Today’s digital marketer can be extremely good at just one aspect, but they need to be experts at various other skills so that they can understand everything else. With each passing day, there are newer methods being discussed, different channels popping up, new automation, alternate workflows, and whatnot.

8 Mandatory Digital Marketing Skills to Know

We know all the mentioned factors can be mind-numbing for a marketer sometimes as it can be too much to take, there are certain digital marketing skills that you need to possess to be a really good marketer. Well, you are in the right place. Here are the 8 mandatory digital marketing skills that every aspiring digital marketer ought to know.

#1 SEO

It has been in existence for more than a decade and a half now. The rumors are not true, SEO is not dying. In fact, it is only gaining in importance as more and more content is being churned out. Knowing how and from where customers are searching for you is really important to produce useful content. Content is what drives users to your website where they want to know more about you, what you offer, and so on.

As an SEO expert, you need to be good at setting goals, leading a detail-oriented team, performing ample research, delegating work, and a lot of other responsibilities, otherwise your SEO campaigns will not be successful. Here is what you need to know as an SEO expert:

1. You should have the ability to see data, look at reports on organic traffic, understand which were the good content that you wrote, and find out if your ranking dropped and why it happened. The ability to crunch data is pivotal here as it will give you the best direction for your campaigns.
2. You should be able to do basic research like keyword analysis and competitor analysis which will give you the foundation for your campaigns. You will need to know about the latest SEO updates. The ability to run experiments based on your research.
3. While you don’t have to be a professional coder, you should know the basics of coding as being able to understand the source code and easily make some changes without making your website crumble is a good skill to have.
4. Understanding people and having empathy will keep you in good stead if you want to become an SEO expert. How do you think that is important for technical skill, you might ask? When you are doing SEO, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a website visitor, it will allow you to make changes, run experiments, and so on.

#2 Content Marketing

Content is King, Queen, and the whole army combined. Without content, there is nothing to market. We do not need a digital marketing team if we are not churning out content on a regular basis. If you want to become a digital marketer, having content marketing skills is basic. Without it, you will never be able to create campaigns or bring in more customers for your clients.

Here are some of the skills that you require to become a good Content Marketer:

1. While being an expert at editing content is great, it is not a necessity. But you need to be good at spotting errors, inconsistencies, lack of style in the language, grammar mistakes, types, and so on.
2. Should have the knack to present information in a more consumable manner. Learn how to add bullet points, add additional images, present insightful infographics templates, add subheadings, reduce fluff, break up paragraphs, and so on.
3. Create well-defined personas and add them and use them when creating content so that your targeting is always targeted.
4. Create a content calendar that has all the necessary types of content made available for the customer’s benefit.
5. The ability to research extensively to find content pieces and ideas that will add value to the lives of prospective customers.
6. Understand how different types of video content work. Instagram recently released Reels. Are you aware of how it works? Each type of videos have their own relevance and importance. Your Snapchat videos should be different from how you create a video on a platform like LinkedIn. You can use free video editors to make videos and post on different platforms.
7. Your distribution skills should be on point. Content is of no use if there is nothing to distribute. The main task of a content marketer is to distribute content so that it reaches every possible person who is a part of the target market.
8. The ability to stick to a plan and find out ideas and content based on that plan is important as it is easy to want to try different things at a time. It will only lead to a loss as you need to work on a sustained campaign to see results.

Content Marketing is continually evolving and the above eight tips are some of the skills that you need if you want to become a good content marketer.

#3 Video Marketing

With our attention span decreasing over the years, it is important that you create content that people are eager to consume. Videos are easily the most consumable form of content because there is little effort from the side of the consumer. Becoming a good video marketer is pivotal to the success of your digital marketing campaigns.

Here is how you can be a good video marketer:

1. Center your brand around the story. The rules that apply for content marketing apply for video marketing as well. You need to concentrate on the value that you provide for your customers. That is all that matters.
2. Be able to understand the video script written by the content creator and offer changes so that it is in alignment with what customers want and expect from you. It should appeal to your audience specifically and you should be able to offer suggestions that will shape your video script that way.
3. Optimize your video for SEO so that they will be better visible in your search engines. Write stellar descriptions so that your video gets found by users who are searching for something related to your niche.
4. Find out simpler and cheaper ways to create videos. Have the ability to go lean when it comes to videos as businesses end up spending thousands of dollars to create videos. You need to reduce the effort and cost involved so that you can come up with more videos for your brand.
5. Understand how different types of video content work. Instagram recently released Reels. Are you aware of how it works? Each type of videos have their own relevance and importance. Your Snapchat videos should be different from how you create a video on a platform like LinkedIn.
6. Learn how to add more User-Generated Content that can be used in your videos. People love seeing themselves and they will share it more than a company-related video that has nothing personal for them

