Core competencies of a content marketer. Necessary competencies for a marketer Competences for a marketing manager

What professional skills should successful marketing managers have? Here is a list of skills and qualities required for marketing managers. segment, distribution channel, geographic region and any order. good understanding information technologies, technical devices and means of communication; confident use of the Internet and information bases data; telemarketing skills. In technical fields, you must have an engineering background. Understanding strengths and weaknesses various components of the complex marketing communications allowing for integrated relationships. Deep understanding of mathematics and statistical methods, such as cluster analysis, joint analysis, sales analysis, interpretation and presentation of market data, modeling of marketing initiatives and others. Creative thinking skills to find new sources of company income. (How good is marketing education? Are managers able to put into practice marketing methods? To what extent does a marketer's success depend on the skill? Business schools can help a person become a good professional, but the work of outstanding marketers is impossible without intuition, luck, savvy and other Factors.Marketing education programs are designed to combine ideas, methods of marketing and study the examples of leading companies.Good marketing is following the rules exactly.Great marketing is often about breaking the rules.

More on Skills:

1. Qualities that ensure the success of professional activities (professionally important qualities):

The profession of "marketer" or "marketing manager" is to manage the perceived value of a product to increase sales and profits. In order to work effectively, a marketing manager must have certain skills and develop competence in specific areas.

Allocate 9 core competencies that a marketing manager should have. These competencies and personal qualities may not be fully expressed, but should be improved as experience is gained and professional growth is gained.

Analytic skills

The marketer must be able to:

• Analyze sales dynamics and manage sales forecast
• Manage advertising budget and calculate return on investment
• Compare several solutions and choose the best one
• Set priorities for projects
• Always look for causality in customer behavior

Professional Competence

The marketer must know and improve his knowledge in:

• modern marketing techniques
• modern models of development and brand management of the company
• modern techniques and sales methods
• basics of economics and finance (for price and budget management)
• fundamentals of sociology and psychology (for understanding the consumer)
• modern design trends (for understanding aesthetics)

Initiative

A marketer must himself form and set tasks for himself, not wait for other people's instructions, see opportunities for improving the business and implement them.

A responsibility

Efficiency

A marketer must be persistent in his actions and ambitious in his goals, to complete the tasks on time.

Creativity

The marketer must be able to generate new ideas and offer multiple alternatives to solve the same problem.

Communication quality

Communication is one of the key competencies of a marketing manager. A marketer should be fluent in the following communication skills:

• Competent written communication - the ability to correctly express one's thoughts in business correspondence. Write without grammatical and spelling errors. Write correct advertising texts.
• Competent oral communication - the ability to correctly express one's thoughts during a conversation. Correctly and logically build your speech.
• Effective interpersonal communication - the ability to effectively interact with other team members to achieve a goal, the ability to find mutual language with different interlocutors.
• Public speaking skills - the ability to establish and maintain contact with the audience during presentations.

Flexibility in work

The marketing manager must use in his work different approaches to be open to new technologies and new perspectives on solving common problems. Must be able to abandon the chosen course and switch to other methods of work if existing solutions lead to failures.

Self-development and erudition

A marketing manager must constantly improve his competence in the professional field and broaden his horizons, using new knowledge to improve the efficiency of current work.

Look at great entrepreneurs like Seth Godin or Steve Jobs and you'll be surprised how many skills they have that don't even have to be marketing related. You will see items on this list such as the skill of interviewing, giving good feedback, and even the skill of flattery. There will, of course, be obvious things - for example, the ability to talk, focus on results and focus on the flow of sales.

And after almost ten years of working in the SEO industry in various roles, I realized this. Both at Single Grain, which I founded, and in positions at companies like Oversee.net, I have found first hand that when I focus on the needs of my clients, I always achieve more success than when I focus on my personal goals first.

Based on this, I have compiled a list of 50 skills that you, as a marketer, must have in order to keep your customers happy and coming back to you again and again. Let me explain in more detail what I mean.

1. Customer orientation

A really good marketer is literally obsessed with his client: what he needs, what he wants, what he dreams about and what worries him. The central figure of any discussion is customers and their benefits.

2. The ability to tell

A true marketer understands how much people love stories. He knows how to weave a compelling story and knows that any good story must have conflict at its core. He also knows that people want to see themselves in these stories.

