15 Top Marketing Skills and Qualities to Stay Top of Your Job

15 Top Marketing Skills and Qualities to Stay Top of Your Job

This post provides exhaustive information on marketing skills and qualities you need to have to be a best seller in whatever industry you are in.

Please, read on:

The role of marketing has proved to be pivotal in the increase in the sales of goods of many companies.

Goods need to be sold and that demands someone competent and strategic enough to make those goods available to the consumers.

That is the work of a marketer.

Who is a Marketer?

A marketer is someone hired by a company to oversee methods and techniques used to make goods or products available for consumption by the end user who are the customers.

15 Top Marketing Skills and Qualities to Stay Top of Your Job

Here are important marketing skills and qualities to develop to be a top seller in your industry:

Knowledge of the market
Product knowledge
Presentation skills
Basic IT knowledge
Research skills
Communication skills
Persuasion
Negotiation skills
Networking/collaborative skills
Analytical skills
Problem solving skills
Goal driven
Resilience
Effective planning
Self-management.

Knowledge of the market

Your biggest business is in the marketplace. That is where your job is defined and that is where your intellect is needed.

That is where you are expected to excel.

The market is your field of play and you have to give it your best at all times.

But to be a good marketer means you have to be familiar with the market system and the trends in the market.

It is not expected that you should in any way be ignorant of the latest trends in the market.

By being the eye of the company in the marketplace, you are expected to be abreast with market structure and demands.

You look at the market and you think within yourself, what is the current structure of the market and what could be the future outlook of the market?

Answering these questions will help you know what your advice to your company should be.

Product knowledge

Apart from knowledge of the market, the next big thing that you should know well is the product you are marketing.

The product you are marketing should be well known by you in case you are caught in a situation where you need to explain the functionalities and benefits a customer is expected derive from using the product.

For presentation purposes, you are expected to be well prepared to defend the products you market.

Imagine a situation you are caught fumbling during presentations simply because you are not fully knowledgeable about the products you are selling. It is not a pleasant thing to imagine.

Also, for the sake of your confidence, product knowledge is a good way of increasing your confidence in the marketplace.

It aids in your presentation and makes you sound confident about what you are saying.

Also, in the case of sampling, you will need adequate product knowledge to be able to do a good sampling for customers in the marketplace.

Presentation skills

As a marketer, you will definitely face the prospect of facing the need to make regular presentations possibly at any place you find yourself.

So, you have to prepare for it and not shy away from it whenever you are needed to do so.

In your quest to be a good presenter, you undergo training on the right use of words and customer friendly and appealing words which have the ability to persuade potential customers to patronize your products.

This is one skill you cannot do without.

Also, during the course of presentation, you are also expected to learn how to compose yourself in order not to give the potential customers a reason to doubt the authenticity of your presentation.

This in itself can make a big difference in your presentation.

Basic IT knowledge

You may not be highly gifted in the use of computers and other IT gadgets, but there is the necessity that you have a basic knowledge of how to use some IT gadgets.

This should prompt you into developing your IT skills up to a good level.

Your ability to thrive in the current digital world is dependent on your ability to know and use some IT gadgets.

These IT gadgets include smartphones, Modems, etc. There are many of them out there you need to get yourself acquainted with.

When you are able to make adequate use of most IT gadgets, you are able to reach out to potential customers.

These days, group chats are created on Facebook, which is presently the largest social media network in the world, as well as on Whatsapp and Telegram.

The creation of group chats on the social media platforms help reach out to hundreds of people all at the same time.

So, it’s highly beneficial you know how to use these things.

Research skills

To be competitive in the market place as a marketer, you must have some requisite research skills.

Ordinarily, research is not a skill but developing your own way of carrying out research is the skill we are talking about here.

And by this we mean employing any method that can get you the result you want in the area of research faster.

Research keeps you abreast with the happenings and trends in the marketplace.

The marketplace is your primary place of assignment and therefore must be known by you inside out.

So, to do this, you are to deliberately and consciously make up your mind to know more.

One good reason to engage in research is to make sure you are properly placed to know of change in the taste of customers in relationship to what they want.

The customers’ taste is bound to change from time to time and if you want to still keep up with them, you have to know about it on time and decide your next line of action.

Communication skills

This is one of the things you learn during your period of training on presentation skills.

You are to know the place of communication in the job you are called to do.

You cannot overlook or underestimate the power of good communication if you really want to succeed as a marketer.

One thing that shows that you are a skilled communicator is your ability to know the best communication technique or channel to use when dealing with potential customers.

This is also part of the things you include in your research endeavors.

In addition, you are to also learn to coordinate communication to enable the customers or potential customers give feedback.

When there is no feedback, it is assumed that communication never took place or the communication process is not complete.

Persuasion

Your success as a marketer is 90% dependent on your ability to persuade people in the marketplace.

Your power of persuasion is your power of success when it comes to marketing.

Marketing demands that you should be skilled in persuading people into buying into your idea or patronize the product your company has to offer.

To be able to persuade people also demands that you learn the act of public presentation.

In public presentation, your sole aim is to make people find reasons to patronize your company.

If at the end of your presentation people are not convince to patronize you, it shows to an extent you have not yet mastered the art of public presentation.

Also, for others who may not be in the position to make presentations face to face with people, there is what we call the selling point or punch line.

The selling point comes just before the conclusion.

