7 MUST-HAVE TECHNICAL SKILLS FOR DIGITAL MARKETERS
Last time we shared the essential soft skills that a digital marketer should have to start a career. This week, we expound further and cover the technical skills that are necessary to kick-start a career in this lucrative field.
Technical skills are mainly job-specific and majorly their performance is measurable. These skills are mainly acquired through training either on-job or in school and many a time are job/task-specific.
Maybe you are looking at a career change or advancement, these technical skills will help dip your foot in as you advance your competency with each of them.
1. Customer Relationship Management
Marketing as a field is geared toward customers. How you relate with your customers depends on whether they will be back or never look your way. To relate well with your customers you must understand what their problem is and position yourself as the best problem solver for their situation.
Pay keen attention to the actions that retain customers and those that push away customers, focus on those that retain your customers as you drop those that impact your business negatively. You have to be customer-centered, without the customer, there’s no business and there’s no marketing.
2. SEO & SEM
The mention of search engine optimization sends shivers down a lot of newbies as they think of how highly technical this field is. Well, that’s not the case, maybe!
Search engine optimization focuses on drawing organic traffic while search engine marketing focuses on drawing paid traffic. SEO is a MUST have when starting off as a digital marketer. Organic content is very valuable on every platform. It shows how many people you can genuinely reach without paid Ads and how good your content is. SEO will help you understand how to develop and structure your content in order to drive traffic your way. You should strive to deeply understand this concept.
3. Project Management
As a digital marketer, you will be involved in one or more marketing projects the majority of the time. At the start of each project, a client expects to see the whole plan to be approved for implementation. They also need the project to be within budget and completed within the stipulated timeline. On top of it all, they will need results.
You will require the relevant management skills to attain all these. Good thing is that short courses on this skill are offered on numerous trusted online educational platforms e.g. Coursera, Udemy etc. Ensure to also sharpen your multitasking since you could be a whole package in one person handling these projects.
4. Websites & Social Media Platforms
The title Digital Marketing means that you will be dealing with online platforms. From websites to all social media and online platforms that your client and potential clients could be. You don’t have to understand every concept about these platforms, that’s too much work. Have a grasp of their basic functionality and their algorithm. The algorithm is important since you want your content to appear at the top and in the most relevant of places. Understand how to optimize content that you intend to upload on these platforms for maximum exposure.
5. Data Interpretation/ Data Analysis
The advancement in technology has led to the production of data in large quantities hence the term ‘big data’. These days even small companies have large amounts of data. To get any valuable information from these data, you have to sieve it and get rid of the useless and duplicate data.
There are tools that will help you analyse and draw inferences from the data that you have gathered. Some of the tools you could use to analyse data like your reach and conversion are Google Analytics, Semrush, Moz etc. Microsoft Excel has loads of features and formulas that will help you interpret the data gathered. Learn to use some of these tools and you will be ahead of your peers.
Once inferences have been drawn from the data, use them to craft and come up with relevant marketing strategies and campaigns.
6. Design Skills
It is no secret that the current audience prefers visual content more than text content. In fact, 8 out of 10 social media users have said they want more video content on the platforms. The majority of the applications are also encouraging the use of video in content with features such as Instagram Reels and Facebook Watch.
Aim to have basic knowledge in things such as Video Editing since the demand for video content is so high. Graphic Design, Photoshop and Illustrations should also be among the technical skills you have an idea of. Understand some of the rules when it comes to designing so that you can guide your team appropriately.
If you find yourself in a small team, you might be the one handling all these tasks. Including visuals in your content will have the audience more interested and retain them longer on your pages. Remember, the attention span of people these days is so low. They want to consume as much information, within the least time while putting in minimum effort.
7. Content Creation and Curation.
These two words get thrown around randomly without really understanding what it entails. Content creation is coming up with concepts and ideas that are aimed at delivering sales or brand awareness. Content curation is the process of sieving other people’s content and sharing the most relevant with the most value. Content creation involves all formats of content which include; videos, graphics, illustrations, infographics etc. This is why those design skills are crucial.
This list is not exhaustive but only covers the main skills that you should focus on at the start of your career as you decide what to specialize in.
Always remember, ‘A Jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one’.
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