As individuals continue to work from home, marketing leaders need to understand how to lead their remote marketing team effectively. How do you overcome supervising employees in different time zones? What skill-sets do you need to make sure you build trust? How well do you communicate? Developing a solution to support daily operations in a virtual work environment is more than having the right communication platform. A strong leader must possess the hard and soft skills needed to make sure the team is healthy and happy. Without the right leadership skills, it can lead to a high-stress working environment. As recruiters for marketing executives, the best solution to mitigate inefficiencies and unproductiveness is to consistently work on the hard and soft skills needed to manage an effective marketing team.
The reality is constant changes in marketing will not slow down. Marketing professionals must become adaptable and a life-long learner to add value. Whether your company plans to return to the office or remain remote, all marketing executives should evaluate and revise the key essential skills needed for strong leadership. With 2020 slowly slipping away, here are the most sought-out skill-sets you need to remain efficient and competitive in your industry.
Recruiters For Marketing Executives Highlights Top Skills Needed In 2021:
Soft Skills
Strong soft skills have been in demand for many different types of industries over the past few decades. How you work and relate to others affects the company’s culture as well as your motivation. Often, your personality, manners, motivation, and/or attitude will determine whether you will advance in your career or stay stagnant. Developing these skills and emphasizing them in your resume will help employers better understand your capabilities. With many companies remote, here are the essential soft skills companies are looking for in marketing executives:
Communication
Regardless of the work environment, communication skills are the foundation of a successful remote marketing team. You need to stay connected and engaged to ensure the team is equipped with the necessary tools to execute the best marketing strategies. Have you set clear expectations? What are each member’s KPIs? Making sure each team member understands the objectives and how to achieve them is the key to effective communication.
In a virtual workplace, you need to be able to speak clearly and articulate your message effectively. However, miscommunication is very common. The chances for marketers to misinterpret your message can cause chaos within the team. As recruiters for marketing executives, defining and documenting all tasks and objectives is the best way to ensure everyone understands the goal.
Along with your ability to speak clearly, you also need to be a good listener. This is extremely important when your team members are fully remote. Top companies are looking for marketing executives who can listen to the concerns or suggestions of their team members. Being able to read body language or nonverbal communication is helpful to determine where your team stands in regards to motivation and productivity.
Whether you are speaking with a client, customer, teammate, or vendor, your communication must reflect your executive presence. To simply put, executive presence is the ability to inspire confidence in others. You need to be able to share your vision and the solution to achieve great results. Candidates that can display their executive leadership through their communication will motivate the team and make an impactful change.
Critical Thinking
No matter what industry you are in, there will always be obstacles you must overcome in marketing. Top leaders who can analyze the situation and make informed decisions will continue to add value to the organization. How are you resolving issues while your team is remote? What strategies are you implementing to ensure the problems are resolved? Being able to demonstrate these capabilities especially while you are remote is the start of becoming an effective leader.
So what makes you a critical thinker? As recruiters for marketing executives, we have worked alongside many great marketing professionals. Here are some of the characteristics we see in all of our successful placements.
Characteristics of a critical thinker include:
- Observative
- Curious
- Stays objective
- Analytical
- Introspective
- Open-mindedness
- Creative
Work Ethic
Marketing professionals need a strong work ethic to promote positivity, motivation, and determination within the virtual work environment. Are you making sure your team is logging in to work on time? How are you ensuring work gets completed promptly? Are you focused on building a more effective team? Working in a virtual environment can be stressful. You need to go the extra mile if you plan to reach your goals. How you convey yourself through this difficult time is the difference between a marketing executive and a great marketing executive. Companies want to make sure you are the best investment for their organization. Therefore, if you can demonstrate this in your resume or daily job functions, you will be able to further your career opportunities faster.
Hard Skills
As a marketing executive, the more hard skills you have the better equipped you are to effectively reach your goals. However, with most companies remaining remote for a longer period, there are specific skills you must have to properly execute the brand’s vision. Here are some essential skills you need as a marketing professional:
Analytical Skills
The most important skill-set in today’s market is the ability to analyze data. As more consumers switch to online shopping, companies are acquiring large amounts of information. It provides them with the necessary insight into the likes and dislikes of the target market. Marketing executives must be able to make sense of the data and predict the trends or patterns of the consumers. However, if you are not familiar with data analysis, manipulation, or constructing predictive models, the large volume of information can be difficult to navigate. Therefore, marketing professionals who can quickly acquire the information needed to make informed decisions will surpass other marketing professionals in the industry.
SEO
Over the past few months, the changes in consumer behavior have shifted SEO strategy. You must stay on top of the latest SEO trends if you plan to gain the attention of your target audience. Consumers are no longer interested in the content, product, or services that do not align with their needs and expectations. How are you shifting your content strategy? Are you addressing relevant concerns? With the drastic increase in online competition, optimizing your SEO strategy is crucial to the success of your brand. The higher you rank on search engines the more interaction and brand awareness you will get. However, knowing just the basic SEO practices that were used years back will not be effective. According to Search Engine Watch, here are some of the top SEO trends you will see in 2020:
- Voice search
- Featured snippets on Google
- Influencers for SEO
- More companies applying BERT models
- Better digital experience
- Videos will be the top form of content
- More mobile
Technical Skills
As you look into the near future, eCommerce is becoming a very popular trend for many companies. It gives them the ability to offer products and services straight to the homes of their target audience. However, with the struggle to interpret large amounts of data accurately, companies are turning to AI applications for more efficient results.
For years, artificial intelligence has been developing techniques to better understand consumer behavior. The more data that is acquired, the more accurate the algorithms become. According to Martech Outlook, the most common AI marketing applications in today’s market are predictive analytics & forecasting, audience hyper-segmentation, and persona research. These tools can take past consumer actions and predict future trends. Therefore, marketing professionals that are willing to invest time to acquire the knowledge of new technologies will be able to turn indigestible data into actionable insights.
Conclusion
If you are considering expanding your knowledge, you need to evaluate your past experiences first. Where do you excel? What do you need to work on? What kind of skills do you need for your future position? As recruiters for marketing executives, we have reviewed many resumes. While some candidates do possess the hard and soft skills needed to effectively reach the desired results, other candidates have invested time in skill development that they don’t truly need.
When creating a list of skill-sets you want to accomplish, reaching out to marketing professionals could help you recognize strengths and weaknesses you may not have recognized in yourself. The best way to know exactly what you need to work on is to understand what marketing roles are becoming increasingly popular and which ones are slowly fading. Specialized marketing recruiters will be able to point you in the right direction and align your skills with better opportunities in today’s market. Now is the time to make sure you have all the key essentials you need to advance your future career choices.
Author: Melissa Van Rossum