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John Spacey, December 13, 2015 updated on December 28, 2018
Marketing skills are abilities, talents and knowledge related to marketing, sales and product development. These tend to be heavy on creative talents, social abilities and technical skills. The following are common marketing skills.
Developing marketing goals, strategy and plans.Administration of the end-to-end marketing process including elements such as sales and operations planning.Marketing communications includes marketing areas that are focused on communication including branding, public relations, promotion and product launches.
Generating demand and brand awareness with promotion techniques.Campaign ManagementThe planning and execution of coordinated marketing campaigns that may include operations, distribution, promotion, pricing and branding. For example, an ice cream manufacturer who ramps up production and promotion to support a summer price cut.
The process of setting prices based on factors such as stock levels, demand and competition.Revenue management is the complex process of pricing and promoting inventory that expires at a point in time such as seat on a flight or night in a hotel room. Also known as yield management.
Managing products and services through their entire lifecycle from launch to retirement.A promotion technique that involves paying for access to a target audience.Ad CreationDeveloping ads themselves. A highly creative process that is often outsourced to an advertising agency.
Distribution is the process of reaching the customer to sell to them and deliver your products and services.Managing your sales and marketing channels including channel partners.The end-to-end delivery of your services considering every touchpoint with the customer.
SalesThe process of engaging customers and closing sales.The ability to establish and sustain positive relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders.ProspectingProspecting is the process of developing sales leads.The practice of scoring leads to decide which leads to prioritize and which to discard.The art of getting to yes to close sales.High value sales that involve multiple decision makers and long selling cycles.Solution SellingDeveloping unique products and services for each customer as opposed to selling them something out-of-the-box. For example, selling software that is highly customized for each customer.Selling person-to-person.Predicting reasons why customers will rationalize against buying your products and services to plan to defeat these objections.Responding to customer objections to close sales. Sales StrategyThe process of developing sales strategy.Planning resources to achieve sales strategy.The day-to-day process of directing sales teams and controlling resources such as budget.The administration of the end-to-end sales process including lead generation, lead qualification, opportunities, needs analysis, proposals, contracts, deal approval, order fulfillment, customer service and customer retention.Customer RelationshipsThe process of building relationships with customers to ensure customer satisfaction. This is essential to your reputation and customer lifetime value.Customer service is the process of engaging the customer to meet their needs.Managing the reputation of a firm and communications with all stakeholders including investors, employees, communities, customers, regulators and partners.PresentationsThe process of communicating to customers and other stakeholders such as the media.Non-Verbal CommunicationElements of communication that are beyond words such as eye contact and body language.Listening with focus and intent to understand.Communicating information and emotion with visuals.StorytellingStorytelling is the ability to make information interesting.Developing materials to support sales processes. For example, presentations, product brochures and price lists.The use of technology to reach customers including digital advertising, social media marketing and certain types of direct marketing such as email marketing.The use of digital advertising to target a customer after they have performed some action. For example, showing ads to a customer who recently visited your website.Omnichannel MarketingOptimizing your marketing across all your channels.Developing a valuable identity for your products and services in a crowded market. Branding is mostly focused on brand recognition, brand awareness and brand image.Digital AdvertisingThe purchasing, optimization and monitoring of digital ads.Using software to automate or semi-automatic marketing. Monitoring & AnalyticsMonitoring the results of your marketing efforts with tools such as analytics.Marketing ExperimentsTesting things to optimize your campaigns. For example, testing hundreds of variations of a digital ad to optimize an advertising campaign.A simple type of experiment that compares two variations. A/B testing is a common way to optimize for marketing goals such as an improved conversion rate.Data analysis is the systematic processing of data to build information assets, solve problems and support decisions.Marketing MetricsThe ability to calculate and use marketing metrics to improve results.Any marketing that directly reaches out to the customer to promote products and services. This can include various channels such as digital advertising, email, mail, telephone and person-to-person selling.Content MarketingThe production of content such as videos and photos to draw customers so that you can pitch to them.Social Media MarketingThe use of social media for content marketing and direct marketing.Database MarketingThe use of databases to identify potential customers and tailor messages for them.Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is a category of software that is commonly used to track prospects, opportunities, customers, sales, orders and other data that is critical to marketing.Salesforce AutomationA category of software that is commonly used to track end-to-end sales processes, customers, orders and sales analytics. Comparable in functionality to CRM.Media ProductionThe production of media such as audio, video and interactive environments.The design of visual elements such as websites, signs, product packaging and advertisements.EcommerceKnowledge of ecommerce platforms and skills related to ecommerce promotion, selling and operations.Operating retail locations including in-store promotion and merchandising.Merchandising is the presentation of goods and services in retail locations, product showrooms and other locations such as trade fairs.Partner MarketingDeveloping marketing partnerships in areas such as distribution and promotion.Alliance MarketingAlliance marketing is another term for partner marketing that is applied to a wide range of strategic partnerships such as co-branding and licensing.Attribution marketing is the practice of modeling the events that lead to desired customer actions such as a purchase.Researching market conditions including customers and the competition.Growing a business in new strategic directions. For example, entering a new market.Developing a formal proposal for a strategy or investment including an analysis of opportunity, risk, cost and return on investment.Developing new products and services and improving existing offerings.
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