In today’s digital age, what it takes to be considered a great marketer has changed. While the fundamentals of marketing are the same, we now have an array of tools and technology at our disposal to help with the process of planning, executing and reporting our strategies and campaigns.
Despite these digital advances, I believe soft skills are still fundamentals to a successful career in marketing. They support the hard or technical skills you develop along the way and allow you to create meaningful interactions with your audiences. With that in mind, here are my key tips for how to become a great marketer:
Communication is the key to becoming a successful marketer. You need to be able to communicate your ideas, values, and dreams to people you’ve never met before. Having poor communication skills means you won’t be able to convey this message as effectively as a marketer with adept communication skills.
Knowing when to properly communicate and listen to your target audience’s concerns allows you to get into a customer-centric mindset that tailors your company’s products or services to their needs. It’s about choosing the right form of communication and tools to craft and disseminate effective marketing messages.
What helped shape the way I conduct marketing activities is working in a customer-facing role. I believe every marketer needs to work on the other side of campaigns to fully understand the client that they are working for. By going through the complaints, difficult questions and problems that come with marketing offers and promotions, it builds resilience and communication skills that will help you down the track.
There are two distinct paths for a marketer: generalist and specialist.
Generalists cover a wide range of marketing skills. They know how a few marketing channels work and develop solid business, team and strategic acumen. Conversely, specialists are more focused on a specific set of marketing skills or channels – and do it better than anyone else. Specialists will generally gravitate towards large businesses as they have the infrastructure and size to support their niche speciality or will move into agencies or consulting.
Although there are several career possibilities in marketing, I believe it comes down to the foundation of being a generalist or a specialist. It’s important to choose the path that you enjoy doing to excel in your marketing career.
At Flight Centre, we encourage our marketers to lean on their soft skills. We believe that by having a team attitude or personal value of doing your best, it naturally fosters the development of these skills. We’re big believers in pushing yourself to always do better and ensure that there are rewards and incentives along the way to encourage ourselves to do so.
Interested in seeing where a career in marketing can take you? Check out our job opportunities or read more about Flight Centre Travel Group.