Top hard and soft skills from a Digital Marketing Manager

Marketing is a key pillar for any company. The marketing team must promote products and services, understand customers' needs, and analyze the market to propel growth and sales. It involves more than advertising; research, promotion, design, product, and sales are essential to success.

Therefore, a digital marketing professional needs to know a lot about different channels and strategies, and the person leading the marketing team must possess the right abilities that align with the company’s goals and push the team in the right direction 👊.

What does it mean to manage digital marketing?

Marketing management is basically the orientation, strategy, and direction of a company's resources in order to achieve its established marketing objectives. If it’s digital marketing, only in digital channels.

In other words, finding someone with the capacity to plan, control, and organize the personnel and funding necessary to meet the demand for a company's products or services online.

Nearly 90% of small businesses use traditional and/or digital marketing to promote their products and services and more than half of small businesses (58%) use digital marketing, we need to manage it!

What does a digital marketing manager do?

Digital Marketing Managers (DMM) are responsible for devising strategies to promote the company's products and services and increase brand awareness.

Their job is not easy, as they have to set objectives, control demand generation, develop pricing strategies, execute digital marketing channels, and monitor trends 😎 (check out our article for the full list of responsibilities).

According to a study, 90% of digital marketing managers claim to lack the skills needed to succeed, and only 8% of brands consider their digital marketing management staff to be strong, capable, and meet the set KPIs.

What skills should a digital marketing manager have?

Skills are the competencies and capabilities needed for success in the role of a marketing manager.

We can differentiate between 'hard' skills, which involve technical knowledge or experience, depending on the sector or company, and 'soft' skills, which involve social and cognitive abilities.

Both soft and hard skills can be learned, though soft skills are generally more complex! How do you learn to resolve a conflict or lead a marketing team? 🤔

Many articles recap a list of soft skills that a Marketing manager should have, such as critical thinking, project management, analytical skills, technical skills, storytelling, creativity, leadership, collaboration, communication, negotiation skills, teamwork, etc.

All of these skills are excellent, but they are general skills that could be asked of any type of manager!🙄

With these in mind, we just summarized and selected the 5 skills that we believe are essential for these positions, both hard and soft. However, let’s mention that hard skills can vary depending on the specific industry, so it’s just a general proposal.

5 must-have soft skills for a Digital Marketing Manager:

1. Training and learning capacity✏️

Someone who lacks the ability to learn from their surroundings, acquire new competencies, and coach themselves and their team will struggle to bring their team to success.

In marketing, leadership and teamwork are essential. It's important to have a profile that can sense current needs and assist the team in acquiring the necessary skills to take action. Moreover, inspiring, motivating, and encouraging the team to strive for their objectives will ensure success.

2. Listen to their environment 👂

Leaders often appear as motivational speakers, but in a corporate setting, the ability to listen is more valuable than the ability to speak when devising strategies to engage a target audience.

No longer can advertisers rely on appealing to everyone or talking up the features of their products with little regard for what people want. Now, the focus is on interpreting the target audience by listening to the marketplace, sales data, and the team executing the campaigns. This helps them understand the success of each campaign.

Digital Marketing Managers, are responsible for their team's outputs and for building relationships with partners and customers so they need to be good listeners all the time!

3. Business vision 👁

We know this sounds a bit general, but let us explain in detail what we mean. A successful digital marketing manager doesn't need to be a marketing or social media expert; understanding the business and associated objectives is what they need to do to add real value.

Identifying and utilizing key resources to meet those goals makes the biggest difference. This encompasses knowing figures like margins, cost, and onboarding time but also requires an understanding of the sales funnel.

4. Strategy and performance measurement 📈

Obviously, a digital marketing manager must have a strategic vision to effectively design, coordinate, and measure marketing strategies. This allows them to view projects' effects on the company's global purpose, enabling them to collate data for optimization.

Digital Marketing Managers must be adept at analyzing the market, seizing opportunities, and forging plans for success. They’ll be managing multiple projects simultaneously and will often need to adapt to last-minute changes. Therefore, they should possess effective organizational skills and a comprehensive strategy.

5. Team building 👥

Building a team is the first step, but it's more than just assigning tasks; it's about keeping the team motivated and working together in harmony. Developing an understanding of each person's soft skills can help your company gain a competitive edge.

Digital Marketing managers should assemble teams with the relevant skills needed to succeed in the company's current phase. They must be an adept team player, recognizing and respecting the contributions of individual team members.

They should collaborate effectively during meetings and build strong interpersonal relationships with colleagues and counterparts in other departments.

5 nice-to-have hard skills for a Marketing Manager:

As we have said before, each company defines hard skills according to their needs. For example, an e-commerce firm relying on website sales will differ from a clothing brand selling through Instagram or a SAAS company focusing more on branding and outbound sales.

1. Data analysis 📉

Defining department objectives and analyzing data are normally essential skills for this role, no matter their other subtasks or requirements.

In addition to developing strategies, they must implement the best metrics and analytics to track the performance of these actions and campaigns. Analytics allows us to measure the effects of changes made to the marketing strategy and will help us to make informed decisions.

2. Market research 🧨

It is essential that a digital marketing manager know techniques to understand buyers' needs and pain points. This is also a general skill.

They should be able to identify the target market for their product or service among many potential customers and conduct research to tailor the message to this audience.

Knowledge of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and steps for market analysis are needed to answer questions that help shape a product or service.

3. User experience design 📲

When it comes to the Internet, most companies have a website. This often requires a deep understanding of how to optimize the user experience (UX), but only if your company is focused on this type of channel.

A user-friendly website creates positive experiences that engage visitors, allow them to explore your brand, and ultimately lead to sales.

To succeed, marketing managers should have a strong understanding of WordPress, HTML and the capacity to design A/B tests. This will help them determine how to attract and retain users rather than having them switch to competitors.

4. Digital positioning 🔮

SEO and SEM are often relevant online strategies; however, they are not prerequisites. Therefore, we will discuss general positioning in search engines, social networks, or the corresponding digital platforms.

SEM and SEO will allow managers to make the website attractive and increase its visibility to Internet users.

It's a dynamic world, so they’ll need to be up-to-date with the latest algorithm changes and best practices!

5. Content optimization 🌌

A successful digital marketing manager doesn't need to be a skilled writer or be familiar with Photoshop, but they should understand techniques to ensure their content is well-optimized for all mediums where they are present. This is optional too and depends on the company!

They need to understand the types of content that work for each platform, as well as how to leverage paid campaigns and abide by platform guidelines. High-quality, useful content can help you build trust with your audience, foster relationships, generate leads and ultimately win new and loyal customers.

Design and storytelling knowledge are foundational, but to be successful they must be able to suggest creative ways to improve and change existing content and lead their team in making these changes.

Conclusions

A marketing manager will have to develop strategies by listening to sales, their team, and the customer. Their skills will be as necessary as the skills of their team members, as they will be the ones who complement them 😍.

Communication and creativity are crucial to the success of the marketing plan, but how a digital marketing manager guide and implement this marketing plan is the element that will differentiate their roles and enhance the value of their position 🙌.

Also, remember that these skills can be learned and developed over time, so don't be afraid to invest in your own development and growth. With the right skills and an unwavering commitment to excellence, you will be well on your way to success as a marketing manager.