BRANDING - THINKING

Vision – here’s another thought

Digital marketing is indeed the future (or a significant part of our future), but with that comes the increasing need and pressure for marketers to have (even more) specialized skills.

Deeper data analysis capabilities, the ingenuities of SEO and Google Analytics, PPC, greater understanding of all sorts of technologies, these are just some of the requirements mapped in a list that seems endless. But here's a thought. Isn't excellent marketing a matter of strong leadership, solid business know-how, loads of common sense and Vision? Or should we all turn into superhero marketers??

Looking at some of the great marketing minds such as Seth Godin, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, Steve Jobs, Michael Porter (and many others)… Is it PPC, SEO, CMS, Analytics, ARPU, CLV, ROI, MAU, DAU that springs to mind as being their legacy, their expertise? I certainly hope not.

It’s the concept of a ‘unique selling proposition’ introduced by Rosser Reeves, or the powerful Porter’s Five Forces framework, the authority and eloquence of Steve Jobs or the assertiveness of Claude Hopkins on why advertising need to be measured. These are the true lessons.

What makes a good marketer an EXCELLENT marketer? It’s not technological or technical skills, but how adept they are at turning “creativity into return-on-investment, ideas into results, and art into commerce

Not long ago I saw an article that talked about the “50 Skills Every Marketer Should Have”. At first it scared me to death… 50 Skills?!? That’s a lot of skills.  But, in fact I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are more people thinking and believing that marketers are capable of much more.

Here are a few of the skills mentioned in the article: Customer-centric, Storytelling, Describing the end game (thinking about the big picture), Collaboration, Project management, Decision making, Leadership.

The list included some well-known ones as well, such as ‘Understand data and metrics’ or ‘Search engine optimization’. However, what is interesting here is that in the same way we believe a good marketer does not necessarily mean an SEO/Google Analytics expert, this article also highlighted that to be a true marketer you don’t need to master those arts, instead what you need is to understand what they are and their purpose.

So, do you see where I’m going with this? If it’s 50, 30, 10, 5 skills, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, it is all about Vision.

Vision in your thoughts, Vision in your actions – after all true thought leaders observe, engage, think, test and act. They don’t just talk about it. They 'envision' the BIG picture!