Google Search Console.
Another key soft skill is being able to voice your opinions effectively while simultaneously being completely open to feedback and criticism. You may still face plenty of criticism – this will typically be from clients or higher management. In these cases, it is your responsibility to take this on board, make appropriate edits and make firm recommendations to the writers.”
Shel Horowitz
As a green/social entrepreneurship profitability consultant, speaker, and author of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Seth Godin and Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield), Shel Horowitz takes businesses beyond mere sustainability (status quo) to regenerativity (improving): He helps develop and market profitable products/services that turn hunger/poverty into abundance, racism/otherism into social equity, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.
“In 49 years as a marketer, I’ve discovered the most important marketing skills are NOT copywriting, data analysis, etc. They are the journalist’s skills of asking, listening, observing, connecting non-obvious dots – and looking at everything with a fresh eye. So when a client brings me on, I think about questions like:
- Who is the intended customer?
- Who else might be a customer that the client hasn’t thought about?
- How is it different and better than existing alternatives? (I just rejected a project because the product was not better than existing no-cost alternatives.)
- Who else is already reaching my target audience – and how could they benefit if this project is successful? (That question opens up possible partnerships.)
- What strengths and WEAKNESSES have I noticed in the current marketing?
- How can I do it better?
- What do I really want to focus on in my marketing career? (This helps you select the right clients – in my case, companies and authors that are actively working to make the world better.)”
Zac Houghton
Zac Houghton is the CEO at Loftera.
“The most important skill for young marketers is communication. You need to have very high emotional and social intelligence to be an effective communicator.
Marketing is all about communicating with an audience, so it’s not surprising that communication is the top skill marketers need to possess. Being able to communicate clearly and effectively with others will be key to your success as a marketer.
By effectively communicating product benefits, answering customer objections, and persuading prospects to take the next step, marketers are able to make more sales for their businesses. An effective marketer must ensure that his or her messages are properly received by the target audience.”
Alex Franklin
Alex Franklin is a marketing, design, and brand specialist at A.M. Custom Clothing based in the UK.
“The single most important skill for a young marketer is to understand the business they’re working in. They can then use the data they obtain to ensure they’re actually reaching the business’s goals, not just their marketing goals.
An example of this in action might be a marketer running a PPC campaign. They may think they’re doing really well if they have a high CTR and a low CPC. But that’s not the full story. There are two sides to this: Firstly, if the customer costs £10 to acquire via the ad but only generates £9 of income, this may appear to be a poor ad, as you’re £1.00 down. With many marketers basing decisions on clicks and not profitability, this often happens. However, on the flip side, if the LTV (lifetime value) of the client is £900 because they’re going to keep coming back after that initial purchase, what appears to be a loss isn’t a loss at all.
Many marketers don’t understand their customer value or the profitability of products or services. This is to their detriment, as it’s so incredibly helpful to understand the business as a whole and the numbers. With that knowledge, the data you’re pulling from campaigns becomes contextually relevant. Arguably, there are times when things are not as easily measurable, but when marketing is measurable, it should be measured in context with the business.”
Gregory Yong
Gregory is the Chief Experience Officer heading the UX and UI team at software company Convincely.
“All young marketers should develop the skill of storytelling. Every great marketer knows how to tell a story. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to engage an audience’s attention from start to finish, and almost always outperforms traditional marketing methods in driving an intended action. The idea is to introduce a concept, movement, or even a lesson that captures the audience’s attention. Then, by following your story with the main message that you want to drive home, you’ll leave your audience feeling positive about the product or service you’re selling.
Coca-Cola perfected this in their 2020 Christmas commercial. The story revolves around a father traveling hundreds of miles around the world to deliver his daughter’s hand-written letter to Santa. When the father eventually opens the letter, it reads, ‘Dear Santa, please bring daddy home for Christmas.’ The advertisement ends with the father returning home and embracing his daughter, along with the message that you should give something only you can give. The advertisement serves as a reminder to make time for the ones you love during such a special time of year.
Coca-Cola never spent time talking about how delicious their drink tastes or why people should drink it. Instead, they spent time making their audience feel something. The lesson here is that people don’t buy based on logic; they buy based on their emotions. As a young marketer, you must study this important tenet of buyer behavior and always attempt to turn a product or service into an emotional appeal. Whether you’re a junior to the industry or a seasoned professional, it’s one of the most important marketing skills you’ll ever develop.”
AJ Silberman-Moffitt
AJ Silberman-Moffitt is the Senior Editor at Tandem, a full-service digital marketing agency. With over 25 years in business, customer service, and in the service industry, AJ has attained a wealth of experience and knowledge.
