Today I'm gonna tell you 10 marketing skills that are hard to learn but it'll pay off forever. That's a long time. Because just like compound interest, time spent learning these skills now, will continue to pay you back for years and years to come. So let's get to it.
Marketing Skills
- Market Research
- Data Analysis
- Content Creation
- Offer Creation
- Storytelling
- Video Marketing
- Online Advertising
- Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O)
- Email Marketing
- 10 Marketing Strategy
So Let's Start,
1. Market Research
The explanation Market Research is particularly significant expertise for you to create, and one that will take such a long time to secure is that knowledge is power, especially when it comes to marketing. In the round of business, it's not the business with the best help or the best item that successes, but instead the business with the best showcasing.
I wish this wasn't the case. If anything, it's not even fair, but it is what it is. And the fact is, is that good marketing is the thing that's going to drive,
- More Leads
- More Customers
- More Clients
- More Sales
- More Revenue
Whatever business or whatever marketing campaign you're working on. And to do this, well, you're gonna need those leads, you're gonna need those customers which means you're going to need to understand what makes them tick, what it is that's making them make the decisions that they do so that you can influence and persuade those decisions.
The goal with Market Research is pretty simple, and it's to attempt to understand your customers better than they understand themselves. Appreciate simple but not easy, but that's why you want to break it down and try to dial in an ideal customer avatar or figure out who exactly it is that you're trying to market to.
So when you're forming this representation of who it is that you're trying to reach, you wanna sort of building them up in three different areas, including,
- Demographic Details
- Geographic Details
- Psychographic Details
Demographic Details
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Occupation
Geographic Details
- City
- State
- Province, do they live in?
Psychographic Details
- What are their values
- What are their attitudes
- What are their lifestyles
- What are their opinions, or any groups or affiliations that they're a part of?
More importantly than that though, is you want to try to figure out what are their pains, and their problems, and their frustrations and all of the things that are holding them awake at night, that they simply can't solve. The better that you're able to dial into their pains and their problems and their frustrations, well, the better you're going to be able to communicate that your business is the solution to those worries and difficulties.
So the better you understand them, the better you're going to be able to communicate this. Also, this is why Market Research is very important.
2. Data Analysis
Data Analysis is essentially the ability to look at all the numbers and look at all the marketing and then make better and smarter and ultimately more profitable decisions. When it comes to marketing and when it comes to Data Analysis, you want to test everything and assume nothing.
I was unable to try and start to let you know the occasions that I've composed two unique Ads, and I was certain that this one planned to rule and break it, and this one was simply a piece of garbage that I was working on to put out there to test.
Guess what happened? Well, more often than not the one that I thought was garbage just seems to dominate, because as well as I'd like to think that I know my market and I understand what's going to work and what's not, sometimes I'm wrong, but that's okay.
Because as a marketer, I can test different things, and then I can break down the data and make more strategic, and better-informed decisions moving forward. Finally, what this points to is the ability to create accountable marketing or marketing that essentially gives some kind of return on investment or ROI.
And when you're able to create marketing that delivers revenue and profit for a business, well, you're gonna be given a lot longer leash and a lot more of a marketing budget to work with. After all, if somebody gives you $1 and you're able to turn that into $2 back through effective marketing, well, how many dollars are they going to want to give you?
The answer is as many as possible as long as you're able to get that kind of return. And that's the importance of doing proper data analysis and making sure that you're making those smart, and educated, and essentially profitable marketing decisions.
So to help get you started here are some questions that you could look for some data that you could try to break down,
Where are your customers coming from,
- Are they coming directly to your website?
- Are they coming through social media?
- Are they coming through paid advertising?
What are they arranging with your content, and with your competitor's content,
- Are they watching videos
- Are they reading blogs
- Are they listening to podcasts
- Are there specific pages that they're more interested in
- Certain websites that they visit more often than others?
What else are they doing,
- Are they clicking into other pages on your website,
- Are they visiting certain pages and then leaving, never to return?
These are all questions that you truly wanna attempt to obtain the answers to. Most importantly, this enables you as a marketer to figure out what's working and what's not. So you can do more of what's working and less of what's not.