3. Speed ​​reading

4. Building associations

Good marketers can listen to an ad idea, skim through a business plan, or view a presentation about a client's campaign goals—and finally bring it all together into a cohesive plan. They know how to get the maximum benefit by combining the opportunities of different industries.

5. Conducting an interview

A marketer should think like a journalist. Whether you're talking to a CEO or a client, you must be able to ask the right questions and get the best answers, hunt for the best bait, and not be afraid to continue the conversation if the person wants to find out something else.

6. Description of the end result

What does success look like? How do you know if you're getting close to your goal or if you're failing? What points do we need to pass in order to understand that we have not lost our way and are not behind schedule? These questions define the marketer's mindset—he always looks at the big picture.

7. Creativity

In fact, creativity is all about creating a unique and useful product. A real marketer spends a lot of time thinking about these products and improving them. He is not afraid to fail (because he loves risk) and is not afraid to give up on bad ideas. He's full of ideas.

8. Ability to speak

You may not be an extrovert, but you must be a good speaker! You need to be able to cope with the situation of a one-on-one conversation, and with a speech in front of a group of people. I'm not saying that you must love it, but you need to be able to do it.

9. Ability to teach

A good marketer knows how to speak and, therefore, loves to teach, loves to share his accumulated knowledge. You can do this through blog posts, podcasts, curation, workshops, or even formal classroom teaching.

10. Ability to write

It is important for a marketer to be able to write messages of all kinds: he must cope with the creation of an email asking a business partner for a favor, and with drafting an offer for a client. He must know the rules of spelling and grammar - as well as when they can be violated.

11. Ability to listen

Communication is not limited to what you say. Real communication begins the moment you hear what others are saying to you, and more than that, you understand them correctly. This involves asking the right questions, nodding, paraphrasing, and focusing on what the other person is saying.

12. Ability to cooperate

Marketing is one of those disciplines that has to work together with some others (for example, the sales department, financial management and IT), and this will not happen if you do not know how to cooperate with people. When developing a good marketing strategy it is necessary to act as a team, so be humble and care not only about your success, but also about the success of other people.

13. Ability to give feedback

Steve Jobs never been afraid to tell any of his designers that his work sucks. Of course, it is important to be diplomatic, but it is even more important to be able to extinguish bad ideas in the bud, so that they do not grow and do not then delay your time and money.

14. Ability to live with constant change

Do you realize how much marketing has changed in the last 50 years? Radio, television, then the Internet... There are even more changes that will completely transform the world of marketing today. You should be comfortable living in such an environment.

15. Understanding data, indicators

As a marketer, you need to understand quantitative indicators. You don't have to be a Google Analytics expert or a database guru, but you do need to understand the general terms and know what you need.

16. Results orientation

And speaking of data, a good marketer is of the opinion that everything he does should contribute to the overall result. This is consistent with his desire to focus on the final outcome of the game and his belief that without concrete results it is impossible to say whether you win or lose.

17. Direct Marketing

It is not easy, but a marketer must develop the ability to achieve results, including through direct marketing, which is one of the parts of marketing.

18. Persuasiveness

Learn to get high from how you "guess" people. Where is their button? What motivates them, what do they want from life? And from this advertising campaign? And then it's important to understand how to give them what they want and get what you need.

19. Ability to persuade

Like it or not, you have to convince people if you want anything to get done. So it makes sense to learn strategies like "good cop/bad cop", "deadline" or "you can get out at any moment".

20. Ability to analyze emotions

Whether it's your client, CEO, or customers, understanding how emotions drive people to make a purchase is an incredibly effective marketing skill. And it all starts with the premise that people buy based on their emotions, not logic.

You don't have to be an SEO pro, but it's good to know some basics like how to insert links, optimize page performance, and how social media affects rankings.

22. Content Marketing

This is another set of tools that any marketer should own. This includes creating content for videos, conferences, a blog or manuals. It is better if you were a master in at least one area (but not all at once).

This point refers to the exchange of information between you and the audience. How much do you tell them about your product? How are you handling the situation in customer service? How you manage these questions is an indicator of how good your PR is.

24. Social media

Are you familiar with the main media platforms? Do you know what their target audience is? Can you predict which corporations will benefit from a social media program and which won't?

