Along with a tight competition in business area (we call it red ocean), financial pressure is getting high. This occurrence affect indirectly to marketing department especially human resource and budgeting. Consequently, most companies have new special requirement for current employees or prospect employee who will be hired to have technical and non technical skill (marketing hard skills and marketing soft skills). Why? Because these employees must handle several core marketing tasks as well as sales or technical/IT tasks. Only personnel who has marketing skills and other competencies can survive and give a good contribution to the company, as a consequence he has change to get a better career. So, in this article I will share some skills a marketing person should have.

Why you have to know what marketing skills to learn?

Actually this article is dedicated to both marketer (especially entry-level marketer) and entrepreneur (business owner). After reading this article, I hope business owner know marketing skills needed to run a business. And I hope beginner marketer understand marketing skills and expertise required to be the best marketer to achieve the best career.

The ultimate reason you must know marketing skills is Marketing fundamentally affect business process and business performance. Why marketing can influence business performance? Because an ultimate business’ concerning is focused on satisfying current customer and get more customer. This thing is a core marketing activity goal. Now, you have already known the relation between marketing and business/financial performance.

Before you continue on reading this article, I just want to inform you related articles that discuss about marketing, skills, and career. I encourage you to read these article too for deep understanding, so that you (entry-level marketer or business owner) can make an outstanding preparation for the next good future. These are the article:

Career in Marketing : This article is talked about career opportunity in marketing world.

Marketing work activities : This article is talked about the examples of marketing activities.

Marketing skills set :  Marketing skill sets example, it is closely related to this article.

Soft skill in marketing : Marketing soft skill list, it is closely related to this article too.

Marketing skills list

If you read the marketing skills below (especially marketing hard skill), you will find there are a lot of skills.

The thing you must consider is “you can not master everything”. Yes it is true. It is almost impossible to master all the hard skills. I just emphasize here, at least you learn all of marketing hard skill ( along with soft skills) and get understanding the basic knowledge. Once you understand all, it is up to you if you choose your skill specialization and master that skill.

I will inform you the situation in the workforce world, higher management could have put you in certain different area such as: you will be responsible for handling social media marketing. By a good preparation like I mention you above, you can easily adapt, change, and straightforwardly master the social media marketing skill because you have understand the basic. Therefore you can learn more deep, practice them, test them, monitor them, improve them, and master them uncomplicatedly.

Finally, below are the marketing skills you must learn. I write the skill and example of subset of the skill. You will find that one of skill’s subset interconnect with other main skills, it is for easiness and allow you to group the skills.

For you notes, there are more skills you have to own beside the skills I write below. These skills only for make you easy to prepare because the skills are most needed in the workforce or in the business. You can look for another skill in different source.


1. Core marketing skill

Search engine marketing (Keyword research, content optimization, link building, audience research, content marketing, PR/outreach, on –page/technical SEO, UI/UX, responsive design), advertising, promotion, local marketing, international marketing, sales, purchasing, merchandising, retail marketing, wholesale marketing, marketing advertising campaign, ad copy, design advertisement, brand strategy, promotion strategy, distribution strategy, channel strategy, location strategy, service strategy, market segmentation, branding, positioning, niche marketing, guerrilla marketing, mobile marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, b2b marketing, b2c marketing.

2. Research


Know market and customer, product creation and development based on customer’s need, statistics and number, consumer behavior, evaluation, draw conclusion, market analysis, product development, marketing intelligent, competitor analysis, risk analysis, product research, marketing simulation, marketing audit, research and development.

3. Analytic

Revenue-driven action, make decision based on data, integrate action with KPI and metrics, performance analysis, reporting, swot analysis, business analysis, brand measurement, able working with technology (marketing automation system, research tool, analytic tool, search engine marketing tool, social media marketing tool, computer/IT skill, spreadsheet, database, presentation tool)


4. Social and communication skill

Customer engagement, storyteller, provide great customer experience, customer handling. Customer listening, speaking and writing skill, relationship and networking skill, customer relation, public relation, telemarketing, cold calling.

5. Management skill

Schedule management, time management, project management, campaign management, content management, deadline management, account management, contract management, lead management, customer management, sales plan, marketing plan, stock management, business development, brand management, reputation management, event management, CRM.

6. Financial skill

Pricing, budgeting, profit analysis, margin analysis, ROI measurement.

7. Ability to learn and change

Open to new ideas, creative, innovative, love experimenting, have ability to fail, curiosity, problem solver.

8. Leadership

Strategic thinking, Team recruitment process, do a training, taking risk, decision maker, growth strategy.

9. Entrepreneurial skill

Ability to adopt to business situation’s change, develop business model, planning, selling.

10. Personal skill

Responsibility, self-worth, sociability, self-driving, self-management, integrity.

11. Thinking skill

Strategic thinking, creative thinking, problem solving, ability to learn something new, visualization.

12. Workplace competencies

Excellently using resources, interpersonal skills, effectively using information and systems, outstandingly using technology / Information technology.



Another source from educational source about marketing skill. As Rasmussen College in its blog inform us, there are ten marketing-skills must have for future marketer. They are:

1. Marketing

2. Social media

3. Market research

4. Economics

5. Business development

6. Online marketing

7. Blogging

8. Data analysis

9. Mathematics

10. Market analysis.

See the picture graph below, the source of the picture is from Rasmussen college’s blog, you can see at http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/business/blog/marketing-skills-must-haves-for-future-marketers/

Sources:
Marketing skill standard project

Decline and dispersion of marketing competence