Skills For The Ever-
Relevant Marketer
Learning and Adapting
This comes as the first critical skill
because the list of competences, especially
technical competences, continues to
rapidly change and evolve. In order to
keep up, one must learn to learn and
learn fast. Additionally is the need to
apply learnings, dropping old ways of
doing things and adjusting to the new.
Whilst this may seem obvious in theory,
it’s another thing to practically apply. Be
flexible and ready to adopt new ways of
drawing customers in, keep abreast of
the latest information and be willing to
respond to this information as it arises.
Creativity
Living in an age of info-besity, and too
many things trying to draw our attention,
creativity has never been more relevant.
The creative marketer will need to tap
into emotions and communicate to those
emotions in order to win the attention
of audiences. There’s plenty of material
on improving one’s creativity. Every
marketing professional should focus on
improving this aspect.
Storytelling and Story
Creation
The ability to craft unique and compelling
narratives tailor-made to suit specific
media as well as reach and connect with
target audiences is imperative.
Comprehensive writing
abilities
Writing skills including writing copy and
writing for content will dominate writing
needs in 2020 and for decades to come.
Complex problem solving
skills
This involves being able to see
relationships quickly between things,
creatively provide solutions to problems
(even those that are yet to happen) and
deliver the solutions thought of. Whilst
technology allows us to gather data, the
ability to decipher data is still largely the
domain of the human mind.
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Working with people
Today’s workforce is becoming increasingly
diverse in terms of culture, age-groups,
religious beliefs, gender affiliations,
amongst others.
The ability to work with and collaborate
with this diversity will allow for greater
wins. Teamwork, delegating and leading
by example are the areas to focus on when
working with people.
Negotiating
Haggling, negotiating terms and finding
middle grounds is still the domain of
human beings (and hopefully will remain
so for a long time to come). The need to
improve one’s negotiating ability cannot
be gainsaid.
Adapting a digital mindset
Understanding technological change and
using the power of technology to think
ahead and improve in a digital world is
key.
Emotional and social
intelligence
The subject of emotional and social
intelligence has been discussed so often,
it sounds like a broken record. That said,
it still remains relevant just like exercise
to the body. The application of emotional
and social intelligence allows marketers to
express feelings of warmth and humanity.
It allows us to understand others, seeing
things from others’ perspectives and as
such creating meaningful marketing
solutions whilst also allowing us to work
well with others. Being empathic is also
key to outstanding customer experience.
Strategy development and
deployment
Being able to map out a strategy makes it
clear what you want to achieve and how
to get there, minimizing wasted resources.
Decisiveness
With so much choice available, one must
pick and decide what to implement. It’s
easy to get stuck in an analysis paralysis
rut but one can put parameters as to
how much research and consultation
will be done before taking the risk and
implementing.
Winning Habits
Meditation: Defined as the habitual
process of training one’s mind to focus and
redirect thoughts, meditation has gained
popularity in the recent past. It is used to
increase awareness of oneself and their
surroundings. The benefits of meditation
include: reduced stress, anxiety control,
improved emotional health, greater self-
awareness, improved attention span, and
improved sleep just to name a few.
Prayer: The fact is that there are very many
variables that are beyond our control. That
truth couldn’t be truer in the realm of the
marketing profession. Giving your very
best in and of itself is not a guarantee to
success. It is for this reason that I pray and
not just over my professional life but my
personal life as well. I believe there is a
greater entity whom I call God Almighty
rooting for me and looking forward to
helping me navigate things I could not
have anticipated.
Exercise: A lot of people exercise with a
focus on physical health, specifically as a
means to lose, gain or maintain weight. I’ve
recently come to appreciate the power of
exercise for good mental health. Exercise
aids stress management, improves mood,
improves thinking and learning abilities
and helps one to relax. Being in a good
mental space is critical for any professional
and so exercise is definitely one habit to
adopt and maintain.
Practicing Kindness: I like to think that
kindness is all elements of emotional
and social intelligence applied. There are
many opportunities to be kind. Applying
the theory of the 5 love languages, we
can express kindness through gifts, acts
of service, touch, words of affirmation
and spending quality time with others.
I’m purposing for one act of kindness
everyday this New Year.
Reading: Books are the only ‘machines’
that allow us to travel through time and
space and sometimes simultaneously.
Many will read books for the purpose of
self-development and that’s perfectly fine,
but I encourage reading just for pleasure
and in the process a lot can be learned .
Travel: A change of scenery is good for
your mind. It’ll stimulate creativity in
ways unexpected and also give a break
from what can be a monotonous lifestyle.