25. Manage multiple projects at once

It would be great if you could focus on one campaign or project at a time, but unfortunately you probably won't get that opportunity. If you want to be a good marketer, you must be able to manage multiple ideas, plans, and goals at once.

26. Research

The most important thing in marketing is to understand your market, your customer, product and company. And that means you should roll up your sleeves and diligently search for information.

27. Leadership

Most likely, as a marketer, you will have to work on projects in a team. A good marketer is a true leader; he knows how to recruit a team and inspire people to work from beginning to end.

28. Decision making

Even considering how much information you have, it still won't be enough. Even worse, all this information can just paralyze you, instill in you the fear of making the wrong decision. Analyze data, make decisions and learn from your mistakes.

29. Network relationships

Marketers understand that the more people you know, the more opportunities, ideas and potential assistants you have. Therefore, it makes sense to spend some time in order to establish new contacts with people in various social media, at conferences and lunches.

30. Multi-level focus

The marketer is constantly looking for ways to make ordinary person potential client, potential client real, and then loyal.

The marketer understands that he is only as good as other people think he is. Therefore, he is constantly improving to become a true master in his field.

32. Ability to anticipate and correct comments

Since you are constantly testing your product, you understand what annoys the customer and why the customer might say no to you. And you can refine the product so that these objections no longer arise.

33. End sales

Often people fail to sell anything because they are afraid to insist. A real marketer knows that most people won't buy anything until you tell them what they should do.

34. Mastery

It is literally in the DNA of a good marketer to want to do what he does, better and better. He is constantly trying to grow personally and helps people around him do the same.

35. Gift exchange

Remember how Hari Krishna handed out flowers at airports? It was a brilliant marketing decision! Donations skyrocketed because giving someone a gift is making them feel obligated to give you something in return. Marketers understand that people don't like to be in debt.

36. Create Constraints

Another skill of a marketer is the ability to set limits on your product so that people rush to buy it with all their might. Examples might be a limited quantity of a product or a limited time of purchase.

37. Determining the price

You need to understand how your product is affected by production cost, quality, customer expectations, market conditions, and competition. And also - how to set such a price for the product so that it brings maximum profit.

38. Testing

Various tests are just one of the things that make marketing so much fun. Whether it's choosing a headline for an email or the best placement of content on a landing page, it's always a good idea to test what works best.

39. Indicators

You have to like the numbers: subscribers, traffic, web page views and sales.

40. Ability to express concisely

By this I mean the ability to clearly and coherently describe a complex or voluminous idea, so that it becomes concise and easily digestible. A good marketer, after many hours of meeting with managers or clients, can sum up: “So you want to get A and B through C?”

41. Positioning

Research your product, market, and target audience, and then figure out how best to highlight it and how to get that message across all channels.

42. Focus

A good marketer should be able, like Steve Jobs, to discard everything unnecessary and bring all their products to perfection.

43. Organization

Whether it's your own desktop or the latest marketing campaign, you should be able to group individual items into meaningful groups. This also applies to team building and content marketing strategies.

44. Content building

This refers to understanding how best to position content such as videos, articles, and ads on a web page.

45. Ability to make products usable

Marketers should be involved in creating a product, whether it's a doorknob or a website. And you need to determine how to make the product usable.

46. ​​Ability to distinguish good design from bad

You don’t have to be a designer yourself, but you need to be able to distinguish good design from bad, that is, to understand what attracts people and what repels them.

47. Creating innovation

Will you go to any lengths to stand out from the crowd? Do you dream of creating a product that competitors cannot copy due to lack of your resources? Always repeating “What if…?” Then you must be a really good marketer.

48. Flattery

Real marketers are not proud and can sacrifice principles for a big cause. They understand that a little flattery can work wonders, even if the person knows they are being flattered. People love it when others mess around with their egos.

49. Motivating other people

50. Courage

Being a marketer is hard, and even harder to be good marketer. You need to have the courage to stick to your principles and not be afraid to call a spade a spade.

Conclusion

Now you understand what I mean when I say that all these skills are related to focusing on people, namely your customers. It is this focus on the customer that makes a marketer a true master of his craft. What other skills should a marketer have?

