Marketing is the absolute bedrock of business success or recovery, whether the economy is in a boom or bust scenario. As the UK wallows in recession and a cost-of-living crisis, marketing will get your business out of challenging times – don’t cut that budget, much! So, what are the top 10 marketing skills you should have in your business in 2023?
We have seen a move away from the more traditional outbound marketing. So, you should be looking for digital marketing solutions that compete and operate effectively, as we all know it’s all about online now. People that are dynamic, innovative, highly skilled and can flourish in a digital marketing landscape. Not easy to find or retain in a competitive digital marketing candidate pool.
Here are our thoughts on the most in-demand marketing skills in 2023 and beyond and how we tick those boxes.
-
SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation is a critical component of modern digital marketing. It’s important because it allows you to rank highly on search engines such as Google and Bing. If your website doesn’t rank high on these sites, then potential customers will never find it when they search for products or services like yours. This can result in lost sales opportunities which could have been easily converted if only people knew about your brand!
SEO involves analysing what people are looking for on the internet, creating content that addresses those needs, and attracting links from other sites to yours.
SEO requires an ongoing effort to ensure your site remains optimised with fresh content that keeps it relevant and useful. So, you must have a resource that can understand SEO dynamics and how your content interacts and affects your website traffic. We can help!
-
Content Planning and Strategy
Content planning is vital for digital marketing campaigns and defines the content strategy for a brand or business. It is typically a long-term process that involves creating strategic and tactical plans for all types of content, including blogs and videos, social media posts, advertising campaigns, podcasts, email blasts and more.
Content planning prioritises your business resources (time & money) by focusing on what works best for your target audience and aligning it with your business goals to drive engagement with them. You need a multi-channel approach to content marketing that includes creating, delivering and evaluating that content.
There are a number of marketing skills required to put together a successful content strategy. You’ll need to consider your audience (including their needs, wants and preferences), create a plan for delivering your message in formats they’re most likely to consume, monitor how your audience engages with it (both positively and negatively), so you can adjust if required. We can help!
-
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is growing rapidly and makes marketing strategies more effective. It’s a set of software tools that allow marketers to automate repetitive tasks and focus on more strategic work. It’s used to:
- Manage customer data
- Set up automated alerts and reports for better SEO
- Improve time responses and updates for social media marketing
- Automate marketing tasks and improve lead generation
- Create streamlined follow-ups and lead nurturing in sales
- Personalise and niche your email marketing campaigns, as well as reduce cart abandonment
You should be sending out newsletters, managing email campaigns and tracking website visitors. If you’re not, we can help!
-
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a form of internet marketing that involves building and leveraging social networks for your business and engaging with customers. Social media marketing can create brand awareness, engage consumers, and drive traffic to your website, if you know how to work with and beat the algorithms.
- You can use social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to build relationships with potential customers.
- You can use these networks to communicate with existing customers and clients.
- You can promote new products or services via these channels by posting photos and videos on Instagram, writing blog posts about them on LinkedIn Pulse (a professional blogging platform), or sharing links in status updates on Twitter or Facebook.
Therefore, you need a solution that can:
- Optimise social media profiles
- Create engaging visuals and copy that is on brand
- Social listen – respond to comments, messages, likes and shares
- Manage and monitor paid social media advertising campaigns
- Follow and engage with your target market and influencers to build a brand community
-
Copywriting
Copywriting is the art of selling a product or service through words; people think it’s easy, but it takes years of experience and training! It’s using words in advertising, marketing, and public relations to persuade people to take action. Copywriters are responsible for developing creative content that resonates with their target audience and drives them toward their desired outcomes. It’s the ‘gift of the gab’!
Suppose you don’t have strong copywriting skills in your business. In that case, you won’t be able to differentiate, stand out, be innovative, leverage keywords in your social media and website copy or inspire action in an ocean of competitors. We can help!
-
Video Marketing
Video marketing is a powerful and the fastest-growing tool. This type of marketing can help you connect with your audience, increase brand awareness, and boost traffic on your website.
It can increase conversions for individual products or services and it remains in high demand because it’s one of the most effective ways to engage an audience, create a memorable experience for customers or prospects, and drive sales. We can help!
-
Website Development
Website development is one of the marketing skills that are always in demand. Your business must have someone who can build and maintain your presence online through regular website updates, blogs and other content that will drive traffic.
Google has made it harder for people without technical knowledge to use SEO strategies because they have changed their algorithms recently. Therefore, if you have a clean website that doesn’t look like spam pages, you can rank higher on search engines like Google or Bing! We can help!
-
No-code Development
No-code development is a new marketing trend that allows non-coders to create interactive content without having to write code. It’s used to create interactive content for websites and social media, like quizzes, polls, infographics and even games.
This is an excellent option if you’re looking for ways to add more interactivity to your digital marketing. We can help!
-
Community Building
Community building is a process of bringing people together around a shared interest. Successful community builders do this by hosting events, organising meetups, and creating content that is relevant to their community.
To illustrate how community building can be helpful in your marketing strategy, here are two examples:
- A company wants to expand their target audience from tech-savvy millennials to the more mainstream demographic of Gen Zers aged 18-to-26. They could host an event inviting members from both groups to come together and interact about what they care about most: technology!
- A recruiter wants to reach and expand their talent pool for prospective clients by connecting with live candidates. They could host a free webinar with a relevant celebrity/influencer offering job searching and career advice, capturing data and developing new relationships.
Fundamentally, community building is about having a community of brand ambassadors and loyal customers that drive trust and sales. Using CRM, blogger, influencer and journalist outreach will get you results. We can help!
-
Collaboration and communication
Digital marketing success comes down to well-integrated departments, driving collaboration and communication within an organisation. Marketers need to explain the why – clearly state goals to teams, explain why certain things need to happen, why campaign follow-ups are critical and why changes are required. It can be a hard sell sometimes!
Added to this is that digital marketing is not easy to report. So you need good communicators in your marketing team that are constantly striving to support internal teams. We can help, and this is what we do best!
Conclusion
It’s essential to understand what makes your business unique so you can find a way to communicate that message through your marketing campaigns.
Do you have all these marketing skills within your business? It’s often the case that it’s too much for 1 or 2 people, resulting in burnout and a catastrophic collapse in marketing strategy. That’s where we come in – we are a team of multiskilled marketing professionals that become an extension of your internal teams. Living and breathing your brand and supporting your business and people every step of the way. If you’d like to learn more, get in touch.
