How to Cultivate the Next Age of Marketers
Building and managing a marketing team is challenging, especially when you’re looking to cultivate the next age of marketers. And knowing how to get started isn’t exactly easy.
However, the demand for marketing is growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall need for marketers may increase by 10% from 2020 to 2030. For your marketing agency to keep up with these demands, you must know how to prepare a modern marketing team that can handle the work efficiently.
To build and scale a marketing team, here are tips to ensure you succeed.
1. Know Which Marketing Skills Are in Most Demand
Marketing is ever-evolving, and it’s moving at a quick pace. This involves new tools and technologies, consumer shifts in behavior, data and much more. If your marketing team doesn’t prepare for a paradigm shift, you miss out on new growth opportunities.
Currently, the most in-demand marketing skills needed for the next age of marketers include:
- Copywriting
- Data Analysis
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media
- Marketing Automation and Technology
- Audience Building
- Conversion Optimization
In addition to the demand for different roles, growth marketers continue to dominate the market. These are the types of marketers that lead digital channel exploration.
Therefore, it’s important to consider these roles when cultivating the next age of marketers.
2. What To Look For in a Marketer
When you reach the point where you need to hire, knowing what to look for in a marketer is essential. The best qualities to look at don’t have to be how proficient they can be in marketing. Instead, it would help if you focused more on their work ethic.
It doesn’t matter whether the marketer is a generalist or a specialist. The person you hire should be someone you trust to get work done
You shouldn’t hire someone to fill a position. Rather, it helps to look for people with these top traits — smart, hardworking and responsible.
If you rush to fill a position, this can do more harm than good.
3. Provide Training for Your In-House Team
Use a personalized ongoing training approach to upskill your team members based on each member’s learning abilities. For example, some learn better by soaking in digital content, while others prefer interactive learning activities to help with engagement.
Essentially, adopting a personalized training approach will foster the next age of marketers on your team, allowing you to make the most of each team member’s potential.
4. Recruit a Dream Team
Once you find out which types of roles you need to hire, it’s time to find the top marketing talent. Since the marketing industry is transforming because of technology, adding new techniques, strategies and tools, keep this one thing in mind.
The modern marketer must have two sides — an artist and a scientist. Marketers that best fit your growing marketing agency should be creative and imaginative to create results-driven campaigns.
For the artist side, they need to be able to:
- Write premium content.
- Grab consumer attention with visual content.
- Foster and manage digital relationships through social media.
- Know best practices and design for email marketing.
For scientist side, they should have skills in:
- Performance Tracking
- Operating Budgets
- Data Analytics
- Campaign Performance
Essentially, the next age of marketers must be multifaceted and can adapt and thrive in a rapidly-changing landscape.
5. Focus on Retention
Once you’ve grown your marketing agency with a team full of outstanding talent, you want to ensure you’re retaining your employees.
The first step is creating a culture of trust in your agency. One reason a high-performer can become miserable is when they feel you are micromanaging them. Another factor could be that you lavishly praise them publicly for their high-performance efforts.
The occasional public praises help, but it’s better to do this more in a one-on-one meeting and thank them specifically for their efforts. Secondly, you must push back on the intensive coaching unless necessary.
Know Your Next Steps
Whether you’re building a team of marketers or scaling one, knowing which skills are interchangeable can go a long way. This industry requires rapid execution. For your marketing agency to grow, consider implementing these tips to cultivate the next age of marketers on your team.
