The Ultimate Guide To Boost Your Marketing Career

Published on December 1st, 2022

Marketing is a fun, exciting career for those who love to tell stories. You don’t need to write a novel or put together short stories in order to connect with an audience.

The messages you send can be simple, but effective. Marketing means putting stories together that help tell customers why they want to shop here or hire this company.

It’s a challenging career that puts creativity on the same line as technical expertise. If you want to get started in this industry, or alternatively, if you want to know how you can boost your career efforts, use this guide.

Skills You Need to Boost Your Marketing Career

If you want to boost your marketing career, then you’ll need a few essential skills. Being a marketer means doing it all, or, at the very least, knowing how to do it all and then using that intimate knowledge to help you better manage a team. To truly succeed, you’ll need to be adaptable, able to pivot at a moment’s notice, and find the unique approach that works for each campaign specifically.

Though not exhaustive, here are just a few of the skills that a top marketer needs in their repertoire today:

Psychology

Marketing means nothing without the audience. That’s why understanding psychology and even sociology is so important for marketers. You need to know why people think the way they do to convince them of something.

You also need to know how people generally respond to different stimuli. Though everyone is different, many commonalities can be learned by studying psychology.

Thankfully you don’t need to become an expert in psychology to be a great marketer. Many resources, from books to even podcasts, can help you learn the key parts of psychology that will be useful to you as a marketer.

Art Direction

All marketers need to have an artist’s eye, even if they themselves don’t have the technical skill to bring it to life. A marketer will, after all, be the one that collaborates and works with artists to bring a campaign to life.

When it comes to art direction, however, it’s actually very important to understand design. Read books, go to museums, and stay up to date with those in this specific field to help you develop your eye and, most importantly, stay updated on what audiences today are interested in.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an important skill that all marketers absolutely need. How you can further your ability in storytelling beyond just analyzing other campaigns is actually to look into story writing.

There are so many resources for aspiring novelists that you can use to help improve your ability to craft a clear, impactful campaign.

From using archetypes and tropes to using references, there are many ways that you can learn from the writing community to improve your own ability to create winning campaigns. Just think of every advertisement as a short story that ends with the audience buying, subscribing, or hiring your employer.

Filmmaking

While not all content needs to be video, no one can ignore the power and popularity of video content today.

You don’t need to learn how to direct, edit, and so on, but you do need to know how to translate your campaign idea into a visual story. Many workshops, online tutorials, books, and influencers can help you hone in on your ability to at least direct or convey your goals to a filmmaker.

Analysis

If you don’t know how to analyze your audience’s response, then you don’t know how to market. Nothing that comes out of your office is going to win audiences over without a hitch.

Real-life circumstances are hard to account for, which is why analytics is so important. Not only can you adjust your marketing message, but you can also adjust where the marketing budget goes to get the highest ROI.

You can have the perfect advertisement, but if you aren’t looking at when audiences engage with it the most (and understand why), you won’t be able to distribute the marketing funds effectively.

For example, say your Pinterest marketing campaign doesn’t yield much return, but your advertisement on your city’s transportation system is doing very well. There’s no reason to keep money going into the Pinterest campaign when it could be more effectively used to prolong a more effective option.

Leadership

Very few marketers work entirely alone. That’s why you need to know how to create an effective campaign and collaborate with other creatives so that everyone is on the right page and has the same vision.

Communicating your idea isn’t enough, either. You also need to know how to workshop productively so that your idea gets hammered into something great.

How to Learn These Skills

There are a lot of skills involved with marketing. These skills will also need to be adaptable. Marketing has fundamentally changed since the 21st century, and new technologies are going to upset the status quo further.

A modern marketer needs to know how to connect with audiences based on the latest societal values and the latest technologies.

Most marketing today takes place on a digital platform. This may be a TV screen, a digital billboard, or a person’s phone. You need to know how to adapt a psychological approach to marketing (in other words, storytelling) to the modern tools used by your audience today.

This means marketers must continually invest in learning the tools of the trade. Staying up to date, however, can be hard when you aren’t already in the field.

If you want to give yourself a platform from which you can then continue to learn and specialize, you’ll want to earn a degree.

