The digital marketing landscape is very competitive.
Businesses spend millions of dollars and use secret techniques and tools to get the upper hand against their competitors.
But many people don’t see the inherent importance of employing the right people with the right skills and experience to provide the best outcome for their marketing campaigns.
I’m not talking about technical skills, qualifications or certifications
Instead, I’m referring to the simple soft skills that form the basis of our habits and personalities.
These skills are what separates great from good digital marketers.
They separate you from the pack and open doors to opportunities such as leadership in corporate settings.
Let’s discuss five critical soft skills for digital marketers to succeed in selling services and products.
1. Curiosity
Digital marketing has been around for some time. Although relatively new, it has evolved into a varied multidisciplinary industry.
There is so much that is happening in the digital industry. So much to learn, and it’s tough for anybody to master everything about digital marketing.
Yet as a digital marketer, you must stay curious and eager to learn to survive.
Invest your time to study trends, consumer behaviors, analytics, and creativity. The more informed you are, the better decisions you make and the better strategies you implement.
Without curiosity, you’ll continue applying ideas that are outdated and nonfunctional, which will affect your output.
For instance, when keyword stuffing was a functional strategy in content marketing, many experts used it to rank high. Until search engines were improved to penalize this blackhat tactic so as to enhance the user’s experience and suddenly they lost their traffic
A curious digital marketer would have picked this up and focused more on offering readers value rather than trying to trick search engines. In contrast, a poor digital marketer will be unbothered until they notice a drop in their traffic.
Curiosity also makes it easier for you to find a connection between different disciplines in digital marketing, such as SEO, social media, and user experience, which ultimately leads to great opportunities to collaborate and produce customer-centric content.
In the pursuit of human progress, the single most important trait is curiosity. It’s the desire to learn, explore and discover the driving force to new possibilities.
2. Persistence
In digital marketing, there is one strategy that will assure you success, and that is persistence.
It’s the ability to stick to one course of action despite hardships and obstacles that you encounter until you see its fruition.
If you cannot be persistent in digital marketing, then this is not for you. There are so many marketing systems and strategies that would take several lifetimes to gobble up, put them to test, learn and find out if they work.
If you google digital marketing, you’ll be presented with over 2.9 billion results. Consolidating all this information to get the most important and effective tips can be tedious even for a computer.
Yet, most marketers, digital marketers want the secret strategy that will guarantee success in digital marketing.
Well, turns out there is no secret recipe. You just have to try out some strategies and see what works for you.
And most importantly, be persistent with one strategy at a time. Work on it well for a substantial period, make mistakes, improve, change your approach to accommodate new ideas, and perfect them.
Only through trial and persistence will you achieve your marketing goals.
Jumping from one strategy to another often is like a farmer plowing his farm halfway before the harvest because he sees things are not going right. It’s absurd.
You need to stick to one strategy and keep on working on it. Persistence ensures you will not fall into the 50% of businesses that close shop within the first five years or 80% of bloggers that give up in 12 months.
3. Open-mindedness
The problem with many digital marketers is that they think that they know everything.
Digital marketing is an evolving industry where new trends, techniques, and changes come up every day.
To be on top of all this content, you need to be curious and open-minded.
Always assume you know nothing and approach information on the internet to learn something.
Meanwhile, while working with other people, especially employees and clients, you will be surprised at how many times you can be wrong.
Yet, most people assume they know what needs to be done.
Sometimes you disagree with employees, and they argue out their points, but you fail to consider them. Or a client gives you instructions, but you think you know what’s best for them more than themselves.
Then you take action without considering their opinions because you’ve limited yourself to your unique perspective.
When the results aren’t good enough, you start to rethink your decision. But if you consider ideas from other people, you’ll likely produce better results.
Whether you’re working for a company or your blog, listen and learn from other people. We have different experiences and look at things in unique ways.
How a colleague or client sees things might seem unorthodox but could be the best approach for a project.
4. Discipline.
Obviously, you need this in almost every career.
But with digital marketing, you will never do well or succeed without the ability to sit down and do the work that needs to be done.
Even when you lack the motivation or when the work becomes frustrating.
Whether it’s SEO, content, writing, social media, marketing, email marketing, etc., you need to put in a lot of work to attain the marketing goals you have.
Work increases with time, based on the competition and the dynamic nature of the industry.
Sometimes the actions that you take might not lead to the results that you wanted.
For instance, your marketing campaign fails to convert as well as you expected. Will you just drop the ball and move on?
Failing is natural digital marketing. Some strategies work; others don’t depend on the use cases. Others fail because you approached it wrongly. It’s the nature of any marketing.
So it would be best if you discipline yourself and review the frustrating campaign you had. See where you went wrong and find ways to improve your tactics.
Then try it again. Keep trying; put in the hours every day until it works.
Above all, soft skills that you need, discipline can guarantee the most success because it ensures that work is done and time is not wasted.
5. Multitasking.
As a digital marketer, you will be forced to wear many hats.
Replying to comments on your blog while chatting with a potential client on social media. Writing a blog post while designing an infographic for the blog post. Doing keyword research while looking for link-building opportunities.
These are just some of the activities you’ll find yourself juggling within your limited work hours.
If you cannot multitask, you will miss out on things that need to be done and get left behind.
So, ask yourself which activities guarantee the most significant impact on your marketing campaign. Activities in which you are knowledgeable and experienced.
Once you identify them, prioritize and work on them early when you have most of the energy before moving on to other activities which have less impact on your marketing campaign.
While multitasking can impact productivity, it becomes very effective when it involves complementary activities that can be done side by side.
On the other hand, activities that require concentration and wit should be undertaken individually for maximum productivity. For instance, content writing, especially the first draft stage, requires writing in sprints and taking short breaks.
Conclusion
So, those are the five soft digital marketing skills of getting the most out of your digital marketing campaign.
You might not possess all the skills, but they can be quickly learned if you are devoted to improving your marketing results.
Take one skill at a time and work on it for a month before proceeding to the next.
Just like habits, the acquisition of soft skills requires focus and time.
So you need to put them into practice as soon as possible and learn the process.