Suppose you’re in the market to hire the best digital marketing agency. Or perhaps your goal is to become the world’s best digital marketer. What are the attributes of digital marketing success? Would you be satisfied with doing the common thing uncommonly well as Rockefeller says?
After spending many decades developing marketing messages, advertising, and integrated digital marketing campaigns, here are 19 attributes and skills of a great digital marketer that stand out to me. You can use them to help your own self-development or as criteria to find the best agency for you to hire.
Curiosity
Great marketers are like six–year–olds; they always want to know why. Curiosity is the gateway to clarity. As Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.“
Clarity
The difference between a marketer and someone who writes is that the former enlightens the reader while the latter tends to confuse the reader.
Passion
Further down, I’m putting words like “boring” and “trivial” in quotations because, to great marketers, nothing is boring or trivial if that’s what they’re marketing.
Self-motivation
The manager who motivates a marketing copywriter to write by screaming, “WRITE!” has yet to be born.
Self-editing
Arrogance undermines quality. Great marketers know when their own messages stink and treat them accordingly.
Versatility
Some marketers are uncomfortable with the concept of a hard sales pitch; others are uncomfortable with “boring” assignments. Both are uncomfortable when not working on campaigns.
Quick on the uptake
Because of deadlines, marketers often have to learn on the job and on their own – and quickly.
Knows when to ask for help
A good marketer has two choices: struggle endlessly with a vexing problem or get help from a subject matter expert. The latter option improves speed and accuracy.
Has perspective
Great marketers don’t make mountains out of molehills. Those who continually get hung up on small matters of style or approach infuriate coworkers and bosses.
Knows when to skip the rules
Selectively breaking rules is a sophisticated technique for capturing attention. Apple’s “Think Different” campaign succeeded in part by departing from the boring and pedestrian phrase, to think differently.
Understands the business world
The best marketers are those that work best with what they know. Thus, a first-rate marketer understands the business process, customer behavior, and basic business concepts such as features and benefits.
- Anticipates reader questions and concerns
Because great marketers understand the business world, they are able to identify probable reactions from the target audience – and address them in the marketing strategy. In addition, this knowledge enables them to discard messaging points that are not pertinent. An ounce of anticipation is worth a pound of verbosity.
Tells stories
Today’s content strategies have circled back to perhaps the oldest technique of all, storytelling. The ability to spin yarns is essential for grabbing and holding attention as well as influencing audiences.
Listens
Most great marketers I know are better at listening than talking – maybe because they are often introverts by nature. Listening is crucial to many aspects of business, including content creation, because it is the surest way to understand the needs of a company’s leadership and its customers.
- Think logically