11 Digital Marketing Skills in Every High-Performing B2B Team

Every workplace is unique. Your team needs to deliver certain results and reach specific goals.

The skills you need depend on your audience and goals.

Digital marketing is fluid. Tactics change as buyer expectations evolve.

Your digital marketing skills should continuously evolve too. It’s the only way to keep up with your buyers.

Much has changed over the past year – and they are going to continue changing.

Many businesses have shifted online and made massive adjustments to keep up with the changing times. COVID-19 has caused businesses to undergo tectonic shifts in many ways and likely won’t go back to the way things were.

11 Digital Marketing Skills Your Team Needs to Succeed

In some cases, growing your digital marketing skills will involve tying up loose ends where your desired tactics don’t match your experience. In other cases, consider goals you hope to accomplish in the future that you’ve neglected because you lacked the skills.

1. Running Data Analysis and Drawing Insight

Data – it’s all about data. However, Gartner predicts over 80% of B2B marketers will abandon their personalization strategies by 2025.

Bad data is the culprit behind poor results.

Organizations need marketers who understand data and know how to use it. Social media, website traffic, CRM, email – marketers must know how to gather data from multiple sources and use it.

Marketers should also know how to draw insights from data to make predictions and justify all their activities.

2. Project Management

A recent survey found that 89% of organizations consider project management “very” or “extremely” important on a digital marketer’s resume.

Organizations need digital marketers who can not only carry out their individual roles but understand the full range of intricacies and consequences as a team.

For example, individual marketers should be able to decide what tasks to complete themselves, which tasks to outsource or delegate, balance budgets, and where to devote their resources.

3. Ability to Work Autonomously

At least 20 major companies have publicly announced their plans to keep most staff remote permanently. Marketing positions are ripe for remote work, and it can cut down on overhead tremendously.

Beyond project management, digital marketers must be able to self-motivate and communicate properly with a team while working independently.

4. Working in Harmony with AI

84% of B2B organizations already use artificial intelligence to enhance their marketing efforts.

Marketers shouldn’t worry about AI taking their jobs, but they should understand how to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve their marketing strategies. Personalization, forecasting, lead scoring, content marketing – these all demand AI in some fashion to work efficiently.

Fortunately, most AI tools are easy to implement and have a gentle learning curve because they’re designed with usability in mind.

5. Organic Search Engine Optimization

PPC advertising is costly when it’s not highly targeted and planned. Organic search engine optimization is a much more cost-effective and sustainable strategy.

Every marketer must have a decent understanding of organic SEO and its ongoing demands to stay ahead. You can’t publish a single piece of marketing content today without considering SEO implications in some way.

6. Understanding Design and User Experience

Experience and price are the two factors that matter most to buyers. For many buyers, experience matters even more than price!

Marketing teams must understand how to create a pleasing user experience at every touchpoint. As a marketer, you’re the first line of contact with leads and customers.

In many cases, you don’t even know where a prospect will first engage with your brand. That’s why you must consider experience across all your channels.

7. Social Media Marketing

Social media is a critical part of every successful marketing strategy. Marketers should have at least a basic understanding of running paid campaigns and selecting targeted audiences.

Running paid social campaigns is a vital digital marketing skill because it also improves your understanding of your audience: what they follow, their interests, where they work, etc.

8. Email Marketing

Email marketing gives you a direct line of communication with your leads. It’s highly personal and not influenced by algorithms.

Every marketer should know how to write engaging email copy – especially subject lines. Marketers should also understand the basics of segmentation, personalization, and analytics to gather insight from email.

9. Charisma and Conversations

Your digital marketing skills must go beyond selecting audiences for paid posts. Digital marketers should also understand how to engage leads and prospects with genuine conversations – not cold messages.

Marketers should offer their own human touch to your brand via comment sections, forums, posts, and inboxes.

10. Event Planning and Management

Digital events are here to stay. Even after COVID restrictions pass, it’s hard to see a world where B2B organizations go back to completely in-person events without at least a digital option.

Bringing events into the digital space expands reach and offers huge opportunities. Marketers now will have to brush up on their event planning skills. They’ll need to understand how to market digital events and track metrics, read analytics, and use the insight to make future decisions.

11. Personalized Content Writing

Finally, personalized content is an absolute must for every B2B organization.

66% of buyers say companies give them way too much content, and over half say most of it is completely useless. Generic content won’t fly – neither for humans nor search engines.

Marketers must know how to study analytics from their current content library and audience to build future content. Creating content for specific firmographics and segments is the key.

AI Gives You More Time to Flex Your Digital Marketing Skills

Artificial intelligence is a must in every digital marketing toolbox moving into 2021. B2B organizations are finally waking up to AI's power and putting it to use across their organization.

An AI engine lets you break your reliance on completely data-driven personalization strategies, which often use incorrect or outdated data. As third-party cookies phase-out moving into 2021, a solid grasp on intent data and personalization are critical for boosting your goals.

Start boosting your artificial intelligence knowledge. Read the comprehensive Hushly guide on using AI personalization for demand generation.

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