4 types of skills digital marketers must have

This article was originally published on PR Daily in June 2015.

Marketing is changing, and those who run businesses are noting the move online, which requires digital marketers.

Are you keeping up?

In my work training marketing professionals, I’ve studied hundreds of job postings for marketing talent. The numbers I’ve seen show what skills are most valuable, and it’s no surprise that they’re all digital.

Nearly 90 percent of marketers don’t feel equipped to navigate the digital landscape, but in my research I found that 93 percent of marketing jobs require a digital skill set.

These skills run the gamut from one year of SEO experience to 10 years of social media experience (which of course digital marketers don’t yet have).

While the latter may not be possible for anyone, here’s what you should do to stay competitive with other digital marketers.

SEO skills

Ranked number five on the LinkedIn 25 Hottest Skills that Got People Hired in 2014 list, search engine optimization (SEO) was also cited as a required skill for 14 percent of the companies I looked at.

It’s about more than just understanding keywords and getting them on your site. SEO is about optimizing websites at a page and server level to generate traffic and conversion.

To be the best among digital marketers and stay competitive, here’s what you should consider:

• Algorithm changes: Remember all that recent talk about Mobilegeddon? The revised Google algorithm now ranks sites that are not optimized for mobile lower than those that are. What this means is that those marketers who weren’t staying up to date on changes suddenly found their website showing up way further down on the page than it used to be. Even if you have a strong background in SEO, you’re in a bad place if you’re not keeping up with how it’s changing.
• Moz: If you’re not using the Moz SEO toolbar, you’re already behind. This toolbar enables you access all your SEO metrics quickly while you’re surfing the Web, giving you the ability to determine how difficult it is to rank for a given keyword, create custom search and view social metrics for social media sites.
• SEMRush: It may be cheating to add this one, but search engine marketing (SEM) is just as crucial as SEO to becoming a digital marketer. SEMRush offers the tools to analyze and research your competitors’ keywords and discover new competitors, localize your ad campaigns, and find the right keywords for SEO and pay-per-click campaigns. It’s the kind of high-level tool that puts you above and beyond those who only have a strong SEO background.

Mobile skills

Hate to bring it up again, but Mobilegeddon didn’t just change SEO. It showed how important mobile is in the new marketing world, yet most businesses are behind the curve in optimizing their marketing for mobile.

To show that you’re among the innovative digital marketers, understanding mobile is a must. While this doesn’t necessarily mean you must go learn iOS and Android development right away, here’s what you should be doing:

• Optimizing websites for mobile: If you’ve gotten this far in the article, this one should be obvious to you. Just remember a certain day that starts with Mobile- and ends with -geddon.
• Integrate with owned media: As Gini Dietrich mentioned a while back, you must optimize your app with iTunes. Unsurprisingly, 80 percent of app search happens within the App Store. Your mobile site should also be integrated using the same keywords you use for paid media to ensure seamless tracking across platforms.
• Analytics: How are you measuring mobile performance? It’s going to be different from your traditional ways of tracking data. Google Analytics can help you track mobile traffic to measure user acquisition and engagement through your mobile applications and websites, so be sure you’re using it to keep track of engagement.

Social media skills

You can’t just post any #ThrowbackThursday tweet and start raking in new followers. Social media is a constantly evolving field that requires more and more know-how. Ten percent of the businesses I looked at cite a requirement for social media experience among applicants, and that experience needs to go far beyond keeping up an active personal Twitter account.

Today, your social media presence is crucial to educate a social media audience about your brand, engage with them through content and eventually turn them from leads into conversions.

Here’s how:

• Think beyond fans and followers: Are you only tracking the most basic metrics? Fans and followers are only showing a piece of what’s happening on your social media. Instead, you should use metrics that demonstrate how effective your content is and to whom. Take the time to research your applause rate, engagement rate and response rate.
• Target carefully and have conversations that drives business: Social media content without a target is like salsa without chips. There’s nothing there to scoop it up. Design content that reaches a specific audience, and do your research to find out what resonates with these different targets. Then, keep in mind that all social media activity should be set up to drive business. Whether it’s through engaging with experts to enhance your reputation or talking directly to customers, you should always have an eye on using this content to drive new revenue.
• Develop site-specific and interactive content: Are you posting the same things to Twitter as you are to LinkedIn? It’s not going to work. Different audiences use different networks, so be sure you’re using the analytics features on each platform to track your audience as well as your activity.

Analytics skills

I’ve already mentioned analytics a few times, but it’s worth its own section. You may have all of the skills above, but you aren’t much without the analytical skills to interpret and report the efficacy of digital marketing efforts.

I found 13 percent of businesses listed analytics background and experience as a required skill in their job descriptions, and I anticipate that will only continue to grow. The best digital marketers implement strong inbound and outbound digital strategies, analyze them regularly and use those insights to constantly improve.

Here are some ways to bolster your skills:

• Google Analytics/True Social Metrics: These powerful (and in the case of Google Analytics, free) tools enable you to track and report a wide range of data in multiple forms. Use them to report your SEO, mobile and social media activities in a simple and easy-to-communicate way. You’ll demonstrate your value to the rest of the company and set yourself up with the data needed to track the success of future campaigns.
• Metrics (applause/amplifications): We already talked about how important it is to look at more than the obvious metrics for social media, but this applies overall, as well. Sometimes, the best metrics aren’t the clearest. Instead of seeking out how your operations have influenced the number of leads sent to sales, look instead at how many "sales-qualified leads" (SQLs) come out of it—or track the average revenue per lead you send through. This provides data that gives you a more nuanced view of how successful your marketing is.
• Customer relationship management integration: The link between marketing and sales is more important than ever. You should communicate closely with the sales team to ensure your marketing operations are picking up quality leads. While the best way to do this is through sitting down for a chat with the leaders of the sales department at your company, take advantage of customer relationship management tools such as Salesforce and Hubspot that facilitate integration between the two departments.

Today’s digital marketers must be skilled in more than one specialty; a hybrid professional, if you will. How will you stay ahead of your competition?

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Avi Levine is the executive director of the Digital Professional Institute, Chicago's destination for digital skills training. A version of this article originally appeared on Spin Sucks.

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