3. Content Creation
If it comes to marketing, well, really all marketing is content,
- Any time that you make a video
- Any time that you write an Ad
- Any time that you create a social media post
- Any time that you create a blog post
- Any time that you record a podcast or anything like that, it's all content
And your audience or your ideal customers, not to mention the algorithms, all want more content, lots more content like tons and tons of content. This is why you want to develop a content creation strategy and schedule that you can stick to.
A ton of different kinds of content you can create,
- Video content
- Audio content
- Text content
- Graphics
4. Offer Creation
You see creating an overpowering proposition is perhaps the most important thing, quite possibly the most significant skill that you can get as an advertiser. Now, this is one of those things that's simple to learn but takes a lifetime to master. Then let's begin with the easy-to-understand part first.
Essentially crafting an irresistible offer is just combining two different things.
- One of your perfect target market's biggest problems, biggest pains, or biggest frustrations that we order of uncovered and discovered early on when we were doing our market research.
- Meeting up that passion with your business's unique solution, or product, or service, or something that's going to allow that market to have that problem solved.
That's pretty much it. That is the essence of an offer. You have this disorder, well, I have this solution. So would you like to buy it? Now obviously it's a lot more nuanced than a whole lot more detailed than that. This is why it often takes a lifetime to sort of developing the skill to craft an irresistible offer.
But, you do need to spend a lot of time and a lot of energy and maybe even a lot of money here really trying to crack the code on what an irresistible offer looks like for your business. So just how important is an irresistible offer to your business? Well, there's something called the direct response or direct marketing hierarchy.
This says that the effectiveness of any direct marketing campaign is going to come down to three different elements in these proportions.
- 40% of the market
- 40% of the offer
- 20% of the creative
40% of the market
40% of the effectiveness of your campaign is going to come down to your market. Essentially recognizing and locating your ideal spot market.
40% of the offer
Another 40% of the effectiveness of that campaign is going to come down to the offer. Essentially the irresistible offer that you're making.
20% of the creative
And then the last 20% is the copy and the creative. Essentially the words that you write and the images are normally what gets the vast majority of the focus, but you can see here, it's just worth 20%.
Whereas 40% is identifying the right people and another 40% of the offer. So clearly the offer is important. A lot of the marketing campaigns that I audit whether we're talking about,
- Facebook Ads
- YouTube Ads
- Email newsletters, or anything like that,
The vast majority of the time the reason that the campaign isn't working, isn't because of the image, or the text, or even the targeting, but rather they're not creating an irresistible offer. They are creating resistible offers. They're making offers that are easy for people to say no to, and you don't want that.
5. Storytelling
The reality is, is that stories
- Sell stuff
- Period
- Facts
- Numbers
- Statistics
- Features well
These things are necessary but they only get you very far. You want to recount stories to permit your crowd, permit your objective market to relate, and get what things may resemble and basically why they should mind. The story is regarding how we as human-animal groups, all things considered, it's how we impart, it's the way we trade data with companions and with relatives.
Simply ponder the last time that you got together with your companions by the day's end, did you say, "Hello, how's your day?" Or "hey, anything cool happens?" Or then again did you say, "hello present to me "a measurable, applicable, authentic contention on all "of the things that happened to you in sequential request, "so I can do I've evaluated just decision on "whether you had a good day or not?"
I'm gonna guess you didn't do that. Since that is not how individuals talk, which implies, that is not how your promoting ought to impart. 'Cause, your marketing should look like you speak. So on that note, stories are important. You should use them.
6. Video Marketing
Now, it's no secret that Video Marketing video in general is one of the single most effective forms of content marketing, not to mention marketing that you have available to you as a marketer.
No matter what,
- Study
- Statistic
- Fact
- Article
- Friend
- The family that you talk to
Pretty much everybody says that they're watching a whole lot more video. This means you should be making a whole lot more videos. After all marketing's job is to give the people what they want. And if they're saying loud and clearly that they want more video, it only makes sense to give the people what they want.
You can make short videos for Instagram stories. You can go on Facebook Live or Instagram lives or YouTube live. Or you could make a longer form of video content. None of these is better than others, per se, with perhaps a slight edge going to the longer video content hosted on YouTube, but all of them will help you to build trust and to establish authority.
And essentially to build a bond and rapport and connect with your audience. Now I appreciate video is one of those skills that's a bit tricky to learn but, it's one of those skills that you simply can't ignore because it's just too valuable and it's only getting more valuable.
