Like driving a manual transmission or anything related, there are tons of skills that go out of style. However, in the world of digital marketing, plenty of skills withstand the test of time, too.
If you’re looking to master the ins and outs of digital marketing, it’s in your best interest to add these to your repertoire, your resume, and, most importantly, your brain.
Fig. 1: A typical digital marketer’s brain.
We curated this list of essential digital marketing skills to address marketers at companies with high-quality, functional marketing funnels that generate leads independently of the sales pipeline.
So here are the top 20 skills required for digital marketing that all good digital marketers should have—plus a few essential soft skills to consider.
The 16 most important hard skills required for digital marketing
Whether you’re interested in learning something new, posting a job description, or simply need some vindication about what a digital marketing rockstar you are, here are the top 16 most impactful hard skills a solid digital marketer can have:
Content marketing is a digital marketing skill that you should be aware of and know how to do very well. After all, blogging is one of the most important lead-generation tactics modern marketers use.
Digital marketers skilled in blogging must understand the ins and outs of editing, grammar, SEO, keyword research, article structure, and more. But that doesn’t mean it’s inaccessible. In fact, you can learn a lot from reading other blogs about writing SEO content.
Top tools for blogging include:
WordPress, Webflow, Wix, or whatever CMS (Content Management System) your own company’s website offers (No, they don’t all start with a “W.”)
Google Docs for composing the post, working collaboratively and sharing back and forth with an editor
The notes app (yes, the one on your phone), Notepad, or any other plaintext editor for brainstorming and forming talking points leading up to composing a draft
2. Writing marketing copy
Not to be confused with blogging, which is a digital marketing skill in and of itself. In marketing, copy basically translates to words, and copywriting translates to writing marketing words.
Digital marketers write these marketing words all the time for many different applications. Blog content is copy, sure, but a good copywriter can make qualitative changes to their writing depending on where it is deployed.
Writing bullet points and blurbs on a website requires different skills than those needed to compose compelling emails. Drafting a blog post is dramatically different from writing a video script. It’s all copy, and it’s all marketing, but it requires different training and a different strategic approach.
3. Email marketing
Email is ubiquitous. Almost everyone sends and reads emails, whether in a professional capacity or on a personal basis. Because of this, email marketing is still the leading tactical way of reaching specific audiences.
Of course, “email marketing” is an umbrella term that describes a diverse array of email strategies, each requiring its own unique marketing skills.
Having a firm grasp of web design is a digital marketing skill that makes digital marketers invaluable. This doesn’t mean that all digital marketers should inherently be skilled at building sites from scratch and writing code (although knowing how to tweak existing HTML and CSS code is profoundly useful).
Marketers must understand the basics of web design, such as how to incorporate the company’s logo and branding and adhere to style guidelines.
With a bit of skill and marketing magic, a marketer should be able to pull off the feat of designing and creating simple web pages—mainly landing pages, lead magnets, and web forms. Any serious web design work should be left to the company’s dedicated web designer.
And, of course, your company’s website should have a streamlined blogging and content creation system so that creating and publishing content doesn’t require marketers to solicit help from other departments.
Editing photos isn’t just for Instagram #influencers—it’s for digital marketers, too.
Knowing how to edit photos or create certain kinds of imagery used on various website pages, within content, on social media, and in content downloads is an integral part of the digital marketer’s role.
Although it would be helpful, this doesn’t mean that all digital marketers must be skilled in the entire Adobe suite or even Photoshop itself. Plenty of image editing apps for PC and mobile can do the job.
For marketers, being able to do some light graphic and image editing eases strain from the rest of the team, like the dedicated graphics designers whose time might be better spent doing heavier-lift projects.
Various iPhone and Android apps for the super easy stuff
6. Marketing analytics
We’ve all heard people (on LinkedIn) talk about how “content is king.” Well, in the world of digital marketing, analytics is the queen.
