👋 The 5 Most Important Skills for the Future of Marketing. Before you get too excited, remember that this “data” is ultimately just a sample of executive opinions (and not very many). We usually try to avoid discouraging our readers from clicking, but there’s your grain of salt right up front.

Ahem. There are three charts at the link, but here’s the titular first:

Our task here is to coarsely define/explain each of those five, just to make sure everyone’s eyes are on the same prizes…

1️⃣ Content Marketing. Saying, showing, and/or sharing the “stuff” (information and media) that engages people and makes them likelier to do business with you.

Hopefully this doesn’t break the fourth wall beyond your liking, but… theCLIKK is content marketing (whether or not it’s a pitch-perfect example). Our “job” here is to provide you with content you want; in exchange, you provide us with your attention, which implicitly means a certain probability that you will buy things if we sell them (whether for ourselves or for our advertisers).

2️⃣ Strategy and Brand Management. Marketing is a wide umbrella that can include a lot of different angles and specialties—so if you’re thinking about big-picture marketing strategy, what are your strong suits and smart plays?

Regardless of the exact buttons you choose to press, there’s another question to consider: what is your brand’s “identity” or “personality” and how should those be reflected in your marketing?

And regardless of the previous answer: for heaven’s sake, just be consistent.

3️⃣ Data and Analytics. We’ve spent a shameful amount of time drafting this paragraph because, at first, we were basically trying to validate the importance of math and data for business. Then we realized that, if you’re not already there, you’re basically f**ked and we can’t help you.

Anyways. If you don’t have data on what’s happening in your business (and actually use it), you’re flying blind. Once again, you hopefully understand this even if you don’t consider yourself a “numbers person.”

4️⃣ Customer Marketing and Insight. Do you actually know the kinds of customers you’re trying to serve? Or are you just trying to sell products to a big, vague, impersonal group of people? (Remember that customer avatars are not real people. Don’t kid yourself and pretend that it’s a single person.)

Good marketing is always careful about knowing and defining its audience: who it’s trying to attract, and why, and what those folks want for themselves.

Some of this information comes from research and data (see above), but a huge and meaningful amount of info comes from actual connections with prospects and customers, whether that means talking face-to-face or just reading the comments they’ve left you somewhere.

5️⃣ Marketing Automation. This subject can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. At root, though, it just means “removing manual human effort from marketing tasks, wherever desirable and feasible.”

A complex example might be, say, setting up the rules and conditions for an automated ad campaign and its budget. A simple example might be establishing a content calendar and making it a habit to post certain things regularly. Either way, it’s working smarter and not harder. 🤓

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