In fact of all the skills that I'm talking about here today, maybe one of these single most important tactical implementations or adoptions you make into your business or your career as a marketer. One that's gonna pay off not just today but for weeks and months and years to come.
7. Online Advertising
Now, when it comes to getting more attention for you,
- Business
- Product
- Or your service as a marketer,
you essentially have two choices.
- To pay
- Or not to pay?
That is the question. Or then again, all in all, to run internet promoting like Facebook Ads, or Instagram Ads, or Google Ads, or YouTube Ads or anything like that, or do not, and attempt to do everything organically. Now, neither is better than the other say running Ads or not running Ads.
And there are advantages to both, but one of the biggest advantages to running online advertising like Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads is the speed and the reach with which you can execute them.
Essentially, by running something like a Facebook Ad, or an Instagram Ad, or a YouTube Ad, or anything like that, it permits you to receive your message in front of hundreds or thousands, or maybe even millions of people in as short as a day.
But with great power comes great responsibility. So you can't simply just toss up an Ad and expect money to rain from the sky. This is why understand the early skills that I've already shared with you.
Things like,
- Market Research
- Data Analysis
- Content Creation
- Video, and everything.
All things considered, these will have a fundamental influence in making productive and successful high changing over, web-based publicizing efforts.
8. Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.)
Instantly SEO is easily one of the least sexy features of marketing. That and maybe Data Analysis. I guess maybe Market Research too. There's a lot of things nobody wants to talk about. This is insane on the grounds that Market Research, and Data Analysis, and SEO, all things considered, can make you a ton of cash.
Web optimization is the craftsmanship and study of getting your substance, or your site, or your recordings to appear higher in the web crawler rankings when, a client, or a watcher, or a potential possibility is composing something in.
For example, one of the ways I was first able to grow my very first digital marketing agency over a decade ago, was ranking for terms like digital marketing agency in my hometown, as well as a marketing agency, and marketing strategy and social media marketing, things like that.
And now applying those same tactics and same strategies to this YouTube channel. Well, now on YouTube I rank for terms like Marketing and Digital Marketing. And all of those have helped to grow the channel.
SEO is surely difficult and it requires some investment, and persistence, and a ton of specialized information to attempt to develop the right titles, and catchphrase examination, and labels, and depictions, and all the material that goes into it. Yet, the prizes are certainly worth the work. Just think about it.
How would your business change if your website, or your videos, or your content started showing up in the number one or number two place for highly competitive search terms in your industry?
9. Email Marketing
I fought with myself a long time about which skills should go in this spot. I thought maybe I would put,
- Re-targeting
- Re-marketing
But those are just variations on online advertising. I thought maybe something about a CRM or Customer Resource Management software but those aren't that hard to learn. So ultimately I ended up deciding on well, you already know, Email Marketing.
Yet, here's the reason, the explanation I picked Email Marketing as perhaps the main topic at this point troublesome ability to acquire and dominate is that email, yes today, it's still comparably important and can be similarly pretty much as productive as it at any point was. Why you request, I'll just assume you asked why.
Well, it's because everybody uses email, everybody. Not everybody watches TV, surely not cable TV or the kind that you can run advertisements on. Not every person pays attention to the radio and regardless of whether you need to utilize the radio there is just an excessive number of stations to try to get at the beginning of and not everybody reads the newspaper.
I can't think of a single person I know that reads the newspaper anymore. But everybody uses email, a lot, every day, many times a day. Of course, sending an email to your friends and inviting them out for pizza, or to go watch a movie and crafting a high converted marketing email that results in millions of dollars in sales are two completely different things.
But, it is a skill that's worth learning and one that will pay off for years. So, it had to make the list.
10. Marketing Strategy
All right, of all the skills that I've shared up until this point, there's one single skill that I haven't mentioned yet, that is more important than all the previous ones because it's the one that all the previous skills are built upon.
Now, when talking about Marketing Strategy, what I'm referring to is the ability to take all of the skills that I've just shared with you now, and essentially to package them up, or to mix and match and to choose the exact specific combination of different skills that are going to be unique to every single different market, and industry, and business that you work on.
You see it's never the tactics that move the needle, but rather the strategy on which all of the tactics are built.