Artificial Intelligence is a game changer for marketing. While AI will be useful in many industries, the nature of the marketing profession makes it even more powerful, from the need for constant content generation, to ideation for advertising concepts, to automation for day-to-day operations, AI is the biggest innovation in marketing since the internet.

Since the beginning of 2023, the amount of AI tools for marketing has exploded.

While there’s no official count of new AI applications since the beginning of the year, if you monitor websites like TheresanAIforThat.com, you’ll find dozens to hundreds of new applications being added every day, with the current list including 4,600+ apps covering over 1,300 tasks.

Further, the investment in new AI companies has rapidly expanded. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), investments in AI software, hardware, and software for AI-centric systems will increase 26.9% to $154 billion in 2023 over 2022, with $300 billion expected by 2026 (SOURCE).

In 2021, the investment in AI doubled globally from less than $40 billion to almost $80 billion (SOURCE), and look what has come from that!

Needless to say, there are many, many choices when it comes to AI applications, and it can be difficult to nail down which ones to use, much less which ones you should focus on.

After discussing the topic for dozens of marketing professionals and AI experts, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: marketers should master ChatGPT BEFORE anything else.

Here I’ll explain why.

Why Marketers Need to Focus on AI Skill Development

Marketers are notorious for falling prey to “shiny object syndrome.” It’s no surprise why… the easiest person to get sold is a salesman after all!

There are always new methods, platforms, techniques, tricks, tips, and tools to make your marketing faster, better, and more effective. Every company needs marketing to succeed, and the impact of good marketing can make or break your organization.

AI is the shiniest object of all for marketers…

Here’s why AI is such a vital development in the marketing industry:

Ideation: Marketers and marketing agencies may have to create multiple concepts for content and advertising for each client every day. This need for volumes of creativity was time consuming and tiring, but with AI the process has become 10 times easier. No more lag time between needing to brainstorm and creating new concepts… AI makes it almost instant.

Volume Creation: In addition to massive amounts of new concepts and ideas, AI also provides the ability to create brand-specific content whenever necessary. By “training your AI” to create content based on a particular style, marketers can create new advertising copy, landing page headlines and text, email drip campaigns, social media descriptions, lead magnet materials, and much more 10 times faster than before.

Personalization: With AI, marketers unlock the power of personalized experiences on a large scale. By leveraging data analysis and machine learning, AI comprehends individual preferences, behaviors, and purchase patterns. Marketers can then tailor their messaging, recommendations, and offers to each customer, creating engaging interactions that drive conversions.

Data-driven Insights: AI’s ability to swiftly and accurately process vast amounts of data empowers marketers with valuable insights. They can delve into customer behavior, market trends, and campaign performance. AI-driven analytics tools offer actionable recommendations based on data, enabling marketers to make informed decisions and optimize strategies for superior outcomes.

Customer Support & Chatbots: AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants provide instant and personalized customer support. They excel at handling customer inquiries, offering product recommendations, and facilitating purchase decisions. Available 24/7, AI chatbots enhance response times and boost customer satisfaction by delivering prompt and relevant assistance.

Predictive Analytics: AI algorithms leverage historical data to predict future outcomes, empowering marketers to anticipate customer needs and behavior. Predictive analytics aids in optimizing marketing campaigns, identifying high-value customers, and forecasting sales trends. With these insights, marketers can allocate resources effectively and enhance overall campaign performance.

Automation & Efficiency: By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, AI liberates marketers to focus on strategic endeavors. AI-powered tools automate email marketing, social media scheduling, content generation, and data analysis. This streamlined automation boosts efficiency, productivity, and eliminates manual effort.

Competitive Advantage: Marketers gain a competitive edge by harnessing the potential of AI. AI-powered tools enable advanced market research, competitor analysis, and trend forecasting. By staying ahead of industry developments, marketers can make proactive decisions that differentiate their brand and seize opportunities for success.

With all that said, you will severely limit your ability to use AI if you bounce around from application to application. That’s why you need to get focused.

Why You Need to Limit the Amount of AI Applications You Use

While AI may be new to the marketing profession, the need to focus on a particular set of skills has been around since the dawn of the position.