March 15, 2016

I was faced with the fact that finding a really smart marketer or PR specialist becomes a big problem for many business owners.

Himself not very well versed in this area and clearly not understanding what to pay a marketer for and what to demand from him as a result of his activities, it often turns out that the manager hires a marketer “blindly”, relying on his feelings or intuition.

So, here

4 points for selecting a decent marketer for a decent job.

I pay attention to:

• A) The desire of the candidate to work, then
• B) its performance
• C) Competence, and then
• D) his personal qualities.

This sequence is precisely in order of importance and it has proven its effectiveness over time.

If a person has no desire, he will not work, but will simply receive a salary and serve his duty. If he is not productive, it will be extremely difficult for you to get results from him! If he is not so scary, good candidate it is possible, but it is important to evaluate it correctly, because salary and / or often depends on competence. As for personal qualities, this is the most unpredictable criterion, because here you rely heavily on your senses.

Each of these points has its own way of checking and testing, which I conduct during the interview and which allow me to fairly objectively evaluate the candidate. The first 3 points may vary from company to company.

Personal qualities of a marketer

• The most important thing is the attitude towards work. He really burns with the desire to work, to serve common cause, eager to learn something.

• This person is not too young and not mature, somewhere in his 20s or 30s. Gender doesn't matter.

• This person is most of the time in a high tone - a strong interest in what he is doing.

• This person is very sociable, he is ready to chat on the phone with anyone, anytime. He has no barriers to call someone and find out something or, if necessary, call the same person several times to clarify some points.

• This person is above average intelligence (120 and above). He has good analytical skills and logical thinking ability - he can conduct and analyze the results of studies and surveys himself and draw the right conclusions.

• This person is interested in marketing and PR. He is interested in various ways of promotion, do not feed him bread, let him make an outgoing stream (letters, mailings, faxes, videos, articles) or look for opportunities for outgoing (especially free outgoing).

• This person is very alive. At the same time, he always brings the projects he has started to the end, and is very happy when he receives the results. It receives results in the form of an incoming flow of calls and requests to the company.

• This person is easy to control, he does not resist control. However, he is accustomed to report on the results and rarely takes up very much attention.

• If he does not know something, he looks for ways and offers good decisions, which can be used, and does not create a problem and the situation “nothing can be done here, because such is life \ economics \ competitors, etc. ”

• This person has a creative approach, good creative ideas often come up.

• This person is also able to perform routine work when it comes to processing survey results, tabulating data, or finding information needed for research.

• This person does not "limp", he has a high penetrating ability. He is ready to prepare and hold a presentation, or in a few days to find the personal phone of the "Pope" and arrange an interview for the company. This person sees opportunities, not just obstacles.

This is my ideal picture. You can use it to select the right specialist for your team.

Perhaps you, dear reader, have your own additions or comments (write in the comments).

Let's fantasize together! :)

After all, when there is a good idea of ​​what you want to get ideally, i.e. perfect picture, you immediately understand where to strive and in the end you get exactly what you want!

Has your company hit a ceiling and stopped growing? You do not have enough customers and you do not know how to attract new applications? This means that you need a marketer. And not just a marketer, but a real specialist who can ensure the sustainable and stable growth of your company. What to do? Where to get it? How not to make a mistake in choosing?

In this article I will try to answer all these questions. In addition, I will show you how:

• test the knowledge of applicants;
• develop a motivation system for a newly hired specialist;
• help him achieve his goals;
• and, most importantly, how to avoid a variety of pitfalls in the search for exactly who you need!

How to get ahead of competitors?

Actually, the answer to this question is very simple. To stay ahead of the competition, you must work with the best of the best.

I think you will agree with me that the master of sports of international class in swimming at 100 meters knows a lot more details and nuances than just a master of sports. Although on the stopwatch their results will differ by a fraction of a second, in reality there is a huge gap between them.

So it is in marketing. Only the perfect knowledge of your marketing specialists will help you get ahead of your competitors at the finish line and win the race for your customers. But is it easy to find the right specialist? Let's try to answer this question.

Too important to be 100% trusted

Hiring a marketer is such a key task for a business owner or manager that it cannot be completely entrusted to a recruitment service. The main problem is that there are very few real professionals in the field of Internet marketing. About 2,000 marketer vacancies are opened on HeadHunter every month. How can we find the right one?

