What Soft Skills Do I Need for Marketing?

Becoming a professional digital marketer? Make sure you have these 12 essential soft skills needed for digital marketing success.

We all understand the hard skills involved in becoming a great digital marketer. Hard skills are the technical expertise and training required for SEO, email marketing, content marketing, and all the other areas that we may have educated ourselves in. 

Understanding the soft skills for marketing can be more elusive but just as important. As with the hard skills that we have acquired, we will excel in some areas while others we have to work at. There is no ‘perfect digital marketer’; we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what soft skills are needed for digital marketing is crucial for a successful career in this industry. 

Here are the 12 essential soft skills required for digital marketing success.

1. Analytical Skills

Analytical skills could be classed as a hybrid soft and hard skill. You’ll need to have a firm grasp of technical data analysis and know your way around tools like Google Analytics. But you’ll also need to have an analytical mind so that you can develop your findings into robust strategies. If analytics isn’t an area that you are strong in, we recommend this excellent Google SEO Guide with in-depth modules on advanced analytics techniques that will upgrade your marketing skills. 

2. Be Adaptable

The online world is fast-paced and ever-changing. What worked today may be redundant next year, so you need to be flexible in your outlook. Adaptability is a soft skill that is crucial for digital marketers; you’ll need to be continually evolving and keeping up with the latest industry trends. As well as being adaptable to the constant changes in marketing you also need to be able to confidently adapt to the different business clients you’ll be working with even if you have little knowledge of their specific field.

3. A Passion for Marketing

If there is one essential requirement to become a successful marketer, it’s being passionate about your role. Your team members and your customers will soon notice it if you are just going through the motions. Digital marketing is a job that requires people who wake up in the morning excited about their day, and ready to rise to any challenge.

4. Time Management Skills

Time management is one of the core marketing skills required in the fast-paced digital world. With looming project deadlines and clients wanting results fast, you’ll need to be a ninja at planning and prioritizing tasks. If you think this is an area that you lack in, there are plenty of books, articles, and apps that can help you further your time management skills.

5. A Strong Work Ethic

This is a soft skill that will apply to any career; a hard worker will earn the respect of their employees and peers even if they aren’t the most talented at their job. If you double-down on the effort and show that you can go that extra mile when the times are tough, you’ll be rewarded for your tenacity.

6. Be Creative

There’s no getting away from it; digital marketing is both a science and an art. Creative marketing campaigns are the backbone of any website marketing agency. While some people might be naturally more creative than others, it is a skill that can be refined. Being creative and innovative doesn’t mean coming up with brand new ideas; you can always build on existing ones and put your own original slant on them.

7. Be Persuasive

Marketing and persuasion have always gone hand in hand, though the methods used today are more subtle than those that were used in times gone by. Today’s marketing requires a different style of soft persuasion rather than cajoling or manipulating your customers to buy your product. It ties in with empathy and social skills so that you can tap into exactly what the potential customer requires and persuade them that the product you are marketing is the best for their needs.

8. Emotional Intelligence

Managing your own emotions and understanding the feelings of others is extremely important in digital marketing. There will be times when everything is going wrong; the tech isn’t working; your audience doesn’t like your campaign. You’ll need to deal with those feelings of anger or frustration and address the issue. Likewise, you’ll need to be dialed into the emotions of the audience you are marketing to, and understand their needs, passions, and motivations. You can take a test to determine your emotional intelligence here.

9. A Lust for Learning

Digital marketing is a job for people who love to learn, so if you find studying a chore, then you won’t survive in this environment. If you aren’t updating your knowledge by reading about the latest marketing trends, taking courses, attending conferences, or testing new software, you’ll soon become stagnant and won’t be able to keep up with your peers. If you are a passionate marketer, this won’t be an issue as you’ll love all the knowledge bombs that you’ll be acquiring.

10. Communication Skills

Being a communicative team member is just one part of the equation when it comes to social skills. With social media platforms being one of the fastest-growing digital marketing arenas, you need to be able to communicate well with your intended audience by posting, commenting, and sharing images that resonate with them.

11. Tech Savvy

Out of all the soft skills a digital marketer needs, this one is a given. As you’ll be working online, day in day out, if you are a technophobe, it’s going to be a pretty stressful career choice! But even if you are comfortable with technology, new tools are always appearing on the market and existing tools regularly updated, so you’ll need to be open to further advancements.

12. In Conclusion

Don’t panic if you’ve looked at the list above and believe you are deficient in one particular skill set, or for that matter, several. Small step by step improvements in any area you are lacking will soon produce positive results. The main thing is that you have identified your weak areas and can develop them.