Making your way in Marketing

angela wade - director of growth @ wyre technology

The most important hard skill is copywriting. Yes, you can outsource it, but as the Marketing Lead, it’s critical to learn how to speak to the audience you’re trying to reach. Who are they? What’s on their minds right now? How can your business help them? Physically writing the copy—the struggle of what to say and how to say it—helps you get to the heart of what you’re trying to achieve.

As far as soft skills, curiosity is huge! Throughout your career, you’ll constantly be learning. If you’re not curious, it becomes a grind. You don’t have to fall in love with every aspect of marketing; you just have to be curious enough to want to understand it.

drake rustand - founder of drake. creative

Tell a Story
Storytelling is the key to design. Storytelling is fundamental to every design, whether you're creating a website or logo. Imagine yourself telling the brand's narrative from the inside out. Discover its individuality, peculiarities, and path. Every color, typeface, and graphic should all work together to tell the true story of the brand. Your design components take on the role of chapters, creating a striking image that evokes strong feelings in the viewer and leaves a lasting impression.

1. Less is More
   Your ally is minimalism. Consider your design as a work of art where each stroke has significance. Design elements should breathe with purpose, colors should inspire a sense of clarity, and font selections should be harmonious. By using minimalism, you're not only helping your audience understand your visual language but also making it easily navigable for them. Your work takes on the qualities of simplicity, allowing people to intuitively connect with it and leaving a lasting impact.

2. Consistency Across the Board
   Think of your designs as a symphony, with every note and instrument harmonizing to produce a harmonious experience. The conductor is consistency. Creating a whole user experience is more important than only upholding a visual style. Every element works together to create a cohesive brand presence, from the color scheme that works well on all devices to the harmoniously dancing functional elements and the content voice. As with musical notes, think of developing a style guide or design system to make sure that your design elements always resound and unify a brand to an audience.

james dawson - co-founder of deckability

Marketing is like an orchestra. Many specialties combine to create the song of the brand. The melody is driven by the hard skill of copywriting, and consistent brand voice is crafted through the soft skill of interpersonal communication. Like an instrument, copywriting takes practice, and more practice. Learning how to say 15 words in 5 is only possible when you fully understand who you're talking to, and what they care about. Interpersonal communication is the conductor that brings all the marketing instruments into harmony.

holly perleoni - professor of marketing @ lee university

The biggest soft skill a marketer can possess is the ability to connect. Artificial intelligence has been such a hot topic in the industry and even has people concerned about their jobs. But an automated bot can’t create relationships like people can- and that comes down to not just communicating effectively but also being able to think critically. Understand what the data tells you and what it means for your specific company or client- a bot can’t do that. If you can take the outputs from automated systems and create a valuable product or service for your client while also communicating those benefits to your client, you are ahead of the game.

katie lantukh - founder of murphy marketing

1. OUTLINE FIRST
   When you have a story idea for an article, you first create an outline and a general flow based on your research and what you already know or can find out about the issue you're covering. You find the gaps in that outline and then seek out sources, typically in the form of people you can talk to. I approach marketing writing today much the same way. Before writing a piece of content, I want to know things like who the audience is, where they are in the customer journey, what the brand wants the reader to do after they read this piece of content. This direction serves as the "outline" of marketing content writing.

2. GATHER BALANCED INFO
   When writing a news article, you get at least one source from each side of the issue. Someone in support and someone opposed. (At least that's how we were taught in my degree program.) It needed to be balanced because the Journalist's job was to present the issue and let the reader make their own informed opinion. Marketing content is obviously different because our job IS to persuade with the writing instead of presenting an ideally neutral piece of content. But the process is the same that I want to understand the "other side" of the issue by understanding the competitors and alternatives that my client is up against. I want to know how the alternative options in the market are presenting themselves so that I can present my client's brand as the better option for their right-fit customers.

3. ASK OPEN QUESTIONS
   Then you do the interview for the news article. During this question/answer session, the Journalist is asking open-ended questions. You craft your questions ahead of time so that you know you're filling in the gaps of your outline, using your time effectively and asking your source balanced questions -- not leading them or baiting them. For my marketing content, I interview my clients and often times their clients. I ask open-ended questions and often circle back and rephrase what they've said so that I'm positive I understood what they were aiming to communicate. As I'm positive all readers can see, the end result of a journalistic news article and a sales landing page are very different. There are conventions and artistic flourishes that are present in one and absent in the other. But what I find really fun and interesting is how similar the behind-the-scenes process is. You start with the end in mind, you seek to understand the context of "both sides" and you ask open-ended questions, not yes/no answers."

Also, it seems like being empathetic is something that a lot of people talk about, but only sometimes see in practice -- at least in this very digital space of online marketing. What I think most people don't realize is that empathy is something they can learn and nurture within themselves. I find that when I'm in a heated moment -- a sales call is going poorly or a client has sent a terse email -- I've learned to take a pause. Instead of reacting immediately or saying I lost internet connection like I want to, I will stop and think of them as a person. First and last name, not their brand name. Not their title. Because that's how we think of ourselves, right? You're not your job title to the people who live in your house with you. You're so much more than your email address to the other parents at carpool. You're a person with God-given value and so is the person on the other side of you. And when we see our clients and colleagues this way, we also will begin to see our "audience" this way. They're more than the ideal customer persona we made up for them. They deserve to have their problems solved, not to be sold to. So in summary, empathy is seeing each person as a person whose value extends far beyond who they are at work. And then importantly, empathy is taking a step of compassion in light of their value. You pause before responding, you ask how their son is feeling, you ask about their vacation. Empathy is treating that person like a person.