Skills like copywriting, product positioning, data analysis, customer service, communication, networking, adaptability, and innovation are keystones to the professional marketer.

The ability to utilize AI is just the latest one.

I’ve found that the principle of minimalism allows for the quickest development of new skills. Unfortunately, trying to learn how to use a dozen new tools goes against this philosophy… you need to limit the number of new applications if you really want to master one.

Here’s why the principle of minimalism applies to AI skill development:

Intentionality: In the world of minimalism, intentionality reigns supreme. It urges individuals to deliberate and question whether they truly require an array of specialized tools or if a single tool can serve their needs just as well. By consciously evaluating the functionality and purpose of each tool, you can make mindful decisions that align with their specific requirements.

Simplification: Minimalism champions the art of simplification, both in life and possessions. By minimizing the number of tools and opting for multi-functional alternatives, you can declutter your tool collection, streamline their workflow, and eliminate unnecessary complexities. Embracing simplicity allows for a more efficient and unencumbered approach.

Functionality over Excess: Minimalism urges us to prioritize functionality above all else. Instead of amassing an abundance of tools for each specific task, the focus shifts towards identifying a versatile tool that can effectively serve multiple purposes. By valuing functionality over excessive accumulation, minimalism fosters efficiency and resourcefulness in our endeavors.

Mindful Consumption: At the heart of minimalism lies the principle of mindful consumption. Rather than succumbing to impulsive or societal pressures, minimalism encourages you to consciously evaluate your needs. By carefully considering the necessity of each tool and making choices aligned with those needs, we reduce excessive consumption and wastefulness. Mindful consumption promotes a more intentional and sustainable way of living.

With all that said, there’s many reasons why ChatGPT is the marketers-choice for AI skill development.

Why Marketers Should Focus on ChatGPT

Yes, there are newer and more specific AI tools out there, but ChatGPT is still the standard when it comes to marketing, and for good reason.

The following is just a few of the reasons why the use of ChatGPT should be a primary focus of marketers.

Conversational Superpower

ChatGPT possesses unparalleled conversational superpowers that elevate customer engagement to new heights. With its natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT can simulate human-like interactions, leading to more personalized and meaningful conversations with customers.

Marketers can harness this power to provide tailored recommendations, answer queries promptly, and build strong connections that foster brand loyalty.

Further, marketing is one of the few areas of business where a conversational style is more effective than technical communication styles, making ChatGPT ideal for this type of content generation.

Versatile Marketing Applications

ChatGPT’s versatility empowers marketers to excel across multiple marketing applications. Whether it’s content creation, customer support, lead generation, or even social media management, ChatGPT delivers exceptional performance.

Marketers can leverage ChatGPT to generate engaging blog posts, automate personalized email campaigns, and handle customer inquiries efficiently—all from a single AI tool.

Better yet, as marketers utilize ChatGPT they’ll start to define their prompting style, creating more and more content from less prompts.

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Standardized Brand Voice for Unlimited Companies

With ChatGPT as their exclusive AI tool, marketers gain a profound advantage in crafting hyper-targeted campaigns that utilize a consistent brand voice.

ChatGPT’s ability to understand individual preferences, behaviors, and purchase patterns allows for laser-focused messaging. Marketers can tailor their content and offers to resonate with each customer on a deeper level, resulting in improved engagement, higher conversions, and increased ROI.

Since marketers often focus on more than one company or client at a time, ChatGPT allows for continuous content development through individual chats that maintain the organization’s brand voice without the need for a technical account set up each time. It doesn’t care how many clients you take care of, meaning both cost and time savings.

Continuous Learning & Improvement

ChatGPT’s continuous learning capabilities enable marketers to stay ahead of the curve. Through ongoing training and exposure to real-world data, ChatGPT adapts and evolves to meet changing customer needs and industry dynamics.

Marketers can capitalize on this adaptive learning to refine their strategies, optimize campaign performance, and drive continuous improvement.

Dependable Development & Longevity

Few, if any, companies have spent more money or received more investment than OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in the company to date (SOURCE), and with a valuation of $29 billion, OpenAI won’t be disappearing any time soon.