“There are many marketing skills that are important for your marketers to acquire. Here are a few of the most essential marketing skills:
Pay attention to the work that you submit. Your work is not only a reflection of you but also of the company that you are representing. Make sure to check for grammatical and other errors before submitting pieces so that what you submit leaves a positive lasting impression.
Observe those around you. You can learn a lot from listening to your coworkers. Many of them will have vast experience that you can benefit from if you take the time to listen and learn.
Keep up with the current trends. Continuously be reading and learning about the new trends and opportunities that present themselves. Technology and business are constantly emerging, and it’s essential to be up-to-date with what is currently working best.
Become competent in digital marketing. Digital marketing, including but not limited to pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), and social media marketing, have significantly evolved over the past 20 years, and it’s critical now more than ever before to be familiar with digital marketing to reach customers.”
Kateryna Reshetilo
Kateryna is the Head of Marketing at Greenice with 15+ years’ experience in marketing.
“In my experience, the following marketing skills are the most useful, regardless of your specialty.
Of course, the level of mastery for those skills will depend on the individual career path. For instance, if you decide to be a PPC specialist, you will need to know everything about PPC, but you will also benefit greatly from having the basic skills of SEO and copywriting.
Research: Research is an innate part of marketing. It is important to be an effective researcher regardless of what you do in marketing. From researching the competition, target audience, and keywords to just being able to quickly grasp new concepts and apply them to your work, you need to be able to do it all!
SEO basics: If you expect to receive search traffic from Google, then you need to know SEO, even if you are not the one to do it. SEO is becoming more and more interdisciplinary, as it is closely interconnected with content, web design, and digital PR. So content strategists, copywriters, PR specialists, UX/UI specialists, and designers need to have a good understanding of SEO.
Outreach: Outreach is another multipurpose skill that you can utilize in lead generation, link building, and PR, among others. Of course, the strategies will vary depending on the area of application, but the basics remain the same. You should be able to collect a high-quality database of targets, find the right contacts, and write and personalize emails, as well as use tools to automate and manage your outreach.
Copywriting: Copy is everywhere: landing pages, blogs, newsletters, social media posts, ads. Even if you won’t write it yourself, it is likely that you will work with a copywriter, so it is very useful to know the basics of copywriting.”
Michael Alexis
Michael Alexis is the CEO of TeamBuilding.
“Try front-loaded learning for rapid skill acquisition. I’ve been in marketing for 13+ years, and believe the most important skill for young marketers is the ability to learn things quickly. In marketing, best practices and tactics are always changing. Twenty years ago, search engine optimization and online ads were barely a thing, yet now they are an essential part of the tool chest. Even on shorter timelines, we see new marketing channels open up every year or even every month. A young marketer who can apply proven principles and adapt them to new formats will be light years ahead of peers that can’t.
One way to learn faster is what I call Front Loaded Learning. Essentially, you do a deep dive into a subject matter for a few days and then give yourself permission to learn the rest over time. For example, if you were learning about branding you could read a book, find some popular blog posts, interview a mentor, and do some small projects as experiments. Then, with this foundation, you can keep developing your branding skills over the months and years to come.”
Samantha Lyon
Samantha Lyon is a Digital PR & Content Marketing Account Strategist at The Brains Marketing.
“There are a lot of skills that make for a great marketer, but the three skills below form a great foundation for a successful career in marketing:
Data analysis: Marketing is still a creative field, but increasingly, it can all be drawn back to data. It’s important to have an aptitude for data and numbers and to be able to reflect, learn and adjust based on what has worked and what hasn’t. So one of the most important skills young marketers can have these days is an affinity for data – not only how to analyze it, but also how to use it – which is often where creativity comes into play.
Creativity: Marketing is part art, part science. So while it’s important to be good with numbers, promising marketers also need to have a creative mind. They need to be able to look at a campaign and see what’s missing and how to get there – opportunities missed not only by their clients but by their competition, too. This involves out-of-the-box thinking and a willingness to take risks in order to get where you need to be. This is relevant for content creation, SEO, social media, and PPC efforts.
Communication skills: To be a great marketer, you need to know how to spread meaningful messages while building trust and relationships with the target audience. This involves looking at a particular issue from different perspectives and manipulating messages so they are easily digestible and welcome – not simply sticking to one narrative in the hope that it’ll stick.”
Abe Breuer
Abe is the CEO and owner of VIP To Go and John To Go.