#4 PPC

PPC or Pay-per-click are your paid campaigns. Every day that you see on the Internet is a PPC campaign that brands have invested a lot of money on. It is used to drive traffic to a website or a landing page in which the business pays the publisher when the ad is clicked. In the digital marketing industry, PPC is a highly valued skill set as it brings in immediate results unlike traditional methods of marketing. Since there is a lot of money involved here, businesses will want to ensure that it is assigned to someone who is an expert in it.

Let’s see how you can learn to become a PPC expert:

1. You need to have a deep understanding of your target audience. Only when you know who exactly to target, would your PPC campaigns have high ROIs. If you are selling to entrepreneurs, you do not want to target doctors. Sure, there are doctors who are also entrepreneurs, but you would do good for yourself by targeting entrepreneurs directly. Understanding this difference is pivotal or it is money down the drain.
2. This is an area that involves a lot of numbers and statistics. There are some metrics that you need to deeply understand, like CTR, Cost per click, Quality score, Cost per conversion, return on ad spend, etc. Understanding the metrics involved will offer you a great insight into the success or failure of your campaigns.
3. Have the ability to take inspiration from competitors. Understand what they do, why they do, and how they do. It helps you save a lot of time if you can do thorough competitor research. It will cut your learning curve by a huge margin.
4. The ability to manage and manipulate thousands of rows of Excel data is important. Knowing Excel shortcuts helps you save time as you don’t have to do everything manually.
5. You should have a mastery of landing pages because they are as important as the ad itself. When you create a landing page, should be an extension of your ad copy and should be in alignment with your marketing goals.

#5 Copywriting

While copywriting is a highly specialized skill that requires professional experience, that is not the expectation from someone who wants to be a digital marketer. But understanding the nuances involved in copywriting is a must because the words that a copywriter pens is going to drive sales.

Here’s how you can understand the nuances of being a good copywriter:

1. Know everything about your industry. Know your competitors. Know your target audience. Know the different customer personas. You need to write for each of these personas. The messaging for each of the personas will be different as their motivations and behaviors are completely different from each other.
2. Write more than one copy for each ad or landing page.
3. The ability to take feedback and rejection is important as not every copy is going to be successful or approved.
4. There are different types of copy, right from B2B or B2C brochures, copy for TV or radio ads, Sales script, customer support script, etc. Each of them has a different target audience, format, and style. Understand the nitty-gritty associated with each of them.
5. A/B test your copies for the same audience. Find out how they are reacting to it. Measure the metrics. Then do the same for different audience sets. Gauge the reaction of each of these audiences. Analyze them and keep optimizing your copy.
6. If you have the liberty, then try writing the copy using a variety of emotions for the same audience and product. See how people respond to it, we would advise you to run this experiment within a closed group.
7. Focus on W.I.I.F.M (What’s in it for me?) for the customer. They don’t want to know the features of your product, instead, tell them how your product will be of help to them.
8. Avoid T.M.I (Too Much Information). While you might want to bombard your prospect with as much information as possible to persuade them, please don’t. Know where to draw the line when it comes to adding more information.

A Marketing copywriter writes persuasive writing to promote a service or a product.

#6 Email marketing

The ROI of email marketing is ridiculously high. In many cases, it has been reported that for every dollar you spend on marketing, you get back $41. No other communication channel comes close to that number. Email marketing is a popular method because it gets you closer to the customer as it can engage prospects, build loyalty, offer them relevant information, and so on. Without email marketing skills, you can never be qualified as a marketer.