Further, with over 100 million users and an expected revenue of $1 billion by 2024, the company is strong and growing (SOURCE). If any company will lead the way in consolidating smaller companies with similar solutions, it’s this one.

How to Develop Your ChatGPT Marketing Skills

ChatGPT is like a hammer. In the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, it can still be useful, but in the hands of a carpenter, it becomes something transformative.

That’s why the second cohort of DigitalMarketer’s AI-Powered Marketer Accelerator is focused exclusively on ChatGPT. If you want to learn how to employ the most powerful frameworks built by DigitalMarketer over the last dozen years, while also using AI to make the process faster than ever, you need to attend.

The post Why ChatGPT is the Best Tool for Marketers appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

The benefits of being a T-shaped marketer and utilizing expertise from different digital fields to stay on top of this rapidly changing marketing landscape is crucial.

We are witnessing unprecedented levels of digital disruption in marketing. AI is also assuming more marketing responsibilities and raising concerns that human marketing roles might become obsolete. 

This will most certainly not be the case. At least not anytime soon. But the ability to embrace new technologies quickly and implement marketing experiments independently can make the difference between success and be made redundant. This is where T-shaped marketers come in. 

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By nature, T-shaped marketers are self-starters and doers. They do not confine themselves within the limits of their specialization but seek to understand all facets of digital marketing while achieving expertise in one. 

Building a team of T-shaped marketers can be highly beneficial because it will ensure everyone understands the bigger picture while filling expertise gaps in different marketing specializations. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of being a T-shaped marketer – for yourself and your company. 

Benefits of being a T-shaped marketer

Generalists are capable of many things but do not excel in any. I-shaped marketers are specialists in one area of expertise. They carve their corner in a single space. On the other hand, T-shaped marketers are skilled in different marketing facets but experts in one.  

Thus, one would easily say that T-shaped marketers are an excellent fit for agile, fast-paced environments and startup cultures. Here’s why:

1. Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge

T-shaped marketers can identify opportunities for collaboration with other teams across multiple disciplines, such as content marketing for lead generation and social media for community building. This can lead to more effective teamwork, increased efficiency, and reduced marketing costs.

For example, a T-shaped marketer conversant with digital and traditional marketing can use a digital advertising campaign to complement a more extensive print advertising campaign. 

Furthermore, T-shaped marketers help companies manage diverse workloads, preventing them from hiring separate full-time marketers. They also understand how different marketing elements fit together and can allocate resources to guarantee the success of marketing campaigns.

2. Ability to Work in Any Industry

Most marketing initiatives or activities are industry agnostic. Being a T-shaped marketer makes handling various tasks in any company or industry easy. For context, you can seamlessly pivot and fit into a new market, technology, or industry without compromising quality service delivery.

Moreover, companies are looking for flexible marketing professionals who can bring new perspectives and deliver results no matter the industry. 

Similarly, the versatility gained from being a T-shaped marketer makes you well-suited to meet such demands. You can get your feet through different doors because of the diverse marketing skills you bring to the table.  

3. Better Chances of Getting Hired

Skills are the bedrock of your expertise, and companies hire based on skills, not roles. 64% of experts claim that skill testing is vital for hiring the right candidate, much more critical than traditional hiring methods. 

Likewise, having various skills that cut across different niches increases your chances of employability. So no matter how competitive the job market is, you can be confident of landing your dream job as a T-shaped marketer.

4. Helps You Develop High-Value Soft Skills

Being a T-shaped marketer gives you a holistic avenue to develop in-demand soft skills that could boost your career prospects. Handling diverse responsibilities and working across several departments requires you to wear several hats simultaneously. 

Consequently, you can build a robust stack of soft skills applicable to any industry. 

You can become a critical thinker, an effective communicator, a collaborator, a leader, and a great negotiator, to mention a few. Additionally, you learn to adapt quickly to technological changes, customer behavior, and market trends. 

Benefits of Having T-shaped Marketers on Your Team 

Having T-shaped marketers on your marketing team is akin to fixing round pegs into round holes. They fit perfectly. On that note, let’s look at some benefits of having such perfect fits on your team.  

