Marketing is one of the key departments for any organisation as the success or failure largely depends upon how the product has been marketed. A mediocre product backed by an excellent marketing campaign could make the product a hit among the users.
In contrast, an exceptional product backed by a mediocre marketing campaign can bomb the product. That is why marketing managers’ role is so crucial; no wonder marketing managers command high respect and awesome salaries in companies around the world.
A marketing manager’s role includes planning, creating, and implementing the marketing strategies to maximise revenue through a higher sales volume. Marketing managers are everywhere, in all the industries. That is why so many students opt for a marketing management course at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Suppose you are on the verge of enrolling in a college to pursue marketing management. In that case, you should read this post carefully as we would point out top marketing management skills that every marketing manager should have.
You should not join a course just because your friends are joining, but you should carefully analyze your strengths and map those with the required skills to get an idea if the course would be suitable for you. There are some intrinsic skills that you already have, while there are other skills that you can acquire.
Let’s dive into the skills that help marketing managers succeed in their jobs:
1. Leadership skills
Managers across industries must manage a team to accomplish specific goals. They achieve this by motivating their teams and achieving the common objective by effectively doing their jobs.
Marketing managers often have to interact with different departments, co-ordinate meetings, present the plans to the higher management and get the strategies ratified before they could be implemented. All this requires effective leadership qualities.
2. Technical skills
A few years ago, marketing managers were not required to have many technical skills except great presentation skills. But with fast-evolving technologies and the ever-increasing use of social media and content as a marketing tool, the marketing managers are required to know the technical skills thoroughly:
3. Organizational skills
Organizational skills are beneficial to anyone who manages multiple tasks or projects at the same time. Marketing managers are no different as they often have to make decisions about multiple assignments, all of which can be at different development stages.
Organizational skills help a marketing manager create and execute achievable timelines, meet complicated schedules, and keep track of important information. Marketing managers are expected to have below mentioned organizational skills:
4. Communication skills
Marketing managers communicate with a wide range of people, including their co-workers, team members, and customers. Marketing managers need to communicate ideas, expectations and demands clearly and effectively. They must be good at organizational and interpersonal communication, which means they must share information both in large groups and in individual conversations. Marketing managers use their communication skills by:
5. Creative skills
Marketing is, in many ways, a creative business. Marketers need to develop unique and interesting ways to sell products or promote the brand. It involves the ability to develop original ideas and innovate to make them come true. To be successful in the industry, marketers must capture and hold the attention of their audience. The creative skills of a marketing manager often involve:
Now, let’s quickly assess other skills that the marketing managers require:
6. Analytical skills
Since the world has become highly dependent on the internet, successful marketing managers often have analytical minds. They know the value of the vast amount of data available today. They are very interested in what that data can reveal about consumer behaviour, the effectiveness of various marketing approaches, and more. Ability to analyse consumer data can help a marketing manager create laser targeted marketing campaigns.
7. Curiosity and innovative thinking
A marketing manager must remain open to new ideas and possess a desire to understand a concept that may be difficult to grasp at first glance. The world is changing fast, and people’s preferences are changing too.
There is no guarantee that if a particular campaign worked well previously, it would work again. Today’s marketing manager needs to think out-of-the-box to create campaigns that resonate with the targeted audiences.
8. People skills
A marketing manager’s job requires communication with people from different departments, clients, advertising agencies, social media teams, and content managers, among others. The successful marketing manager needs to be calm, persuasive, and adept at handling people.
9. Adaptability
Just as important as making initial plans at the beginning of a project, the ability to adapt to problems and solve problems throughout a marketing campaign is often even more valuable in marketing management. Everything does not go as expected all the time; the marketing manager should handle the obstacles, find ways, guide the team, and carry on with the new plans in mid-way if required.
10. Tech-savvy
Above, we have covered technical skills; here, we wish to emphasise the value of being tech-savvy. Since most customer engagements occur online, it is pertinent for a marketing manager to understand the customer’s perspective and deliver the services and information they want.
Moreover, being tech-savvy means that you would better interact with the product/engineering teams to create a more useful product or services as a marketing manager.
11. Detail-oriented
Marketing managers must see the big picture, but the reverse is also true: they must be purposefully and obsessively detail-oriented. They should be able to drill down to all the finer aspects of the project, as the name of the person who would finally sell the product, at what price, and by when.
12. Sales skills
Since sales is an intrinsic part of marketing, a marketing manager should have great sales skills so that he/she can think from the sales perspective. If the marketing manager is disconnected from the real sales process, he/she might create fancy marketing strategies that might never work on the ground. Business comes from the actual sales process; therefore, a marketing manager needs to have strong sales skills.
13. Manage external noise
A marketing manager manages many different tasks at the same time. With all this comes the “external noise” from people inside and outside the project.
Top marketing managers are adept at handling all these noises, especially hurdles, and keep the team focused on ensuring the desired outcomes. These managers know what to hear and what to filter out. So, they can filter out the distraction, hold the team together, and successfully deliver the project.
Final words
After this detailed article, we hope you would have understood the skills required to be a successful marketing manager in top-notch companies. We also believe that you would have assessed your strengths, interest, and passion for pursuing a course in marketing management.
If you still have questions or queries about your suitability for a marketing management course, please feel free to get in touch with one of the career specialists at MIT College of Management (MITCOM). They would be more than happy to guide you to select the best course option.
MITCOM is a part of renowned MIT-ADT University, which is known for its unique state of the art campus and has been awarded “The Best University Campus” at the 10th National Education Excellence Awards 2017 ASSOCHAM.
If you have big dreams and are looking to be part of the success stories that our alumni have been creating worldwide, MITCOM is the place to be! Do not wait; get in touch with us today!