With a bit of analysis, digital marketers can see exactly how well their marketing is doing—which strategies are working and which aren’t. This allows them to make better decisions about what to do next time.
This doesn’t mean that every digital marketer should inherently be a data analyst or have a repertoire of obscure Excel formulas committed to memory. Still, they should at least be able to track the success of their marketing concisely.
And with data analytics comes conversion rate optimization (CRO)—the process of testing pages, copy, and calls-to-action (CTAs) to see what converts best. Digital marketers will need CRO skills if they want to turn raw marketing data into actionable insights.
Most content marketers are already skilled in Google Analytics and other web-tracking software, but email marketers might prefer the built-in reports that come with their email marketing suite. At the end of the day, marketers should be able to measure the success of whatever marketing they do.
ChartMogul to measure churn and retention (optional)
Tableau for data insights and visualization (optional)
7. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Regardless of how great your content is, getting visibility on search engines requires some SEO expertise.
Again, not every digital marketer needs to be obsessed with SEO, but understanding the basic skills and concepts is essential. Whether you invest in SEO tools and resources for your team or outsource a professional, SEO is critical to the success of any digital marketing strategy. Without quality SEO, content doesn’t get the visibility it deserves, which reduces its ROI.
Understanding SEO and being able to “bake it into” marketing content is a phenomenal way for digital marketers to multiply their efforts and help their content garner more organic engagement.
Some solid SEO tools include:
Moz or Ahrefs for site health, link building, and SEO
SEM involves strategically placing ads on search engine results pages (SERPs). Paying for search ads can help your business shoot to the top of search results pages and lead to increased sales.
Although trying to target every possible search phrase with ads may seem like a good idea, the most successful marketers leverage SEM with a specific goal. They need to consider factors like keyword intent, cost, keyword volume, competition, and campaign structure.
A good SEM strategy, coupled with SEO expertise, goes a long way in optimizing your company’s visibility in the SERPs.
A few good tools for SEM are:
Semrush for researching keywords and traffic analysis
Keywordtool.io for identifying keyword trends across multiple platforms, including Google, Bing, Amazon, and social media sites
“Communication is key,” the late ’90s motivational posters say. And this time, they’re right.
Communication skills are arguably the most underrated skills in any professional setting. From working with teams to communicating with prospects and customers alike, being able to give and receive information effectively is critical—no doubt about it.
Marketers should be able to communicate spectacularly at various levels, including in web content, through emails, blog posts, social media, and so on. They need to adhere to the company’s communication style while also using their own personal voice wherever it’s required.
For instance, copy intended for a website page should adhere strictly to the company’s brand voice. Rather than long-form written content, marketers will need to communicate by using text, images, icons, buttons, styling, blurbs, and more.
Switching gears, digital marketers also need to be able to compose emails for large audiences, tactical recipients, and one-to-one messaging, and each requires a different feel and tone. Digital marketers also need to know how to write and speak persuasively—after all, their job is to get potential buyers thinking about just how great their products are.
Social media posts require the brand’s voice and (ideally) are broadcast to a large audience. Blog posts are in the half-personal-half-brand-voice space. Each medium requires a different communication style, which is why a solid marketer should be a communication chameleon.
10. Project management
There is always so much stuff to do! It’s practically impossible to keep track of every project and every deadline without some type of project management tools (and the skills to use them).
For content marketers, this means managing freelancers, assigning blog topics, keeping track of deadlines, getting the freelancers paid, and more.
For email marketers, each email has a scheduled send time and is carefully measured to ensure that they’re reaching maximum effectiveness, which is painfully difficult to achieve without some sort of dashboard, at the very least.
Since marketers are often leveraged for design and communications, managing projects and tasks outside the marketing team is also required.
And then, of course, there are the millions of messages in our inboxes that require responses.
A skilled digital marketer should know how to use tools and software to track the diverse projects and initiatives undertaken at any given time.
As a digital marketer, you’re responsible for representing your company’s brand to the world through the content and messaging you create.