1. Valuable Assets to Any Company 

The experience and unique blend of soft and technical skills T-shaped marketers possess make them invaluable talents to any company. They are also referred to as marketing demigods capable of taking a marketing framework from zero to a hundred, single-handedly or collectively.

Who would treat someone who is basically good at everything and can deliver effectively as a liability? Except, of course, they are ignorant of the competitive advantage T-shaped marketers offer or are terrible at managing human resources.  

2. Complete Perspective Over the Digital Strategy

From sales to customer relationship management to analytics, T-shaped marketers provide a comprehensive and integrated approach to digital marketing strategies. 

For example, a T-shaped marketer with experience in UX and CRO could bring a unique perspective on self-reported vs. traditional marketing attribution across different customer touchpoints. This could help you make more sense of the customer journey and invest in the channels that are truly bringing results. 

T-shaped marketers also bring a data-driven approach, evaluating the effectiveness of their campaigns on the go and making informed decisions by running many small-scale experiments.

3. Provide Creative Solutions to Problems

T-shaped marketers are great creative thinkers because they are exposed to and understand different marketing domains. It enables them to proffer feasible solutions to problems as they arise. 

Additionally, they can identify marketing loopholes that could potentially risk the company’s growth. 

4. Ability to Deliver Well-Rounded Results

Being knowledgeable in different areas of marketing makes T-shaped marketers all-rounders. They can think beyond the boundaries of their expertise and consider the bigger picture when developing marketing strategies. 

This means they consider broader business goals, external factors, and how to thrive in the competitive landscape.

5. Experienced Collaborators

T-shaped marketers can take on small responsibilities and assist colleagues across different departments while keeping sight of the company’s goals. 

They are flexible and can adjust their approach and strategies based on input and feedback from others. In addition, they are open to new ideas and are willing to work with others to find the best solution.

6. Organizational Integration

Everything is omnichannel or multi-channel today. Thankfully, T-shaped marketers can integrate multiple organizational functions—such as branding, product development, and customer relationship—leading to better marketing results. 

They provide organizational integration by creating a synergy between different departments to achieve common marketing goals. And they do so by establishing clear communication channels and creating cohesive marketing strategies. 

7. Work Better in Teams

Working in silos is fast becoming outdated in today’s business world. Fortunately, having T-shaped marketers in your workforce can help you foster teamwork and achieve the company’s goals more quickly.

Furthermore, T-shaped marketers can mentor and share their knowledge with other team members, helping to build a stronger, knowledgeable marketing team.

The Benefits of T-Shaped Marketing Extend Beyond Just Being a “Jack of All Trades

The first step towards leveraging T-shaped marketing is having a basic understanding of what a T-shaped marketer is. Besides being a jack of all trades, T-shaped marketers are great fits for the fast-growing business ecosystem. This is because their expertise goes beyond the marketing spectrum.

So, if you want to expand your craft and become a highly sought-after marketing personnel, consider becoming a T-shaped marketer. Likewise, an organization looking to stand out from competitors must focus on creating a versatile marketing team that also includes T-shaped marketers. 

The post Why T-Shaped Marketers Hold the Key to Success in the New Marketing Age appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

AI is an opportunity, not a threat. The marketers who embrace change will see their capabilities expand faster than they ever thought possible. Marketers who hide or ignore the trends will be left behind.

There are two ways to look at this situation. Let’s start with the negative way…

The Lost Marketers on the Beach

All the marketers sat on a beautiful beach that went on far as the eye could see. They chatted, laughed, built sand castles, and played in the waves. Then the ocean started to recede; a little bit at first, but as the minutes ticked by, it got farther and farther away from the shore until it couldn’t be seen.

The marketers looked at each other perplexed… some thought it was funny and ran out onto the wet sand where the waves used to crash. Others remained were they were, and simply discussed the troubling disappearance of the ocean. Still others ran inland towards high ground, screaming for the rest to follow.

By the time the tsunami could be seen, it was too late for anyone to change their mind. The wave rose, and rose, and rose, and it got closer, and closer, and closer. It swept up the people who had run towards the ocean first, then the people who did nothing, and then pursued the ones who tried to prepare for its arrival.