Here’s what it requires to be a good email marketer:

1. Learn how to build a targeted email list of qualified leads. Converting your website visitors into these leads is the easiest way to build a targeted email list.
2. Know how goals are set for email marketing. Each of the activities that you do for email marketing has specific goals like boosting engagement, nurturing the existing subscribers, promoting a product, segment subscribers, and so on. Understand how this works.
3. There are different types of emails like those that are sent for new subscribers, onboarding messages, purchase confirmations, and so on.
4. Understand how to use the top email marketing tools which will help you build successful campaigns. You can use it to create campaigns easily by using their premade templates, workflows, etc. It will also offer in-depth analytics to improve the performance of your future campaigns.
5. Learn how to create opt-in forms that are used at different touchpoints for visitors. Exit-intent popups, Lightbox popups, Welcome gates, etc., are some of the most used ones. Understand how they appear for the visitors and ensure that it doesn’t annoy them.
6. Know more about how to take effective email follow-ups.
7. Plan drip campaigns. It can be used to pass important information, as a how-to series guide, nurture the subscribers, and more.
8. Focus on your subject line, copy, and CTA. All of these things matter when you want the customer to open the email, read it, and take action.
9. Email design matters. A sloppy design means that you don’t care much and since most readers open their emails on their mobile phones, it will look bad if the design is not nice.
10. Collect data of the emails that you send for further study in the future. Keep testing everything.

#7 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

CRO is an important skill because it helps you improve the functionality of the website and drives more conversions, thus helping you increase your bottom-line. The desired action that CRO helps with could be a customer filling a form, paying for the subscription, subscribing to your email newsletter-anything. You need to understand how users navigate in your site, the actions they take, and why are they not customers yet.

Here’s how you can become good at CRO:

1. Understand micro-conversions (creating an account, adding products to the cart, email subscription), and macro-conversions (paying money for a service, extending their subscription, or asking for a consulting call).
2. Learn more about the strategies that can be used to increase conversions. Understand from the point of view of a probable customer how you can make them trust you more. For example, adding testimonials and reviews will make them trust you more. Add a live chat button on the website. Video proofs are also a great way to entice the customer into understanding the benefits your company offers.
3. Learn how to make your CTAs more effective.
4. Do not overlook the importance of choosing the right offer for your customers.
5. Survey users to find out more about them like their wants and needs using a tool like SurveySparrow.
6. Know how to conduct A/B tests to improve your conversion rate. The A/B testing can be conducted on various factors, like the colors used, fonts, placement of buttons, copy, etc. Each of the factors contributes to the overall conversion of the website.
7. Learn how to map your buyer’s journey so that you can reduce the friction by going through what they do.

Once you have nailed the basics, then you can get more specific on the other factors that contribute towards the overall conversion rate of the website. The more data you have, the better your chances of converting them if you use the former to take steps.

#8 Social Media Marketing:

There is no need for us to elaborate on the importance of social media these days. Knowing social media marketing is pivotal to the interests of your business. You need a wide range of skills to become a master at this. Social media marketers take care of creating and maintaining brand promotions, company information, creating marketing campaigns, producing new and innovative content, executing marketing campaigns, etc.

Here are the skills required to become a digital marketer:

1. Having an eye for design is pivotal as your team will be creating graphics, visuals, infographics, etc., on a daily basis. Your inputs and approval will be vital for your team.
2. Knowing how to build a community Owning a community of users who are available on a single platform can be your single biggest asset when it comes to providing remarkable customer experiences. You need to have conversational skills, empathy, and knowledge to help your customers.
3. Understanding user psychology. People on social media are the same, there are reasons why they behave in a certain way, what inspires them, why they like a particular brand over the other, etc. You need to understand what ticks customers and use them to your advantage.
4. Be familiar with social media metrics and business metrics so that you can correlate them to figure out what is working and what is best for your customers. Use the social media metrics for your business to create content that will help achieve your business goals.
5. Be adaptable. There are newer techniques and channels coming up, you need to be able to quickly adapt to anything new and bring in your charm and personality into it. This way, you can always create content for any social media platform.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is never going to go out of fashion. You can be more sure about that than anything else on Earth. You need to be able to offer your customers what they want and that’s the sign of a good digital marketer.

Mastering the above 8 digital marketing skills can put you miles ahead of most digital marketers. While you cannot master all of them, being good at them is a must as all of these are basic for understanding marketing.

If you want to know what your customers want, send them online surveys where you can ask them a bunch of questions to pick their brains. You can use the feedback to make the necessary changes and create better digital marketing strategies for your business. Try SurveySparrow’s free online survey tool to get feedback from your customers.

Mathew Maniyamkott

Guest Blogger at SurveySparrow

Regular contributor to various magazines. Passionate about entrepreneurship, startups, marketing, and productivity.