The business landscapes are highly competitive these days and you cannot expect to get ahead with a conventional approach. It is imperative to have a seasoned marketing team with the right skills set to drive your initiatives and capture a fair share of the market for your business. With online marketing becoming the most important means to promote businesses, the list of skills needed is very different from what it used to be. In a recent survey conducted by Microsoft, it identified the most significant hard skills for marketing in 2020 and beyond. Let us list them for you.
Search Engine Optimization
With the unprecedented growth of digital marketing in recent years, it comes as no surprise that SEO is on the top of the list. After all, ranking on top of the web searches is a priority for businesses to stay ahead of the competition and be visible to the online audience. While you can have an in-house team for the job, availing SEO packages from reputed agencies has become a common practice for brands and startups. The reason is that the outsourcing model is far more cost-effective as compared to hiring, training, and retaining in-house teams.
Data analysis
Apart from SEO, data analysis is a vital marketing skill that can empower businesses in the current scenario. Marketers can no longer follow a hit and trial approach with their campaigns; rather they have to work with a clear view and direction. This is where data analysis helps as it enables you to know your target audience better and tailor campaigns to match their expectations. Also, data analysis skills also make it possible to track, measure, and monitor the performance of campaigns and fine-tune them for better outcomes, if there is a need.
Behavioural analysis
Besides data analysis, behaviour analysis is another hard skill that modern marketers need to master. Essentially, it is about understanding consumer journeys and comprehending their response to content, brands, and campaigns on diverse devices and platforms. Needless to say, marketing in the 2020s is omnichannel and you can win the race only with effective campaigns across all the channels. Behavioural analysis enables the marketers to optimize the campaigns so that they resonate with their audience across the entire journey.
Copywriting
Another skill that businesses and marketers cannot miss out on is copywriting. In fact, relevant, authoritative, and useful pieces of content fuel SEO campaigns and get sustainable results. According to the expert web marketers at Outreach Monks, you need to ensure that your content matches the audience’s intent and delivers them rich information. That way, your website will win the favors of search engines as well as the audience.
Automation
Technologies such as automation, Machine learning and AI have become a vital component of marketing plans today. Knowledge of automation can elevate the skill set of a marketer to a significant extent. Automation takes over the routine tasks like email marketing and gives you more time to focus on mission-critical tasks. Even as it handles repetitive tasks, the technology eliminates guesswork and brings accuracy in activities.
Having people with these hard skills in your team can empower your business and open new opportunities for it. While onboarding such resources are one way, the better way is to outsource them and avail the best they can offer.