Brand development is a digital marketing skill that enables you to transform the important characteristics of a brand into images and words that convey those characteristics. Having a solid understanding of the brands you work for—and knowing how to communicate their value—is crucial.
Your goal is to build trust in the brand using brand-associated language and visual elements. You may also find yourself part of the brand development process, helping the business create and establish its brand identity.
12. Automation
You may not think of it as a skill, but the ability to leverage automation tools in digital marketing is highly valuable. That’s because automation streamlines time-consuming tasks and ultimately enables marketers to accomplish more with their time.
Knowing how to create web forms, set up email drip campaigns, and automate posting to social media can help you nurture more leads into customers than you could with manual effort.
13. Asset creation
The technical skills for asset creation (graphics, copywriting, distribution, etc.) have already been covered, but the most important piece of the puzzle has yet to be addressed.
Skilled marketers know how to create assets that will really get something done. It starts by asking questions like:
Who are we targeting with this asset?
What action do we want our users to take?
How are we going to distribute it?
And so on…
Marketing assets are more than just a show-and-tell of cool content. They’re tactical tools meant to serve a specific purpose and motivate users to complete a specific goal.
A digital marketer with asset creation skills and expertise can plan this out upfront, manage the creation and distribution, and measure the impact effectively.
14. Social media
Social media marketing encompasses more than placing pay-per-click ads on Facebook or uploading posts according to your social media calendar. These platforms offer companies a place to connect and build relationships with their audiences.
Each social media channel brings something different to the table, and it’s a digital marketer’s job to understand these nuances. User demographics, behaviors, and preferences vary from one social platform to the next, and each operates using its own unique algorithm.
Knowing the differences helps marketers determine what messaging is most relevant to each platform and how best to join or lead the conversation. It’s also vital for developing effective social media ad campaigns.
Delivering engaging, relevant, high-quality content is the most important factor when crafting your social media marketing strategy.
The popularity of video as a preferred method of content consumption continues to grow, making it a powerful tool for increased audience engagement and conversion.
Therefore, it stands to reason that understanding when and how to create videos, where to distribute them, and the SEO related to them are essential digital marketing skills.
Some of the fundamental benefits of learning and implementing effective video marketing strategies are:
Increased engagement: Videos can capture an audience’s attention and convey emotions more effectively than images or text, making them ideal for building stronger customer bonds.
Improved SEO: Search engines often deliver video results above and below general results, giving you more opportunities to rank for important keywords and attract essential backlinks.
Enhanced brand awareness: Videos can help you reach a broader audience when you share them on social media, embed them on your website, and use them as part of your paid advertising campaigns.
Better conversion rates: You can use video for product demos and walkthroughs, making it easier for prospects and customers to understand and make a purchasing decision.
Greater customer satisfaction: Videos are ideal for explaining processes, answering questions, and overall customer education, which enhances customer success and leads to improved customer satisfaction.
16. Influencer marketing and partner programs
Influencer and micro-influencer marketing are all the rage, and for good reason. Collaborating with influential individuals to promote your products and services is a fantastic way to reach new audiences and build trust in your brand. But it’s important for digital marketers to build relationships with the right influencers.
As a digital marketer, you must ensure that the followers of the influencers you choose to work with fall within the scope of your target audience. You should also select influencers whose messaging aligns with your brand voice and image.
The same goes for partner programs, where your company can team up with another business to help promote each other’s solutions.
Digital marketers can leverage the power of influencer and partner marketing to drive brand awareness, generate leads, increase sales, and much more.
What about the soft skills required for digital marketing?
There’s no doubt that the skills listed above are absolutely essential for digital marketing success. But these are just the vital hard skills that give you the technical ability to be a great digital marketer all-rounder. There are also soft skills to consider, and mastering these will give you the edge over many other would-be digital marketers.