Everything they had built on the beach was destroyed. Most of the marketers were lost, sucked into the ocean or smashed against the shore. The remainder stumbled across a desolate landscape, picking up the pieces of what they had built, and began reconstructing from scratch.

I’m sure you guessed that AI is the tsunami, and the three groups of marketers are the ones that are happy about AI but aren’t taking it seriously, the ones on the beach aren’t doing anything, and the ones heading for the hills understand that AI is a game changer and are starting to prepare.

The good news is, this isn’t the only way to look at this situation!

The Adventurous Marketers on the Frontier

The crew was ready. Cargo stowed, flight checklist reviewed, engines in the green… the countdown had begun. The count reached zero and like a match being struck, the ship leapt into the air climbing higher and higher, faster and faster until the mountains and waves devolved into a mat of green and blue, and the clouds billowed below.

They were headed towards space, where countless new stations had been constructed near resource-rich astroids… or maybe to the manufacturing plants on the moon… or to the growing colony on Mars… or to explore the moons of Jupiter. The crew was excited with the endless possibilities this new frontier had opened up.

There would be danger and fear, but that would be easily squashed by adventure and opportunity, driven by courage, energy, and a ravenous appetite for advancement.

The frontier had been opened to everyone, and once that happened, the crew realized that the environment they had been operating in had become stale, monotonous, tedious, and boring. The frontier had saved them.

Which story do you identify with? Which one sounds like more fun?

Survival is stressful. Adventure is stressful. The difference is that you can choose adventure, while survival is just something we all have to do.

Your Marketing Career is Safe If You Want It to Be

I speak to a lot of well-established, successful marketers who have been in marketing for over 20 years. That puts them in a unique set of people who saw the transition from traditional offline marketing to digital marketing… the biggest change in the industry since the television.

They’re NOT worried. All they can see is possibility. Possibility for more effective marketing, for more efficient teams and workflows, for expanding markets in new industries, and for tech that makes they themselves 10 times more productive.

If you choose to view AI as an opportunity, you will have the right mindset for what’s coming next.

What’s coming next? A shift in the way we do things! It’s something we’ve faced before and will face again. That said, you still need several traditional marketing skills to succeed in the new age.

Here are 5 ways to safeguard your marketing career.

#1: Double Down on Marketing Strategy

With AI tools increasing the productivity of marketing managers, and allowing all marketers to produce content faster than ever while also managing paid media channels more effectively, the marketer that can produce the best overall strategy will win.

Note that I said “overall strategy” and not “paid media strategy,” “social media strategy,” “content strategy,” “product strategy,” etc. With marketers’ growing capabilities comes the opportunity (and necessity) of creating a cohesive strategic plan that can be created and executed by a single marketer.

At DigitalMarketer, we have the Customer Value Journey to guide overall strategy creation. It’s an 8-stage process that will turn strangers into buyers into active promoters, and you can incorporate all elements of marketing (AI, email marketing, social media marketing, copywriting, etc.) into it.

TAKE ACTION!

If you don’t have a well defined overall marketing strategy, you don’t need to create one from scratch. The Customer Value Journey has been used to make over $100 million for DigitalMarketer and billions for our students. Download this ebook and start solidifying your strategy today.

#2: Start Using AI

No, you can’t avoid using AI tools.

If you think that you can eventually hire an “AI Specialist” just like you do with a “TikTok Specialist” because you want to avoid the platform, you are 100% wrong here. You need to build a basic understanding of how AI works so you can evolve your strategy to match.

Your ability to both use and understand AI will directly impact your ability to manage marketing campaigns. Without a basic understanding, you won’t just SEEM out of date, you will be truly lost, and that will be very noticeable by your subordinates, colleagues, superiors, and clients.

TAKE ACTION!

Not using AI yet? Not to worry! Simply set up a ChatGPT account RIGHT NOW. Next, whenever you’re planning on doing a Google search for something, instead put the same search into ChatGPT. Review the answer and ask follow up questions to refine the result. This is the FIRST STEP to understanding AI and what it’s capable of.

