Growth Hack Your Marketing Career For 2016
Growth Hack Your Marketing Career For 2016
How do you take your marketing career to the next level? Columnist Mary Wallace discusses shifts in the marketing technology landscape and the skills you'll need to get ahead in 2016.
The role of marketing has changed immeasurably over the past
decade. With this revolution comes the opportunity for marketers to
catapult their careers into new directions and amazing opportunities.
As always, skills are the fulcrum point for a career trajectory in
changing times. For marketers, it’s all about the “building block”
skills, or those that empower them to craft strategies — skills to
design and deploy campaigns, skills to build marketing infrastructure
and processes and skills to create content and analyze results.
Of equal importance are the skills needed to build, lead and
participate in teams, as well as to work cross-functionally across the
organization.
As we see 2015 draw to a close and 2016 move nearer on the horizon,
here are four skills that can help marketers take their careers to the
next level.
Understand Technology
According to Marketo, 39 percent of marketing executives
are seeking talent in the areas of digital engagement and marketing
operations and technology. As future customers stay hidden longer, the
skills of the technologist are driving engagement through marketing automation, predictive analytics and SEO.
The marketing technology landscape continues to expand. There are more and more layers in the martech stack, and more tools are available.
To grow, marketers must have a working knowledge of those components
and how they fit together. Without this skill, marketers are limited in
the extent that they can push campaign design and execution.
Marketers must know the latest technology standards. This is
especially true given that the bulk of the lead-generation effort takes
place through the internet.
They must also know what responsive design is and why it improves UX. They should understand appropriate security measures and how to protect lead data.
Embrace Creativity
How and why a purchase is made is changing — and with it, the
responsibility of marketing. Faced with a new set of challenges, leading
marketers must figure out how to creatively solve problems.
For example, with so many channels to communicate through (e.g., mobile, social, apps) and the proliferation of intent data, marketers need the skills to creatively analyze data to determine which channels to use to communicate and when.
Skills in creativity go beyond the unwalked path. Creativity is needed to tell the brand story that attracts and engages leads.
As brand ambassadors, marketers need ingenuity and vision to protect the vitality and integrity of the brand
Hone Your Analytical Skills
As customers continue to exert control over purchasing decisions,
they are leaving a trail of digital body language (data) that can be
harnessed to better reach, engage, convert and retain them. This means
marketers no longer need to guess at what’s working and how to improve
on their results.
One of the hottest trends in marketing is analytics: mining and
analyzing data to find out what’s working, what customers are doing and
what impact campaigns are having.
Analytics skills — using big data/data warehouses and tools like
Tableau or Qlikview — are required to validate and investigate. Skills are needed for
transitioning from analysis to intelligence, driving customer stories
through metadata and understanding customers from multiple perspectives.
Just as important, analytical skills are needed to create models that
validate the marketing organization’s worth to the business and the
impact of campaigns on revenue and growth.
Sharpen Your Communication Abilities
Almost every job opportunity out there has a requirement for strong
written and oral communication — because communication ties the pieces
and people together and enables an organization to define and execute a
strategy or create and follow a process.
Strong communication skills are key to marketing success. Written and
verbal communications clarify goals, responsibilities, due dates, plans
and success.
Scott Vaughan, CMO of Integrate, recommends in a blog post:
Start with curious listening. Understand the needs of the individuals you’re communicating with, choose the right channels, and craft your points accordingly. The career payoff will follow.
And don’t underestimate the importance of writing. Copywriting is one of the most important skills that a marketer can have.
Writing, the foundation of almost every marketing campaign, is a basic skill that can have a huge impact on career growth.
Regardless of the skills they hone, marketers who foster a positive
working atmosphere will far exceed those who do not. Learn to be
supportive.
Create a collaborative environment that incites the creativity and growth of those around you.
And learn to adapt to constant change and diverse work requirements. Adaptability is a key skill that should be displayed by marketers who want to continue their career growth.
Doing it all and being the expert isn’t realistic. But upwardly
mobile marketers will have a working knowledge of technology and
analytics.
They will have strong communications skills, and they will have a curiosity to embrace what’s around the corner in 2016.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be
those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff
authors are listed here.
Post a Comment