With a Degree

A degree is the way to go if you want a targeted, no-nonsense way to build these skills. It’s particularly useful for those who took marketing, business, psychology, or even an arts degree and want to hone their skills so that they can then use that foundation in their marketing career.

When it comes to which degree to choose, the answer ultimately depends on what you want out of your future career and your current needs.

If you want a way to kickstart a new life in a new part of the world, then attend a campus-based education. If you are already established where you are and don’t want to move, take advantage of one of the many new and innovative online degrees there are to offer.

As for what type of degree you should go for, it ultimately depends on what you want to do in your marketing career. If you want to lead marketing campaigns and work towards a top executive-level role, then you’re going to need a degree option that combines art and storytelling with analytics and technology.

In this example, a masters in integrated marketing communications online degree is going to be the better fit for you, and you can click here for more information.

This degree will help you learn how to craft a strategy based on the research you’ve conducted. The goal is to create creative campaigns that provide that can demonstrate a healthy ROI.

Rather than focus on the more creative side of marketing, this degree teaches you how to approach marketing from a research background.

This way, you can create impactful campaigns that inform and influence your audience with far less guesswork than other approaches.

With Books

Books and reports can be so incredibly helpful not only as a source of information but as reference materials. Chances are you’ll want to have a few key design, font, art, psychology, and marketing books in your office to check back to during the strategy development stage.

Not only is having books on hand useful for you, but they can also actually help you collaborate with your employer or team. Having a visual reference is invaluable when it comes to communicating a multi-media campaign idea.

By Attending Talks and Conferences

Go to talks and conferences designed for marketers. Even if they cover information that you already know, you can network at these events. Go to socials, meet people, and remember to get their contact information.

It’s so much easier today than it was in the past to stay in touch. You don’t need to call or touch base with those in your network personally. Instead, you can connect with them online and stay up to date with what they’re doing passively.

If they post online, you can comment, help out, or just support them. This is how you can go from being a stranger or acquaintance to a familiar professional connection. Collaborate on projects or get in touch with them directly to help them out, and you can deepen that connection.

When it comes to networking, always see what you can do for someone else before wondering what they can do for you.

Taking Short Courses

There are short courses for everything, and they can be invaluable tools to help you improve your skillset and stay on top of the latest innovations.

When it comes to any career, take a course to learn the ropes for every new tool that comes your way. This is how you can effectively start getting the most out of every new tool you use.

This is particularly important if you are involved with creating the art assets. Even tools like InDesign or Illustrator have many hidden features that can drastically improve your workflow and results.

Short courses can also be useful as introductory tools. For example, you may get a marketing gig where the target audience is not a demographic you are familiar with.

You can take short online courses (usually for free) to learn more about that demographic’s culture and history. This way, you can get started with important background information that will inform your strategy development.

How to Make a Name for Yourself

If you can make a name for yourself, you will automatically open more doors and opportunities. Networking alone can do wonders, but if those in your industry can look online and see a wealth of reasons to hire you, you’ll do even better for yourself.

Clean Up Your Image

Start first by cleaning up your image. At the end of the day, there is no reason you should have personal information out there on the Internet, at least publicly.

Go around and private all your personal information and accounts. Make sure that only people you actually know are following you.

If you want to use your existing accounts as part of your professional profile, you’ll need to go through and audit them. Do this from a marketer’s perspective.

Analyze what each post says about your brand and whether that message is in line with the image you want to project.

Start Building Up Your Online Identity

Once you’ve cleaned up your image online, you’ll want to start building your professional persona. You can do this first by creating a website and social media profiles.

The website can be very low-key and act mostly as a dedicated resume and portfolio. As with any website, however, you will want to keep updating it. Continue to add to your portfolio or create a blog to keep your website active. This way, you can encourage people to visit your site regularly, can showcase your expertise, and make your site more SEO-friendly.

Becoming A Thought Leader

If you want to become a leader in your field, then you need to become a key resource. A good way to do this beyond just managing a blog (and marketing said blog) is to guest post.

Try to get published in recognized magazines and journals. You’ll also want to collaborate with others to get your name out there to new audiences.

You should also look into any competitions and awards that you could qualify for and apply. While the most prestigious awards only accept nominations, you may be surprised at how many competitions you can enter on your own.

Build up those credentials, collaborate, and get your name out there – all of these will help establish you as a key figure in your field.

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