The new year is finally here! Now is a great time to beef up your resume and increase your skill set to be a more competitive candidate, get a promotion and/or better serve your clients. You can accomplish all three of these goals (and more) by learning new marketing skills.
It’s not just about adding skills; you want to make sure your resume has the right skills that are actually in demand. Certain abilities and skill sets will make you much more appealing to employers and clients.
Here are ten marketing skills to add to your resume this year.
1. Video creation
Video is huge. People are always on the go these days and need quick, easy ways to digest content. One Cisco study predicted that by 2021, 80% of all Internet traffic around the world would be from video. Whether you’re putting out Instagram Stories or Snapchat or YouTube videos, or you’re doing a live video on Facebook, it’s important to know how to create quality video content. Your videos must tell a story, be informative, answer questions, entertain and persuade your audience to take action.
How to Learn This Skill
If you want to learn how to create and optimize great videos, you can take a YouTube Masterclass, train yourself on video editing software like Final Cut Pro and read guides on Facebook Live Video.
2. Search engine optimization
Google changes its search algorithm frequently. Keywords, for example, used to determine your ranking, but now your ranking is calculated by the quality of your content, the backend of your website, your author bios and much more. If you’re going to be competitive in marketing, you need to learn the technical side of SEO.
How to Learn This Skill
Study up using resources like Backlinko’s The Definitive Guide To SEO in 2019. Take Moz’s SEO Training Course. And make sure you follow news about Google’s ongoing algorithm updates.
3. Data-driven marketing
According to research, data-driven marketing is urgently needed, but there is a huge skills gap in the workplace. Companies need workers with marketing skills like data analysis and reporting, and data and database management. As companies are able to collect increasing amounts of data from customers, especially through artificial intelligence, they’ll need people to analyze and decide what to do with it.
Nearly 40% of brands will expand their data-driven marketing budgets and companies that use data-driven personalization deliver five to eight times the ROI on their marketing spend.
How to Learn This Skill
To tune up your data marketing skills, enroll in courses like Marketing Analytics: Presenting Digital Marketing Data from LinkedIn, or Coursera’s Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals: Marketing Analytics in Practice.
4. Soft skills
LinkedIn research revealed that the United States is short 1.4 million professionals who possess soft skills. In terms of marketing skills, this means people lack the ability to work on teams, communicate effectively, provide conflict resolution, negotiate and be adaptable. Soft skills are going to become even more critical as businesses rely on AI to perform technological tasks — placing communication and planning skills at the top of the list for marketing positions.
How to Learn This Skill
If you feel that soft skills are an opportunity for improvement, take classes on BizLibrary or ed2go.
5. Mobile marketing
In 2018, 52.2% of global online traffic came from mobile phones, up from 50.3% in 2017. Mobile marketing is gaining momentum year after year, and digital marketers need to know how to utilize it to their benefit. Most importantly, marketers need to understand mobile users and should know where to look to pull data and important insights to improve their experience.
How to Learn This Skill
Sign up to learn mobile marketing skills like mobile-friendly email design and mobile app development, and take the class Learn Effective Mobile Marketing on Udemy to get started.
6. Marketing automation
Companies have been increasingly using marketing automation over the past few years. On average, 51% of companies now use marketing automation, and 58% of B2B companies plan to adopt it in the future. Marketing automation experts can do things like plan and implement drip campaigns, determine messaging for the buyer’s journey, analyze the results of campaigns and decide what to do differently the next time around.
How to Learn This Skill
If you want to add automation to your marketing skills resume, check out HubSpot’s marketing automation courses.
7. Content marketing
Content marketing is going to continue to be a game changer for businesses in 2019, just as it has been for the last several years. In 2017, nearly half of all marketers planned to utilize content to connect with their customers. Critical content marketing skills to add to your resume include:
- Researching, writing and editing written content
- Using a content management system (CMS)
- Performing keyword research
- Determining who the audience is for the content and then distributing and promoting it
How to Learn This Skill
To brush up on these content marketing skills and learn new ones for next year, take HubSpot’s free content marketing certification course.
8. Customer/user experience
This past year saw the adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, designed to increase user privacy by protecting people’s data. If companies and websites operating in the EU want to be compliant, they have to follow certain guidelines, such as asking customers if they wish to receive emails or handing over customers’ data they have collected if customers request it.
In the U.S. in 2016, 24.4% of U.S. Internet users blocked online ads, and that number is predicted to reach 30.1% in 2018. As companies collect more data on people and try different ways to target them with ads, people are fighting back.
In 2019, it’s critical for marketers to focus on the customer/user experience by delivering content they want, when they want it to ensure they have a great experience with a brand.
How to Learn This Skill
Customer/user experience is a rather broad marketing skill, and it can include capabilities like making sure a website is mobile-friendly and putting up blog posts that an audience wants to see. Read more about user experience on General Assembly and learn about UX Design on Springboard.
9. Local marketing
Local marketing and local SEO are huge. In fact, 46% of all Google searches are seeking local information. If marketers are helping local businesses big and small, they need to study what techniques work to target nearby consumers.
For example, they may use highly targeted local keywords in PPC ads or use BrightLocal to ensure that all business listings are accurate and up to date. Affordable local SEO services are also available from SEO experts you can find as freelancers, or at digital marketing or SEO agencies.
How to Learn This Skill
If you want to get schooled on local, take Udemy’s Local Business Marketing: Local SEO, Social Media & More and check out Local Marketing Institute.
10. Paid social media
To stand out on social media these days, brands need to invest in paid ads. Marketers need to determine what ads should look like, who to deliver them to and how much to spend on campaigns on channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. According to Hootsuite, social media advertising revenue is predicted to be $51.3 billion in 2018 and will increase by 10.5% annually.
How to Learn This Skill
If you want to add paid social media as one of your marketing skills, take LinkedIn’s Social Media Advertising courses and the Lynda class, Become a Social Media Advertising Specialist.
This is the time to study up for 2019 and craft your impressive marketing skills resume. Marketing is constantly changing, and you need to be able to keep up. With a solid marketing education, you can do just that.