17. Design thinking
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach rooted in a human-centered perspective. In other words, it’s a way of resolving issues with the human experience in mind, focusing on potential solutions to a problem instead of the problem itself.
This digital marketing soft skill is critical in digital marketing because marketers have to think from the perspective of potential customers, identifying why they may or may not want to use a particular product or service. From this perspective, digital marketers can tailor their messaging for the best results.
It’s a good idea to develop design thinking because digital marketers need to use trial and error and testing to find the best marketing strategies.
18. Creative problem solving
Digital marketers who think and solve problems creatively can devise unique campaigns and strategies that break through the barrier of a noisy, saturated environment. With this innovative approach, marketers have the tools to adapt to an ever-changing industry landscape and alter the course to achieve campaign goals.
Next time you’re analyzing campaign data, try brainstorming a few unconventional solutions or approaches using techniques like mind mapping and reverse engineering. This will help you exercise those creative problem-solving muscles.
19. Persuasiveness
A significant aspect of your job as a digital marketer is to convince your target audience to take a desired action—like signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar, or purchasing a product. Your ability to persuade will help you craft compelling messaging that resonates with your audience, influencing their decisions and building stronger relationships.
Developing your persuasiveness as a digital marketer begins with understanding your market and ideal customer, particularly your target audience’s behavior and preferences. Leveraging your storytelling skills to speak to your audience’s wants, needs, and desires could drastically increase your campaign’s success.
20. Adaptability
The one constant in life is change, and as a digital marketer, you’ll experience a myriad of changes from marketing tech to industry trends, campaign obstacles, and more. Agile marketers have the skills to adapt and prioritize quickly to keep campaigns moving and drive success.
To develop this essential soft skill required by digital marketers, keep an eye on industry trends, algorithm updates, and emerging technologies. Be proactive by experimenting with new and unusual strategies and tools when you can to promote a growth mindset and remain agile.
What makes digital marketing skills so important?
At marketing-successful companies, digital marketing generates the lion’s share of leads. Inbound leads are plentiful in these organizations, and salespeople can take a more passive approach by simply responding to sales-qualified leads (SQLs) who have already expressed interest, requested a demo, downloaded a trial, and so on.
At marketing-poor companies, digital marketing assists the sales team with asset creation and sales collateral. Digital marketers at these companies may find that most of their time is spent writing PowerPoint decks and designing trade show banners.
The former style of marketing is superior. Skilled digital marketers can create dynamic marketing funnels that generate leads all by themselves.
A good company understands this, leverages it, and doesn’t constrict its marketers to take its direction from the sales team. Instead, the sales and marketing teams work together toward a unified goal.
So, how do you improve your digital marketing skills to make yourself more valuable to your company? Here are a few tips to help you drive your career through digital marketing:
Take online courses
There are plenty of opportunities to learn more about digital marketing out there, from podcasts to online courses. Find respected and successful people in the field and learn as much as you can from them. Educational courses can also give you certifications that level up your skills.
Practice and document your results
Testing your digital marketing skills to generate accurate results can help determine which strategies work best. Practice skills like writing copy and blogging on your own website, editing photos and videos for your social media accounts, and analyzing data for your website’s rankings on the SERPs.
Research the market
Finally, conduct lots of market research. You’ll sharpen your data analysis skills and learn what techniques work for other marketers. Trends and technology are constantly changing, so staying on top of what’s going on in the industry is important.
Enhance your marketing results with Nutshell
There you have it—the top 20 skills a digital marketer should strive to have. If you’re a marketer, these skills and tools should absolutely be on your radar—or, at the very least, on your list of marketing tasks to outsource.
Having the right resources and tools makes all the difference when utilizing your digital marketing skills. At Nutshell, we’ve created our customer relationship management (CRM) platform to work with your company’s marketing team to give everyone a complete picture of your relationships with leads. With features like built-in email marketing, sales automation, and connected web forms, Nutshell keeps all the relevant information about your leads and customers in one easily accessible location.
