These are the skills needed for 21st century digital marketing

Marc L. Goldberg
| Specially for Time

Marketing in the 21st century combines both traditional and digital channels to promote products and services. They focus on mass marketing campaigns to create awareness in the target market and influence customers to make purchasing decisions on behalf of their preferred choices.

Technology allows marketers to collect, analyze and interpret large amounts of data. This information provides insight into customer behavior, preferences and trends, allowing companies to make informed decisions about which tools to use in marketing strategies.

Digital marketing allows businesses to leverage social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. These platforms allow them to promote services and connect with more people. It also allows them to deeply connect with their audience by showcasing their brand’s personality.

In addition to offering a greater reach, online marketing is cost-effective. Digital messaging can be cheaper and more efficient to produce than printed messages. It can be duplicated more quickly and can be highly targeted to reach only the most relevant audiences, meaning it typically offers a strong ROI.

Online marketing is dramatically changing the way consumers gather information, even allowing buyers to be inspired by trends from another continent. In addition to being a channel for consumers to connect with each other, the best brands also use social media as a way to reach their own consumers.

Whatever your goal, whether it’s increasing your brand’s presence or generating leads for sales, digital marketing can help you achieve results. To leverage social media technology, it is critical to have access to staff or resources with digital marketing skills. In addition to technical skills, social media/digital marketing practitioners need greater creativity, empathy, and communications management skills to generate the ROI marketers demand.

Social media skills are more than technical. For example, TikTok has grown from 500 million to almost a billion users in twelve months. It has become an important marketing channel and therefore skills in video technology have become fundamental. To avoid wasting marketing dollars, companies need staff who can not only select the best platforms, but also understand the market demographics and create targeted social media content. Formstack estimates that 92% of marketers believe social media is important and that two in four new marketing hires need technical skills to succeed. So they need to be skilled in writing, social listening, analytics, content strategy, community engagement and media creation.

Content creation. Most businesses that use social media are successful because they have useful digital content that is valuable to their target audience. Buyers get their content on their phone, lap, desktop or other connected devices. They spend hours a day on one or all of these devices gathering information. Smart digital marketers ensure a constant flow of information to their customer base, even when they are not running a targeted campaign. The voice of the organization becomes part of buyers’ routine.

Analysis. This is an important skill need for digital marketers as data is the key to growth. Nowadays it’s more than just posting ads and relying on gut feelings. It’s all about data. Campaigns need to be tracked and analyzed for what worked, what didn’t, and what performance data is available to make next strategic marketing decisions. And it’s about more than numbers and what they mean. Digital marketers need to be able to translate the results into easy-to-understand images that can communicate brand penetration.

Technical marketing skills. The key to 21^st Marketing success in the century is using performance-based marketing campaigns. Some of these skills include: HTML & CSS and a basic understanding of these tools will help you apply them, not necessarily become a developer. (HTML tools to create actual content / CSS used for website design and style).

Marketing automation. Efficiency and consistency are the key words. Marketing automation reduces tasks on the to-do list and streamlines processes. Data analysis – today one needs to collect findings, interpret them and then communicate them to stakeholders. SQL database management – being able to use this search function without the intervention of the technical team is fundamental for a 21^st century digital marketing professionals skills.

Newsjacking. Digital marketing professionals need to be able to take advantage of the latest news to market their brands. This allows professionals to stay in touch with culture and trends so they can use their brand’s message more effectively.

SEO. It is essential that digital marketers can maintain a high level of search engine optimization to remain competitive in this over-saturated communications world. According to Wrike Blog, 39% of online customers come from searches and 75% of users never get past the first page. That’s why SEO (search engine optimization) is so crucial.

Like a 21^st century digital marketer you have to learn for a lifetime. Technology changes and evolves, so it is crucial to stay abreast of every change. Lifelong learning takes the form of active learning (read articles, study exceptional digital marketers and take classes) or join marketing communities.

We’re already seeing that digital marketing professionals are more than “Mad Men” Madison Avenue marketers. Buffer recommends that social media managers do the following monthly: create an analytics report for the past month’s activity, perform a social media audit, set and reset goals, generate new experiments to test new campaigns, plan ahead for the next month’s activities and make changes to the strategy based on the previous month’s lessons.

Digital marketing is a constantly evolving business and requires daily evaluation to ensure that the tactics used yesterday can generate the same or better returns tomorrow.

Contributed by: Marc l. Goldberg, Certified Mentor, SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands, www.score.org/capecod, 508/775-4884. If you need help with your digital marketing, contact SCORE to set up a mentor. Sources: Digital Marketing Skills You Need to Succeed, Wrike Blog, Kelechi Udoagwu, The Social Media Manager’s Daily, Weekly, Monthly Checklist, Mitra Mehvar, Buffer, 9/20/23.

Related Posts