Five Essential Skills To Succeed In Your Marketing Career

Written by Ohita Iwezeua

Marketing is a broad field. It includes growth marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and more. In many organisations, especially startups, you might need to wear multiple hats as a marketer. It’s also the case at the beginning of your career: you might need to be a generalist until you specialise in a specific field. 

To become a marketing genius - either as a generalist or in a specific field - you need to develop several skills at the beginning of your career and as you grow. 

Here are some of those skills: 

Communication skills
Marketing at its core, is about communication. To succeed in marketing, you must excel in written and verbal communication. You need this skill in developing and executing ideas, brainstorming and collaborating with colleagues, presenting pitches to leadership, and communicating with your audience. The cardinal rule of communication is that it must be clear, concise, and on brand. Develop communication skills by reading extensively, taking courses on communication and seeking feedback from colleagues.  

Writing skills
Closely related to communication is the ability to write well. With good writing skills, you can clearly communicate your product's value to your audience. This might be in the form of writing social media copy, emails, blog posts, and more. Always ensure that your writing is clear and concise. Most companies have a brand guide, and as a marketer, you must act as a custodian of this guide. The language you use in marketing must align with the brand guide. To get better at writing, you must think clearly. Don’t try to impress your customers or talk down on them; use language they’re familiar with. In addition, reading widely will help you become a better writer.

Project management
Marketing teams usually have several projects on their radar. You need to effectively stay on top of these projects so things do not fall off the radar. Some tips for project management include: automating as many manual tasks as possible, using effective tools to manage your multiple projects (Trello, Asana, Airtable, Notion), and blocking to do deep work. Creating a daily or weekly to-do list and blocking time on your calendar for specific tasks might sound cliche, but it gives you a bird's eye view of everything, ensuring you don’t miss deadlines. We recommend taking the Google Project Management Professional Certification to get better at project management.

Data Analysis
Marketing requires a deep understanding of data. Data helps you measure progress. This helps you decide what campaigns, content or ideas to focus your resources on. Regularly, your team lead might require that you provide reports on specific projects, using the metrics or goals stated at project inception. Get better at data analytics by studying data and taking courses on data analysis. 

Critical thinking
The ability to develop creative solutions to problems, create marketing strategies and more are important aspects of the marketer;s job. A marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan highlighting a company’s promotional efforts across various platforms and channels. It’ll include objectives, target audience profiles, content creation steps, key performance indicators, and other components. Some of the best ways to develop this skill include: reading about other company’s marketing efforts, studying every piece of marketing or marketing campaign that comes your way, and reading books about marketing. Contagious by Jonah Berger is a highly recommended read.

Audience Research
Good marketers have a deep understanding of their customer’s needs. Analytics will provide some information, but good marketers will also conduct extensive research through surveys, 1:1 conversations, social listening, and focus groups to understand the audience’s needs and interests. 

Building these skills puts you on the right path to becoming a marketing genius. Keep shooting for the stars! 

What skills does your marketing job require? Tell us in the comments.