“Here’s what I look for in a marketer when hiring:
A deep understanding of the sales funnel: The ultimate goal of content marketing, like all other channels, is to convert online visitors into leads and leads into purchasers. To do so, content marketers employ sales funnels, which are made up of several stages of the customer’s purchasing journey. There are distinct needs and consumer requirements at different phases of the sales funnel. A content marketer must be educated on the sales funnel and how information fits into each step. Once content marketers possess this ability, they can produce content that converts visitors into leads and leads into customers.
CRM: Analyzing customer experience allows businesses to better understand their target audience’s changing demands. Customer relationship management abilities, which include tactics for monitoring and maximizing customer satisfaction, are essential for digital marketers to master. Engaging with customers on a more emotional and personal level is always beneficial to the company since it builds customer trust. To improve customer service management, a marketer must have a deep understanding of a customer’s mentality and emotions.”
Ashley Romer
Ashley is the SEO Manager at PaperStreet Web Design. She has worked at PaperStreet, where she manages SEO link building campaigns for over 80 clients, since 2013. She is a local SEO expert and has helped law firms nationwide increase their website rankings and overall online presence.
“Young marketers will need many skills to succeed in the industry, but adaptability is one of the most vital. The basic principles of marketing tend to stay the same, but there are always new changes along the way and if you can’t keep up with the trends, you won’t be able to grow in the field. Taking the time to learn more technical skills is highly recommended since marketing requires the use of data tracking tools. Interpreting reports and analytical data is critical to be able to improve your marketing efforts.”
Dan Salganik
Dan Salganik is the founding member of a Chicago Digital Marketing firm called VisualFizz. He has run campaigns for companies ranging from some of the world’s largest to local businesses. VisualFizz works with mid-size companies looking to expand and grow with a professional and approachable marketing firm.
“There are two types of marketers out there: specialists and generalists. Specialists specialize in one or two marketing tasks and become experts in that space (e.g., SEO, SEM, design). Generalists are well-versed in many marketing tasks but are not the experts (i.e., project managers, strategists, account managers).
For specialists, my recommendation is simply be the expert in your space. Don’t try to do it all for the sake of getting more work. We are constantly seeking out specific experts who can assist us in running a campaign from beginning to end.
For generalists, be able to understand everything you’re talking about and work on proper communication skills so that you can work with clients and team members. It’s crucial to be able to take complex campaigns and concepts and make them simpler and digestible to all stakeholders.”
Mitchell Stern
Mitchell Stern is the owner of SideHustle.Tips. He’s also the author of The Complete Shopify Tool Kit and The 6 Secrets of Success on Shopify.
“There are several essential marketing skills that young marketers should acquire:
1. Graphic Design – Fundamental to everything a modern marketer must do is create compelling visuals. It’s necessary for social media marketing, contact marketing, web design, and every other visual format. It’s also sorely lacking in younger candidates, especially those who haven’t been to college.
2. Communication – Communication is one of those old-fashioned skills that will always be relevant regardless of technology, medium, or place in history. The ability to manage clients’ expectations, communicate deliverables, and articulate goals doesn’t come naturally in most people. It is perhaps the most important skill for any young professional.
3. Familiarity with available tools – Knowing how to use Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Ahrefs, Alexa, Google Analytics, WIX, WordPress, and Excel is essential for success. This is one of those things that just comes with experience, but it’s always a huge plus when a candidate knows how to use the tools.”
Justin Smith
Justin Smith is the Founder and CEO of OuterBox, a nationally recognized eCommerce and digital marketing agency that specializes in web design, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising. Founded in 2004, Justin has grown OuterBox into the #1 ranked eCommerce SEO agency in the world.
“Marketers today require a variety of skills, but the most important is the ability to write, design, and edit HTML in some form or another. Because marketers often wear many different hats, having these core skills will give you a competitive advantage and show that you are versatile. As you progress in your career, you’ll likely become more specialized in your role but for someone just starting out, it’s often to your advantage to show that you can work across several different areas. These core skills are ones you can use in many different specializations, from social media, to content marketing, to SEO, and everything in between.”
Kent Lewis
Kent is the President and Founder of Anvil.
“Having interviewed thousands of marketing professionals and hiring a few hundred over my 25+ year career, I’ve noticed a few noteworthy trends.