#3: Ensure That You Understand All Marketing Methods

Do you still need to understand each marketing method if AI could potentially execute it for you? Of course you do. How could you manage anything you don’t really understand? You can’t!

Could you manage a group of doctors if you have no medical experience? How about mechanics if you’ve never fixed a car? All managers in skilled workforces have typically done the job in some way, shape, or form in the past. Marketers are no different.

At DigitalMarketer we call it the T-Shaped Marketer. A T-Shaped Marketer is somebody who has expertise in about 1-3 main marketing facets.

Being a T-shaped marketer means that you can help clients with their marketing strategy from A-Z. While you’ll have your bread and butter (like SEO, social media, paid ads, or community building), you’ll be able to create winning strategies amongst other marketing facets by collaborating with your marketing team.

While AI might ultimately replace some of the marketing specialities, your understanding of what role the method played will be pivotal to your advancement as AI becomes increasingly widespread.

TAKE ACTION!

Do a self-assessment, and find out where your marketing skills are really lacking. Here are the marketing skills that we promote at DigitalMarketer. Copy the list, then give yourself a 1 to 10 score regarding your knowledge and understanding of each one. If you give yourself a 5 or less on any of them, start researching, or take a course to learn more.

• Digital Advertising
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Search Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Copywriting
• Ecommerce Marketing
• Analytics & Data
• Community Management
• Optimization & Testing

#4: Add Style & Creativity to Your Skillsets

AI isn’t magic… it’s just a new kind of program. You’ve used computers and programs for years, and you understand the limitations they have when it comes to new ideas, stylized content, and general creativity. It can only know what we know, so the best way to stay useful is to KNOW MORE.

How can you start to “know more?” You do more! You experience more. You open your mind to every possibility and identify and squash habits that prevent you from learning. This sounds simple, but it is far from it.

Hate to bring it up… but you know your aversion to using TikTok because “it’s for young people,” or “you don’t have time,” or “you’re too mature for the content?” STOP IT. That is a perfect case study of your tendency to limit growth because it’s uncomfortable and you fear change. ‘

Now that you’re open to learning, let’s talk about creativity. Who better to show you how to beat AI in creativity, than AI? Here’s what ChatGPT had to say on the subject:

So! According to AI, you can beat AI by leveraging your creativity to develop unique ideas, perspectives, and content by combining human intuition, experience, and creative thinking.

Let’s take it a step further by talking about style. If you can’t define your brand’s style in every aspect of the content they generate, then it doesn’t have a style.

Every piece of content you generate needs to have a unique and identifiable style that matches your brand. Every article, video, graphic, document, post, press release, event, physical location, website, etc. needs to look like “you.”

This is extremely important as more and more people generate more and more content using AI. If we all use the same tool to create content about the same subject, there will be no reason to go to one vendor over another. Your content needs to reflect you.

If you don’t consider yourself stylish or creative, stop it. You’re both of those things, you just need some practice.

TAKE ACTION!

Two tasks for you to do here… get creative and define your style. To get creative, set aside 15-30 minutes a day for creative exploration. This could be through artistic mediums like painting or drawing, but it could also be trying physical activities like yoga or weightlifting. The important part is that you try something NEW each week, every day.

For your personal style, open a document and define 3 unique aspects of the following (start with this personal list to really drive home the need for defining style in every aspect of your life):

• Your Writing Style
• Your Wardrobe
• Your Home
• Your Diet
• Your Hobbies

Don’t overthink it! Simply start to think about what makes you different from other people.

#5: Improve Your People Skills

AI isn’t people! We all know this. Just try to chat with a bot and you’ll quickly notice who’s a person and who isn’t.

There are dozens of facets of communication that we unconsciously execute every time we have a conversation. From body language to tone to mood to outside factors like the weather, time of day, and current events, a lot goes into how we converse with each other.

That isn’t likely to change soon, which means that your personal relationships with coworkers, managers, employees, customers, clients, and vendors will still require people skills.

