Consistent and directed marketing can turn a struggling or average business into a successful one. But you need the right marketing skills to grow your business. As you’ve probably figured out, the marketing world is constantly evolving. It’s 2023, and there are new changes in the marketing world to go with it. So, if you want to level up your business, you have to stay up to speed with marketing trends and learn new skills to keep getting leads and sales.

(Or, you need to find a marketing partner that already has the necessary skills…)

With all that said, let’s talk about why having the right marketing skills is so important and which skills are crucial to have right now…

Why the Right Marketing Skills Are Key to Success

As mentioned above, the marketing landscape is always changing. And if you want to promote your business effectively, you need to keep up. Sure, there are some skills that are timeless—like the ability to tell a great story or demonstrate good marketing ethics. But on top of that, you need to understand how to leverage the latest tools to your advantage and meet customer expectations. 

Having the right marketing skills helps you…

• Communicate effectively with your audience, increasing sales

Thoughtful, customer-focused marketing helps you communicate with your target audience better. It meets your audience where they are by using the channels and language they prefer. Plus, it touches on your audience’s needs and offers solutions rather than just attempting to sell products or services. All of this goes a long way toward increasing your sales.

• Build your reputation and promote trust

The right skills will help you position yourself as an expert in your field. As a result, Google and others will come to view you as an authority in your space. And it will increase the level of trust potential customers have in your business.

• Stand out from the competition

Chances are, you’re not the only business that offers the products or services you do. And that means you have to work hard to stand out from competitors. When you have the right marketing skills, you can adapt to your customers’ needs and preferences better. And when the time comes for them to buy, they’ll be more likely to choose you.   

What Marketing Skills to Develop (or Look for in a Partner)

Here are 5 marketing skills you need to develop or look for in a partner in 2023 and beyond:

1) ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the current trends transforming marketing. Over the last few years, there’s been an increase in the use of AI in digital marketing. But thanks to tools like ChatGPT, AI and human expertise are coming together like never before. And if you haven’t already, you need to get on board.

By learning how to master this AI tool, you can make faster marketing decisions and simplify menial tasks. 

Here’s how…

Generating Content Ideas

With specific prompts, you can use ChatGPT to generate content ideas that will pique your audience’s interest. The tool can provide you with lots of content ideas in just seconds. However, there are limitations to ChatGPT. It’s not a replacement for human input. You also need to key in the right prompts and edit your results to be relevant to your business.

Conducting Market Research

Knowing your audience’s needs has become as easy as typing in a few prompts on ChatGPT.

Once you’ve identified your audience, you can move over to ChatGPT for suggestions on, say, five needs that your audience may have. You can then follow that up with prompts about marketing solutions for each need. Such information can be priceless in helping you build a marketing strategy that converts.

Performing Keyword Research

You can also use ChatGPT for simple keyword research. For instance, you can use the ChatGPT chat interface to ask for the following:

• Relevant subtopics 
• Popular keywords
• Semantically related terms

The tool can give you insight into what phrases are relevant to your audience that you should be optimizing for. 

2) Marketing Automation

You can speed up your marketing if you have skills in marketing automation and technology. Marketing automation involves using software to automate repetitive tasks. It saves time and allows you to focus on work that requires greater human involvement. 

Some key marketing automation tasks include setting up forms, creating landing pages, and developing evergreen email campaigns to convert web visitors to customers.

Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is a powerful marketing automation platform that eases your marketing processes. Knowing how to use Keap for your marketing needs can help you streamline your marketing efforts. With the platform’s simple drag-and-drop campaign builder, you can create full customer journeys, life cycles, and marketing campaigns. In fact, some of the marketing automation functions that you can do are as follows:

Sending Personalized Communications and Triggering Actions Based on Behavior

The “if this, then that” functionality helps you send relevant marketing messages by building campaigns based on customer actions or inactions. You can set up the system to trigger emails, calls, and other actions based on behavior.

Building Emails and Landing Pages

A responsive email builder with drag-and-drop features helps you create emails effortlessly. For beautiful landing pages, Keap also has you sorted. You can use the drag-and-drop landing page builder to build quality landing pages to capture your audience’s attention. There are also landing page template designs if you’re running low on your creative juices.

Performance Reporting

You can also track your marketing performance thanks to a customized dashboard that presents in-depth stats and reports. This way, you will be able to monitor your…

• Emails for delivery, open rates, and click rates
• Web pages, landing pages, and campaigns for return on investment (ROI)
• Real-time campaign results

You can then modify your campaigns for what’s working. You can also access your data from anywhere and communicate with other systems.

3) SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your website rank in search engines like Google and Bing. Although the search landscape is continually changing, SEO is still necessary for increased brand visibility and lead generation. That’s why your marketing skills should encompass different aspects of SEO.

Technical SEO

Proper technical SEO ensures that search engines can explore your site and understand your content. That way, they can serve up your website in search results. It includes factors like page-load speed, mobile responsiveness, site structure, as well as search engine crawling and indexing.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is virtually everything you do on your website to increase your chances of ranking in search. It includes tactics like optimizing your title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs, along with ensuring content readability. 

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO is what you do off your website to improve your authority and rankings. It includes tactics such as guest posting, fixing broken backlinks, submitting your site to relevant directories, and more. 

4) Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is a quick win in marketing. It involves creating ads featuring your products and services. These ads appear on the first page of search engines so potential customers can easily find your business. You can also run paid ads on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram.

Search ads on Google see an average conversion rate of 4.22% compared to 0.65% for display ads. In fact, a good conversion rate to aim for would be at least 5%, which requires you to have the right skills in paid advertising. For instance, you need to know how to…

• Create high-converting landing pages
• Write copy that touches on your customers’ pain points
• Add irresistible CTAs 

…and much more. 

Paid advertising is expected to remain a worthwhile tactic for businesses. So, it’s important to learn how to increase your conversions to over 5%. That way, you can get a better ROI. 

5) Content Marketing

Knowing how to create and analyze content is a crucial marketing skill. Content types include blogs, website copy, newsletters, social media copy, e-books, email copy, and more. You need content that is not just interesting to read but compels your audience to act.

As content is a key part of all marketing efforts, you need to enhance your skills in this area—and specific types of content. 

Video is one of the most popular forms of content, with 86% of businesses using it as a marketing tool. You need skills in creating and editing videos that best showcase your products and services to potential customers.

Social media gets your brand out to the masses. You need the right social media skills to market effectively on different social media platforms to increase brand awareness and reach new customers.

Takeaway

Proper marketing requires strategy and the right marketing skills. Some of the top skills to streamline your marketing in 2023 and beyond include ChatGPT, marketing automation, SEO, paid advertising, and content marketing.If you find learning all these marketing skills overwhelming, you can partner with Viral Solutions. Our team of marketing experts has helped hundreds of businesses generate leads, increase sales, and grow with superior marketing strategies. Request a free consultation today to start marketing right and getting the results you want.