Who doesn’t want to be a good Digital Marketer? Who doesn’t want to be recognized? We all do. We all strive hard in perseverance in order of merit to accomplish something for oneself. Progressing towards a better tomorrow and making every day productive is a demeanor every Digital Marketer should apprehend.

If you fall into the all these characteristics of becoming a good Digital Marketer, then you’ll definitely reach the pinnacle.

There are shortcomings to everything, at times, one tends to focus on only a particular thing and stress about it,and that is when it becomes really difficult to continue or push oneself to the next level.

E.g:

• Your focus only in acquiring knowledge of tools, or
• Focus only on writing a good content, or
• Focus only on delivering the tasks or meeting deadline on the same, or
• Focus only on reading content related to your domain

If you do not prioritize on the few tens of the things which actually play 80% role in uplifting you, in creating an identity for you at your workplace , in building your credibility, then you are at jeopardy and so is your career in Digital Marketing or any other profession of that sort that demands to be a skilled performer.

How can you be a great performer in your domain?

Being a great performer requires not just to:

• acquire the domain knowledge
• being punctual or obedient

It’s a lot more than that!

Obviously, all these are great qualities/skills and every individual is bound to have, but then these are not the only things that you should be mastering at. For sure you would feel great if you are also good at the following, and according to me these are the most crucial skills a digital marketer to be possessing

1. Great data analysis & interpretation skills

Don’t confuse it with the excel skill, it’s a different one and here you actually learn how to process the data and understand, and once you have an understanding of it you will be interpreting things. This skill is the one that makes you the “real” digital marketer and you are component to deal with any kind of marketing platform, audience, content if you are good at this.

You should also be in a position:

• To understand the sources of data
• Formats of data
• Compile the data
• Structure your thinking and position it accordingly
• Expert in using Excel

Regardless of the platform you work, there should be at least two-three analysis to be done on a daily basis on the data available.

2. Learn core of the domain/basics properly

Learning something to its core improves your confidence levels and gives a lucid idea about anything we are dealing with, it also improves your speech and provides with a well founded opinion.

3. You question each and everything that you see as a part of your work

You learn better only when you are curious. Many a times you get answers only when you question, as it’s a fact that people make assumptions that already know and many a times your assumptions about it are wrong and there is no harm in cross-checking it. The better you know, learn and research, the better intellectual you become.

“Develop a passion for learning. If you do you, you will never cease to grow”

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”

“Hesitancy can come in your way of growing and learning”

4. Presentation skills (Show off)

You know that you’re contributing to a good extent and have the capability to do more than your manager/management expects from you. When working in a large firm one can feel underappreciated because your Boss/Management doesn’t realize the hard work you put in. Ergo, you have to ensure that your company is aware of what your merits are and this should be your number one priority; making them understand what you’re dealing with.

There is another pivotal point that you have to consider, they are not expecting just a mere update from you, but something bigger , like an achievement, an extraordinary thing, an innovation which isn’t conventional, which can help in growing the business or fixing the issues in the system. Doing things that benefit the organization is actually benefiting you more than the organization, such benefits include bringing fame/credibility for you at the organization, better salaries and designation, and a lot more.

Many times most of the simple things you do would be an achievement, an extraordinary thing, an interesting thing to them and hence you should keep your management updated with your research and ideas.

5. Being Proactive/Hyperactive

You cannot always expect someone to assist you, train you, educate you, evaluate you, people never come to you, they never think of uplifting you. Everybody is busy in their own lives and if you cannot get yourself involved for your betterment, there is no one who can help you, you have to help yourself. The journey to success begins when you seek help from within.

6. Deal everything Logically/Technically

As a Digital marketer you cannot blindly assume or inherit the knowledge from your seniors or peers, you have to acquire knowledge, wherein you should be able to answer anything and everything logically & technically. A digital marketer will be valued only when he can provide a valid explanation or should be in a position to prove what he/she speaks.

7. Lots of common sense

Digital marketer’s profile is unlike to any other profile, requires having a good sense and sound judgment for the following reasons:

• Digital marketers need to interact with many other teams in the organization
• Digital marketers deal with varieties of data and come across varieties of cases
• Digital marketers deal with the budget on the account. And the platform they work on, sound judgment is very much needed at every step of their work plan
• Digital marketers come across a variation of problems/loopholes on the account and having a proper sense about it helps them to overcome any hurdles in their way.