First off, we hire for personality traits and cultural fit, not knowledge or experience, as that can be gained on the job. What we can’t create at Anvil, however, is a passion for the work, a thirst for learning or a sense of commitment. Those traits are all hard-wired, based on my experience. As a result, we have focused our evaluation of potential clients on a core set of skills that are essential, but also relatively remedial in nature: strong written and verbal communication skills. I’ve noticed a large percentage of young graduates enter the job market with sub-standard communication skills, which makes a successful career in marketing significantly more challenging. If you can’t communicate effectively at a baseline level, how are you supposed to represent a brand on a larger scale? I’ve addressed this issue in a few ways:
- We’ve developed our own internal training and certification, Anvil University, to ensure our team has a common skillset.
- We provide a dedicated professional development budget and guide employees down their path to success via a personal/professional roadmap.
- I’ve elected to teach as an adjunct professor and volunteer instructor at Portland State University and SCORE respectively, where I can help shape minds and expectations.
I’ve written an article that outlines my strategy for those looking to gain experience as an aspiring marketer. Here’s a brief recap:
Read: The first and most important step in building a career is reading. Leverage free industry resources available on the internet, including publications, associations and blogs.
Watch and Listen: Once you’ve painted the landscape with reams of articles, online discussions and books, the next logical step is to expand to learning events from industry organizations.
Get Credentialed: By this point, you should have a good sense of the industry landscape, including any available training and certifications.
Network: With a solid foundation under your feet, the next step is to develop your network. I recommend starting with LinkedIn and branching out to physical events in your area.
Apply: The most critical step in kick-starting your career is to apply your education in the real world. Reach out to family, friends or non-profits that will appreciate the help as you apply your new trade.
Build Your Reputation: In today’s knowledge economy, reputation is everything. Social media is a key component of creating and curating a brand. For example, we look for candidates that appear authentic, professional and passionate about social media. It’s fairly easy to sniff out candidates that don’t value, understand or embrace social media as part of their personal and professional brand, which is fine, but that’s not a good fit for us. I’ve identified three strategies I’ve used to build a personal brand:
- Article syndication: Become a writer
- Professional speaking: Become a speaker
- Press resource: Become an expert source for the media
Peter Bylsma
Peter Bylsma is a Publicist and a marketing communications professional who brings more than three decades of marketing communications experience to NetReputation.
“One of the most important marketing skills for young marketers to acquire is an understanding of where potential sales targets go for decision-making information and how they get it, which is a significant aspect of the emerging field of Online Reputation Management (ORM). An understanding of the technologies, contents, and distributions available for brand building, reputation management, and sales support as it relates to ORM is vital to success in marketing in the foreseeable future.”
Logan Mallory
Logan Mallory is the VP of Marketing at Motivosity, a company helping keep employees engaged both in the office and remotely.
“An important skill for young marketers to acquire is data analytics. There’s a wealth of statistics, information, and results that can be overwhelming if you aren’t skilled in data analysis. With a solid understanding of data analytics, a marketer will be able to make projections and present solutions based on solid data and use that to ensure that their campaigns are staying on track to meet goals such as conversion rates, overall performance, and A/B testing.
Another important skill is communication. As a marketer, you’ll be communicating with a wide range of people, including clients, customers, and of course your team and manager. Each of these groups requires a slightly different communication approach, so it’s important to hone your communication skills so that you can speak with anyone easily.
Communication is also important when crafting campaigns – you have to be able to use the right voice when creating marketing materials. Written communication is especially important in this case if you’re in charge of writing copy.”
Thomas Wood
Thomas Wood is the creative director and cofounder of Woodlette, a boutique creative services agency and production company in Los Angeles. They produce large, broadcast campaigns with established brands and have long-term equity partnerships with startups, building their brands, creative strategy, early campaigns.
“The number 1 skill we talk about internally is recognizing authenticity. It’s in our first emails to new clients. It’s in our pitch decks. It’s the hammer we (gently) bring down on most early calls. Authenticity is the quality of feeling real and earned. When a brand puts anything out, audiences need to feel authenticity or they will reject anything that feels put on. Finding it can be a delicate art, especially with a brand that’s new and still figuring it out.
If I were to try to really define it, I’d say it’s about a brand having a voice, a purpose, and consistency. Too often, we find clients trying things on or wanting to do things that just don’t fit. It’s the college kid who comes home from abroad with an accent, or gets really, really into rastafarian culture; we all immediately realize it’s not a good fit. (Full disclosure: I did the former in my own college years, though, gratefully, not the latter.) Sometimes authenticity can just be about subtlety. Can a brand tell a story that isn’t necessarily all about themselves? This is especially true with branded content, and we always suggest people check out Yeti, who are masters at authentic association without feeling heavy-handed.