And here comes the first hurdle...

8 out of 10 full-time digital marketers are not able to achieve their goals of increasing the number of calls to the company. These sad statistics are not taken out of our heads - this is our 6-year experience of interacting with companies of different industries and different sizes.

I saw the 2 millionth advertising budget turned into a null return. How out of 40 advertising channels only 5 paid off. How the main flow of new customers came through recommendations, and marketers assured that this was the result of their work ...

Many more sad stories could be cited. But they have one reason: many marketers simply do not understand what should be the result of their activities, and also do not have necessary knowledge. That is, we are looking for a needle in a haystack.

Find a professional
not the only difficulty

Since there are few professionals on the market, there is a great demand for them. And when demand exceeds supply, job seekers enjoy choice.

This is where the second obstacle comes in: for the best employees, we have to compete with the best business models and industry leaders.

Coca-Cola or CJSC "Gryadka" - which of these two companies will a professional marketer choose? Definitely Coca-Cola? Nothing like this! In fact, it all depends on his goals (I will talk about this in the second part of this material).

The main conclusion we need to draw at this stage is simple. We must be able to sell our company by building up our offer from strong competitors.

Not only you choose, but you are also chosen

That is, in one task of finding a productive marketer, there are actually two tasks:

• How to find a suitable professional from the whole mass of people who want to get paid for sitting at work?
• How to convince him to choose our company (how to sell your company to a marketer)?

In this article, I will take a closer look at the first question. And in the next article, which will appear on our blog very soon, I will focus on the second.

The purpose of the marketing department

We, as managers, dream that each of our employees is productive and brings benefit to the company. Why do we need a marketer? To relieve us of the headaches associated with attracting new customers.

The result of the activity of any marketer will depend on the goals of the company and the goals of the promotion department (marketing department). But in 90% of cases, the goal of the marketing department is to create a stable system for attracting new customers and increasing the company's market share. So, we expect from the marketer that he will be able to increase the number of requests to the company from potential buyers.

By and large, we do not care what and how he will do. The main thing is that the number of new customers should grow and the price of each new customer should not go beyond profitability.

What kind of marketer do we need
(key competencies)

To provide a company with a stream of targeted applications from the Internet, a marketer needs to understand how to:

• rebuild us from competitors (develop positioning and USP);
• understand needs target audience(basics of sociology and psychology);
• develop the structure of the selling site (page);
• write a selling copyright;
• develop and test hypotheses (be able to compare several solutions and choose the best option);
• should look set up advertising campaign in Yandex.Direct, Google Adwords and various social networks;
• conduct end-to-end analytics of the entire sales funnel (determine which advertising channel is producing results and which is not).

If you understand what I wrote, you should have seen one general idea in all the duties of a marketer. It does not have to create or configure itself. He must achieve performance and be able to both control the intermediate actions of contractors and accept the result of the final work.

Based on this, we come to the most important skill of a full-time marketer - the ability to achieve results and choose a contractor to implement the above tasks, as well as assign him a fair monetary motivation.

Now I will explain. The marketer selects a contractor (who, in turn, will be able to create a flow of requests from Yandex.Direct), develops a motivation system, a quality standard for applications, and a control mechanism.

Here are some indicators for evaluating its effectiveness:

• an increase in the number of targeted requests to the company from potential buyers, taking into account the cost-effective cost of each application;
• growing consumer base;
• increase in the number of recommendations;
• decrease in the number of negative reviews;
• ROI, profit - budget;
• % conversion of site visitors to applications.

What qualities should a marketer have?

We found out with you that an Internet marketer is, in fact, a link between your company and specific performers and contractors. Therefore, I would single out the following qualities necessary for him:

• initiative (does not wait for instructions from above seeing opportunities for growth);
• responsibility (ready to independently make decisions, express their opinion and be responsible for their actions);
• perseverance (brings his actions to the result, ambitious, completes tasks on time);
• communication skills (possesses the skills of competent oral and written communication);
• breadth of views (the ability to look at the issue through the eyes of another person);
• curiosity (openness to new technologies, desire to develop);
• attentiveness (pays attention to the smallest details);
• the ability to correctly assess the situation (the ability to correctly prioritize);
• perseverance (focus on victory);
• stability (the ability to deal with a specific task without being distracted);
• good taste (understanding aesthetics in design);
• flexibility (the ability to learn from the experience of others, to use different approaches).