8. Monitor & track account every day

Digital marketer’s life would become monotonous if they just have to work and not track the outcome of it. The results you monitor are the one that:

• motivates you
• helps you to learn more
• keeps your work interesting
• gives you a good hold on the domain and more

If you are not tracking your implementations outcome you would lose all of the above benefits and there’s a likely possibility to fail in becoming a good digital marketer.

9.Be a go-getter in everything by executing your marketing activities successfully

Digital marketing needs support from various teams within the organization or outside vendors, such as, technology teams, content writers, sales team, operations and more, and if they are not a “go-getter” their implementations cannot go as per the expectations and they will see a delayed progress and thereafter their performance for the month or targets cannot be achieved.

Below are few more traits needed in digital marketer especially when he is leading the teams or taking care of responsibility of driving the digital marketing at an higher level.
As a manager of digital marketing team you may have to fulfill the below 7 criterias as well and if you couldn’t you cannot be a right fit to lead the digital marketing teams or execute a successful digital marketing for the organization.

10. Be a leader

Being a leader is not just about holding the highest role or designation in the organization, but then it’s all about,

• Being a direction to the team/colleagues in the digital marketing team
• Being a role model
• An problem solver and
• An influencer where one deals everything appropriately in order to achieve the goals of the organization/team.
• Putting the knowledge into practice
• Redefining the things in order to bring a positive change
• Motivating the team to work towards a common goal
• Motivating the team to be responsible

Regardless of the role and responsibility.

Until you take charge of things by being proactive you cannot become a leader. To become a leader one need to have a tremendous amount of passion as well to the domain and that’s what all drives them to be a leader.

11. Define things at the organizational level and lead them

There will be “n” number of implementations those may not necessarily be part of digital marketing but then in order to have a smooth flow of the digital marketing activities they may need a fix and you may have to put an effort or risk of working and bring the change in it and that change should help the complete organization or at least several other teams in the organization where coordination between teams should become simple and eventually simplify the digital marketing activities.

When you lead and define the new initiative you are ideally simplifying things in order to achieve your primary goal.

12. Set up a process for everything you deal with

The biggest reason for inefficiency in teams or delayed outcomes or not achieving goal is due to the inefficient process or not having any process at all, and defining the right process here in order to simplify the things, right process to help people, system, and overall the digital marketing efforts to move quick and achieve the targets is a must and when you are that change you are recognized to be as a leader and that’s what makes you a true digital marketer.

13. Have a clear thought process on everything you think do

Your appropriate thought process helps you to simplify the things, help you to put across the things in a right way, in an understandable way and in turn getting approvals, educating people, bringing in right changes or implementations becomes easy and that also brings in a lot of growth in the system and hence this skill is very much needed in order to progress, and move towards success as an individual and as an organization.

14. Timely delivery and meeting deadlines

Marketer cannot just think of things and expect the results, quicker the marketing implementations faster the organization growth and success and marketers not realizing this and implementing the things accordingly, timely would not help anyone and in fact it would incur a loss, so timely delivery and meeting deadlines are very much needed in a digital marketer.

15. Being practical/Realistic

As a digital marketer you can bring the cock and bull stories and this may put you and the organization in trouble, you have to be realistic and you have to speak everything in numbers and with well analyzed/researched data. You cannot be called as marketer if you are not speaking with numbers.

16. Share knowledge/Mentor people around

This is a must attribute that every experienced marketer need to have, as when they share knowledge they are helping in building better people, better system and in turn see a quick progress and success to both individuals and organizations and if a person cannot realize being a digital marketing role for several years he cannot be a best digital marketer.

Conclusion:

Any skill, any attribute that redefines the system, process, the way of learning and leading digital marketing life is a must for digital marketers and digital marketers whoever realize this and practice it properly in order to prosper the system can be consider to be as the best digital marketers as the qualities or traits they exhibit as a marketer help everyone prosper and that’s what marketing teams are hired for.

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Expert, consultant, Mentor and
Director of KandraDigital Marketing
Solutions Pvt Ltd.