Within that paragraph you employ some tactics that will help you persuade the potential customer who visited the site to find reasons to patronize your company.

This art is learned and does not come out of the blues.

Negotiation skills

This entails your ability to negotiate contracts and jobs with the customers to give them the best value for their money and as well good value for the job you are doing.

This is a very interesting aspect of marketing which is vital to the success of the marketer.

As a marketer, almost on daily basis, it is almost impossible not to find yourself in a position where you have to negotiate with the customers about sales and other services rendered to them.

The customers must negotiate because they want the best value for their money.

On this front, you have to develop strong negotiation skills for you to be able to get the value for your effort even as you desire to give the customers best value for their money.

So, negotiation skill is one that you have to learn and there’s no better way to develop this skill other than learning from the experience of advanced marketers in the field.

Networking/collaborative skills

Most successful marketers understand the benefit of networking/collaboration.

Networking ensures that you engage more people to work with you in order to achieve your goals in the marketplace.

To do this requires that you will become a team player.

When you collaborate with people, especially people who share the same interest with you, you not only have more manpower, but also you gain more experience through working with people who may have some level of experience in marketing.

Networking is so vital to the success of a marketer.

You have to work with other marketers out there.

You have to learn from them as well as employ their expertise into your job and watch your little effort producing amazing results.

Analytical skills

Analysis deals with asking questions about some things or events which you do not understand.

At some points as a marketer, there will be instances where you need to ask relevant questions as part of your research.

When you ask questions and answers are provided, the next is to analyze the knowledge you have acquired to know its feasibility.

Not all knowledge are feasible, some are feasible on paper but in reality or in the marketplace may not be good enough to help your job as a marketer.

So in the light of this, you have to analyze the knowledge you have acquired and know how workable it is.

To be a good analyst you have to have an open mind. In other words, you don’t have to rule out an idea at the first thought.

This can be your undoing as the idea that you ruled out simply because you did not understand it at the time might be the missing piece in the puzzle.

Problem solving skills

When you are done with careful analysis of the knowledge or problem you have come across, the next thing that should come to your mind is how to solve the problem or how to use the knowledge you have acquired to solve the problem at hand.

Problem solving skills don’t come out of the blues; it is improved upon daily through constant exposure to ideas and knowledge from past experiences and advice of more accomplished marketers in the marketplace.

It is natural to face challenges in the marketplace, but employing the problem solving skill, you are sure to get out of those challenges.

To be a good problem solver as a marketer, you have to willfully and conscious improve yourself.

Improving yourself entails acquiring more knowledge, expertise and skills to help you solve contemporary problems which are slowing you down.

Goal driven

As a marketer of a company, your goal is simple: make increased sales for your company.

Anything short of this will not be acceptable to your employer who hired you or contracted you in that capacity.

This should be your major goal.

For you too, you should have your personal goals which should be your driving force and that should be far beyond what you are achieving for your company.

You have to identify these goals and work towards them every day you find yourself in the marketplace.

Your goals are meant to spur you to find better ways of doing your job to achieve faster and more telling results than your counterparts in the organization.

In fact, this should set you apart from others within and outside the company.

Resilience

Resilience is one of the skillsets of every successful marketer. As a marketer, things may not always turn out the way to plan them.

Turn of events and other negating factors may threaten to undermine your efforts but you must not give up on yourself or your job.

The unwanted experiences can only improve your expertise over time.

It is not gainsaying that your challenges are meant to make you stronger not to weaken you in any way.

Those challenges may be what you need to bring you out of your comfort zone.

Learn to be upbeat even when the future doesn’t seem so. You have pick up the pieces and put them together again.

Even when you make mistakes, learn from them and be resilient enough not to go back to those mistakes that nearly struck you off balance.

Effective planning

Effective planning ensures that you don’t allow your day plan itself for you rather you plan your day and the order of your activities in the marketplace.

This saves you from a lot of trouble that come from not planning your day before embarking on the day’s job.

When you plan your activities for the day, probably writing down all you need to do for the day in your to do list, you have to be time conscious in order not to expend your whole strength and time on one thing except it is utterly necessary to alter your plans for the day.

Not planning well will make you have many things to do, yet you will achieve little at the end of the day and you know how frustrating that can be.

Be strategic in your planning. Employing strategic planning will help you prioritize your jobs for the day and execute them as they come.

Self-management

Nobody knows you better than you. You know yourself better in the sense that you know your energy levels, your strength and your weaknesses far better than anyone else both within and outside the workplace.

You have to work on yourself to get the best out of yourself at all times.

Part of self-management is being able to do your job the best way you can.
This involves you working smart and not just working hard.

When you work smart you spend less energy and at the same time achieve far more than you can imagine.

In this too, you learn how to manage your energy. This can come in the form of learning to speak less when it is not necessary and engaging in more productive activities rather than in activities that make you expend your strength on issues not related to your job.

Marketing Skills for Resume

If you are making a resume or CV for a marketing job, you will need to include the Competence section to show the skills and qualities you are bringing to excel on the job.

If you have developed the marketing skills and qualities discussed above, you can highlight some of them in making the Competence or Skills section of your resume.

This information in your resume or CV can greatly boost its power to influence the recruiter/employer to grant you an interview where you can prove to them that you are the marketer that they are looking for.

Conclusion

To be a top selling marketer, you need to develop and imbibe certain skills and qualities presented on this page.