Kenn Bennett

Are you a new marketer just breaking into the business?  Are you a seasoned marketing professional, looking to update your skill set or obtain a new position?  If you don’t know if your skills are sought after by companies today, have no fear.  Based on the hundreds of open job notices in marketing I have read in the past several months, there are a few that seem to be popping up in job descriptions more than others.  Bear in mind, skill requirements will vary depending on what type of job you search.  Directors of Marketing are going to require team leadership, budgeting and high-level market analysis and planning while Marketing Managers and Marketing Specialists are going to require more of a hands-on technical skillset, generally.  This list focuses more on the Marketing Manager side, but these skills are helpful across the board.  With that in mind, here are the top 5 skills employers are looking for:

1. SEO – Oxford Languages defines Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, as “the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”  While this has traditionally applied to Google, there is a rising demand for optimization for search engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and any number of search platforms.  Because of the cost associated with third-party SEO maintenance, more and more companies are looking for marketing candidates with SEO experience.  If you need to familiarize yourself or update your knowledge about SEO, there are some great free online resources.  ReliableSoft has a top 5 list of free training resources at https://www.reliablesoft.net/free-seo-courses/.
2. Paid Ads – Whether they are in the form of boosted posts on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram or ads on Google, paid ads are an integral part of expanding the reach of your message, increasing communication and driving traffic to your website.  Although on the surface, paid ads may seem pretty simple, there needs to be some thought put into who and where your target audience is.  And, of course, there is the cost involved, which is going to drastically vary depending on the geographic reach, the number of impressions and, in the case of Google ads, the number of clicks.  Because Google ads charge by the number of clicks, accuracy in choosing the target audience is integral.  DigitalDefynd has a top 5 list of free Google Ads training courses at  https://digitaldefynd.com/best-google-adwords-tutorial-course-certification-training/.  ReliableSoft has a top 10 list of free and paid Facebook Ads courses at https://www.reliablesoft.net/best-facebook-ads-courses/.
3. Website – One of the most sought-after skills employers list in marketing positions is the ability to make website changes.  There are varying levels of web skills that may be required.  With platforms like WordPress, copy and image changes are usually pretty simple, depending on the template and how the site is set up.  Creating new pages or redesigning the user-side functionality may have a bit longer of a learning curve, especially if you are just getting started.  While the basics of website design can be learned and mastered with practice, you will also want to familiarize yourself with the most up-to-date best practices.  This is where analytics come into play.  One of the challenges in a website’s design is how an audience reacts to it.  How many visitors versus how many unique visitors your website has and the difference between those two groups is the tip of the iceberg.  What does a high bounce rate mean?  What does a low “time spent on the site” mean?  A user’s experience on your website determines its effectiveness and possible ROI.  These are knowledge points that enable you to make recommendations about the site that could increase sales or improve the company’s image.  Training to make simple to complex changes to a website is going to depend on the platform in which the site is built.  Google has a great free Analytics curriculum at  https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/.
4. Email Marketing – Structured largely on copy content and design, emails are a great way to reach a list of current and potential customers.  Because the receivers are generally part of a list of people that signed up to receive them (theoretically) and want to want to know more about what your company has to offer (theoretically), it is an excellent tool for businesses to get a message out.  Why theoretically? Much like knowing more than just effective design skills in web work, there is a whole lot of behind-the-scenes knowledge required to run a successful email campaign.  Your subject line can greatly affect your open rate.  Your copy and whether you employ a call to action can affect your click-through rate.  Most importantly, your list can affect your deliverability and sometimes whether a platform will even allow you to send an email campaign.  Some companies might have an old list they have been building on for a decade.  Some companies buy lists (a practice I would strongly warn against).  While it’s a nice shot in the arm to have an email list of 50,000+, it can be detrimental.  At best, a large portion of the list might go directly into someone’s junk mail and never get opened.  That hurts your deliverability and sends a larger percentage of your emails to the junk mail folder.  Worse is when email addresses on your list were abandoned years ago and are now being used as spam traps.  If you hit a bunch of spam traps, many email platforms will block you from sending emails until the spam traps are cleared out and your list is cleaned up. Like web design, knowing these things can allow you to make recommendations that can improve your company’s marketing and online reputation.  EMarketing Institute has a free certification course at https://www.emarketinginstitute.org/free-courses/email-marketing-certification-course/.
5. Social Media – You may use social media to keep up with friends from high school or share pictures from your recent vacation, and you might regularly see posts from companies you may or may not be interested in reading about.  But using social media for business purposes can be very different from your personal posts.  The social channels you use for business and the content you post will depend a lot on your audience and how you want to speak to them.  Do you know which platform to use to reach Generation Z?  Do you know the difference between a Tik Tok and a Reel?  Do you know which channel is best for images or best for videos? Do you know the best tone (serious, familiar or amusing, for example) to use on each platform? Do you know how a social media post goes viral?  Like the skills mentioned above, there are a lot of factors beside posting that are involved in an effective social media campaign.  It’s not just what you say and how you say it, but the media used.  On the surface, it seems simple, but because every channel has different parameters and best practices, creating and implementing a successful social media strategy might be the most low-key complicated skill on this list. Any marketer worth his or her salt would do well to research frequently to keep their knowledge-base as up-to-date as possible.  Influencer Marketing Hub has a list of 17 free Social Media Marketing Courses at https://influencermarketinghub.com/free-social-media-marketing-courses/.

There are plenty of resources, both free and paid, out there to keep your marketing skills updated.  I listed a few here.  None of them are paying me to list them.  They are just resources I have personally used.  Marketing can be a tough but rewarding career, in a constant state of evolution.  If you do it well and keep track of your analytics and ROI’s, you can always prove your worth at a moment’s notice. Good luck out there.