“People skills” are more than just conversing as well. If you want to be a truly capable human, your skills will need to include emotional intelligence, empathy, adaptability, listening, openness, acceptance, authenticity, curiosity, clarity, patience, compassion, and an abundance of energy to make it all work.

That personal touch will be more important than ever as the more mundane tasks that used to suck up our energy and emotional reserves will be increasingly delegated to unfeeling machines (AI).

I think one directive sums up your new mindset well: BE INTERESTING.

Be interesting in your conversations. Be interesting in the way you approach projects. Be interesting when you talk to people you see every day. Be interesting to new people you meet.

TAKE ACTION!

For the next week take notes on any conversation that lasts more than 5 minutes. Note how interesting (or boring) the engagement was, and then consider how you could have made it more interesting. After a week, take one of your notes and apply it to your conversations for a day. See how the conversations go and adjust accordingly.

Conclusion: You’re Going to Be Fine

You don’t have be afraid of the coming changes, but you do need to be open and aware of them. Start using AI right now, and really start to think about what makes you special as a person.

If you want a huge leg-up, consider the AI-Powered Marketer course. We’re assembling a team of highly intelligent marketers who are embracing AI right now to enhance their results.

The post 5 Ways to Safeguard Your Marketing Career Against/With AI appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Digital marketing specialists are in high demand, making 2023 the year to kickstart your digital marketing career. According to LinkedIn, five out of ten jobs posted on the platform are in the digital space.

But, whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer or at the beginning of your career, you’ll need to showcase the following five critical digital marketing skills on your resume to secure a job in 2023.

1. Digital Analysis

Digital analysis involves tracking and measuring the performance of a digital marketing campaign by leveraging data. It’s the only way you can tell which marketing strategies are working and which ones you need to course-correct.

There are numerous different digital analytics tools out there to help you perform such analyses and optimize your digital marketing strategy. In 2023, you should have a working knowledge of top analytical tools such as:

• Google Analytics
• Hotjar
• Adobe Analytics
• Clicky
• Hootsuite

Digital analysis is key to making informed, strategic marketing decisions, so list these tools in your skills section when you make your resume to ensure that hiring managers immediately see that you fulfill the basic requirements of the role.

2. Graphic Design

Graphic design skills like creating infographics, animations, and visuals empower you to present content in different engaging formats.

Graphic design gives you an additional creative channel to incorporate more visual content in your marketing campaigns. It’s why over 50% of digital marketers say that visual content is very important to their marketing strategies.

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And with more companies looking to integrate visuals into their online marketing campaigns, having basic graphic design skills increases your competitiveness on the job market.

Graphic design skills also come in handy when designing social media presentations to pitch to new clients or to present to an audience at a conference.

Use platforms like Canva, Domestika, or Udemy to brush up on your design skills.

3. Strategic Planning

Given the dynamic and fast-paced nature of online marketing, you must first lay out a strategy before initiating a campaign. Any successful digital marketing campaign is grounded by a well-thought-out digital marketing strategy, and strategic planning involves:

• Setting and defining SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals
• Audience research
• Reviewing past and current campaigns
• Integrating data into your approach

If you’re an experienced digital marketer, use your resume’s experience section to provide employers with examples of fruitful digital marketing campaigns you’ve completed in the past. Make sure to emphasize how strategic planning contributed to their success.

Or, if you’re new to the field, give examples of times when you applied your strategic planning skills in previous positions to achieve positive results. Look at digital marketing cover letter templates online to get a better idea of how to frame your experience in a way that appeals to hiring managers. And, to further strengthen your resume, quantify your achievements by using hard numbers and percentages.

4. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM software helps companies manage all customer interactions across the entire customer lifecycle on one platform. As a digital marketer, CRM software is useful when you look for ways to improve your marketing campaigns because these tools make it easy to identify, categorize, and engage new leads from your website.

Additionally, CRM software enables you to optimize customer data in your possession to personalize your marketing campaigns. Overall, CRM software boosts your digital marketing ROI significantly by enhancing your lead-generation efforts and supporting personalized marketing.