Any good marketer has to have this filter, this final check: does this feel true to the brand? Does this come from a genuine place? Are we being real with our audience or are we trying to be something we’re not? Does this feel earned?
This doesn’t mean brands can’t sell or be direct or take big creative swings. Just be self-aware, ask yourself the above, and always make sure you respect that the audience is hearing 10,000 messages a day and will know when it doesn’t feel right.”
Himanshu Agarwal
Himanshu Agarwal is the SVP of Solutions for WorkBoard and has over 20 years of operating and strategic consulting experience. Himanshu spent over a decade working with senior leadership teams at some of the world’s largest companies across industries to develop strategic priorities and execute them.
“Marketing requires knowing and understanding people. The personalities that succeed in marketing are those who are adventurous while staying self-disciplined, have a high level of energy, and remain assertive. To have success in marketing you need to have a real, authentic interest in humans and the way they think. You’ll have empathy for others, and, due to this, your finger is on the pulse of what’s trending. A successful marketer can spot a trend before it takes off and understands the customer on various levels. Lastly, never turning down a learning experience and valuing all the separate tactics used in marketing are crucial to those looking to thrive in the field.”
Chelsea Cohen
Chelsea Cohen is the co-founder of SoStocked.com. As a 7-figure Amazon seller and consultant, Chelsea offers clients marketing strategies for successful 7 and 8-figure eCommerce businesses.
“Here are my top skills for young marketers:
- Empathy shows your target audience that you’re human – not just salesy. Conversion rates spike when clients can tell you understand or share their pain. Once you can establish that connection, skills like copywriting and customer care will follow naturally.
- Experimentation will help you generate results specific to your clients. The rules for marketing aren’t set in stone. Techniques that work for SaaS might not make a dent in sales for a physical product. As a marketer, you need the bandwidth to manage multiple tests before achieving the outcome you anticipated. It’s all part of the process.
- Agility is a critical skill, especially in our fast-paced digital landscape. Customer behaviors and industry trends will likely change throughout the seasons, and that will, ultimately, affect sales. Be prepared to do damage control at any time. And never assume that your marketing strategy is final.”
Yazan Sehwail
Yazan Sehwail is the Co-Founder & CEO of Userpilot, a product experience software that helps companies such as Cisco personalize their in-app user experience for millions of users daily.
“Providing good customer service is a valuable skill for marketers because they undoubtedly will face situations where they need that skill in order to do their job well. Whether it be a poor comment on social media, a negative review online, or some sort of reaction to your email marketing campaign – you’ll need to approach these situations wearing your ‘customer service’ hat. Being able to balance your marketing duties with these situations where you need to provide good customer service can be difficult. If you have the ability to provide customer service – even better if you can provide exceptional customer service – then you are on the right track to being a very good marketer.”
V. Michael Santoro
V. Michael Santoro provides business and digital marketing consulting services for entrepreneurs, startups, and small business owners at ReputationSimple. He’s an award-winning published author and co-authored Niche Dominance, creating order out of your digital marketing chaos. He was featured in Authority Magazine and has contributed content to Forbes, INC., American Express, Yahoo Finance, and other publications.
“The most important skills for young marketers to learn to apply correctly are brand messaging, building sales funnels, and conversion optimization. According to Simon Sinek, ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’ A company’s messaging needs to be consistent and connect with potential customers. This builds trust and authority in order to convert them during the sales journey.
Knowing how to create messaging/content that helps people BEFORE they decide to buy is what works in today’s market. The internet is cluttered and the competition is fierce. People can feel like every competitor is saying the same thing differently. Proper messaging with associated helpful benefits-driven content can provide a competitive advantage.”
Kevin Miller
Kevin Miller is a digital marketing expert, former Google employee, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He was recently named Entrepreneur of the Year” in the 2021 American Business Awards.
“In the early years of being a marketing agency owner, I was overwhelmed with the amount of work I needed to do. As a result, I quickly learned the ability to juggle multiple projects at the same time, while delegating less important but very time-consuming tasks to members of my growing team. As a marketer, you must be able to multitask, manage deadlines, and assign tasks properly. I look at it as a game of Tetris, consistently putting the pieces into place according to when deadlines are approaching. A successful marketer also knows how to prioritize their daily list based on what needs to be done first in order for everything else to run smoothly.
Lastly, it is important to be able and willing to adapt. There will always be something new coming your way, whether it’s a great opportunity or an unexpected issue that needs immediate attention; you need to know how to roll with the punches.”
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