Hiring stages

The decisive factor in hiring is speed. A productive employee will not sit idle for a long time. With this in mind, we must build our recruitment system in such a way that we do not miss the right candidate.

• we collect and work out the feedback (we filter those who are not suitable due to lack of experience and desire to work remotely);
• we conduct interviews for productivity (by phone or at a meeting - more about it in the next paragraph);
• define personal qualities and motivation;
• we check knowledge (this must be done by a person who himself has knowledge of marketing);
• making inquiries;
• give a test
• We discuss the goals of the applicant and his plans for the next 3 months.

Productivity check

Productivity is a key professional skill that helps them achieve their goals. The ability to see the cause of problems, the ability to find ways to solve difficult problems and the desire to bring everything to the end result is a brief description of productive employee.

For 6 years of work in marketing, I got acquainted with the work different companies and saw more than 100 marketers in action. In order for our company to quickly get involved in business and create a flow of new customers, it is vital for us to establish close cooperation with the marketing department. Therefore, in order to quickly understand whether the marketer with whom we will work is productive, we ask him a few questions.

• What is the result of your activity in the company?
• Do you measure your performance at work?
• What is this result (applications, number of sales, channels, etc.)?
• Where did you start and what are you up to now?
• How do you evaluate your results in comparison with other employees in the same position?
• What other achievements can you highlight?

It is important to understand that a person who was not productive before will not turn into a productive one for you either. And the only way to determine a job seeker's productivity is to look back and see if they have achieved results in previous jobs.

These questions are enough to determine whether the person with whom you are communicating understands what is end result his activities. This will confirm that he can achieve results with you.

Check of knowledge

Knowledge can only be tested by those who know. There are a lot of nuances in marketing. At the same time, you can read a couple of smart books and already surprise you with smart concepts like ROMI.

To solve different problems, different knowledge is needed. But in general, I would reduce the knowledge test to the ability to draw up a technical specification for a selling site or page.

If an Internet marketer understands the nature of the actions of potential buyer, he will be able to direct it to the desired route.

Now let me explain what I mean. When I ask a marketer what could be improved on our site, I don't expect him to immediately give me a specific suggestion. As a real professional, I expect clarifying questions from him:

• what are the indicators of the site now (the cost of the buyer, the cost of the client);
• who is its target audience;
• what is the purpose of the site;
• is it possible to see the metrics;
• how goals are set up on the site;
• what queries visitors are currently getting to it (and is there any relevance between queries and content);
• what has already been done to improve the site;
• and so on.

Before putting forward any hypotheses, you need to understand what is happening on the site right now.

This is the simplest test. If you are interested in more difficult tests - look at the end of this material, I have a small gift for you!

Inquiry

The easiest way to make sure that a candidate has achieved measurable results in a previous job is to make inquiries.

Therefore, after determining the productivity of the applicant, ask him: “Who could confirm the results of your activities at the previous place of work?”

After the applicant tells us the coordinates of one person, it is important to ask him who else could tell about his success. In this situation, candidates are often lost, as they prepare "home-made" for only one person.

The bottom line is that very often candidates anticipate such a turn in advance and prepare a good recall option for themselves. We make inquiries about 2 people and 2 places of work. Very often, already in the second minute of a conversation with the former leaders of our candidate, some features emerge that make us think. It is very important to be able to ask revealing questions.

What kind of questions to ask is up to you, there is no ideal option here. But if nothing comes to your mind - at the end of this material I will try to help you!

So the first part of my extensive material on hiring a competent marketer has come to an end. In You can read about how to convince the specialist you need to get a job for you. And now, as I promised, small gifts!

I perfectly understand that, after reading this article, you may have many questions. Therefore, I have a few gifts for you - a detailed test to test the knowledge of the applicant for the position of marketer and a script for communicating with the candidate's former supervisor.

If you are interested in this information - write to me on my personal mail [email protected]. Be sure to indicate in the subject line that you need materials for hiring an Internet marketer. And in the letter itself, write what area your business belongs to - I will need this information to make some corrections to the materials. I hope this information is useful to you!