Some of the CRM solutions you should be familiar with in 2023 include:

• HubSpot CRM
• Monday sales CRM
• Pipedrive
• EngageBay
• ActiveCampaign CRM

5. Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising is capitalizing on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to promote brands and their products. This particular type of marketing is growing in popularity each day as social media plays an increasingly central role in our daily lives and transforms the way customers interact with businesses.

Because of this, companies are looking to boost their social media presence and attract social traffic, and that’s where social media marketers come in. Employers need marketers who can design and execute effective social media lead-generation strategies.

Show that you’re able to meet companies’ needs by demonstrating that you’re on top of the latest social media trends and understand how to target different audiences across multiple different platforms.

The post 5 Essential Skills to Include on Your Digital Marketing Resume appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Are you looking to build a career in digital marketing?

You are on the right track!

According to Grab Jobs, digital marketing specialists are among the top in-demand jobs in the US.

Which skills do you need to become a successful digital marketing specialist?

Digital marketing is a broad feld that includes lots of customer-attraction tactics and platforms, so the list of required skills may be diverse.

Here are top marketing skills that will be in high demand on 2023:

Search Engine Optimization

Organic visibility is the most sought-after marketing channel out there. In fact, if you search Linkedin Jobs for “Digital Marketing”, the results page is dominated by SEO job openings:

And it is understandable: Every brand, big and small, is seeking traffc from organic search for two main reasons:

• It is highly relevant and intent-driven: People typing queries in Google’s search box are there to fnd answers and solutions
• It is not interruptive. Unlike just about any other channel, SEO does not interrupt browsing journeys: Search users are there to fnd you, they are not browsing feeds or checking emails.

On top of that, organic traffc is likely to keep coming even if a company stops active campaigns. It may slow down unless a company maintains it, but it doesn’t require active daily budgets, only a strong team to support what is there.

For all those reasons, having SEO knowledge and experience is likely to be a strong boost to your resume. You can start building that skill now by actively researching, taking SEO courses and volunteering to help charitable organizations achieve their SEO goals.

Content Planning

Content is fundamental to most digital marketing campaigns. You need a good copy for just about anything, including organic or PPC landing pages, social media updates, email marketing, etc.

Good writing is a skill that can be developed. It helps if you have a well-written blog or contribute to well-known publications.

If you are looking to build a career in digital marketing, start by applying for paid blogging gigs. You may also make some income while setting up your writing resume.

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Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a fast-growing field that can make any marketing strategy more productive and effective. Marketing automation can boost just about any tactic:

• In SEO you can achieve better results by setting up automated alerts and reports

• In social media marketing automation helps create better-timed updates and responses
• In email marketing it makes personalization possible: You can set up smart user fow to reach your customers at the most suitable moment. Cart abandonment email automation is a great example here.
• In sales, automation can streamline follow-ups and lead nurturing.

Having experience in using marketing automation software is often required for high profle digital marketing positions. You can get some basic automation skills by using email marketing services which all come with some level of automation features.

No-Code Development

Most brands are looking for digital marketers who are able to use their content management platform independently. The most common CMS is WordPress but there are a few alternatives to be aware of as well. When it comes to WordPress, it is always a plus when you are familiar with most popular plugins, like Yoast and Akismet.

The good news is, you don’t need much technical knowledge to use any of those content management platforms which are designed for no-coding experience. In most cases, it takes a week or so to fgure out a new CMS.

Besides, all of those platforms have extensive knowledge bases and all of them provide free trials or free plans that come with free domains. So it helps if you start exploring the top CMSs to be able to claim basic knowledge of all of them in your resume.

Graphic design is another essential skill that will turn out to be quite useful for an effective digital marketer because visual marketing is on the rise these days. Again, no need to learn

to use any professional graphic design software though. There are quite a few online tools that will help you create images and videos to use across multiple visual marketing channels. Canva is the best known one.

Community Building

Most brands realize the value of having a community of loyal customers and brand ambassadors that can drive sales and trust signals.

Community building can come in a few distinct forms:

• Infuencer outreach and relationship building

• Customer relationship management (CRM)

• Journalistic and blogger outreach

Community building is not a skill you can claim unless you have real experience but you can volunteer for online community building opportunities and gain real experience while making an impact.

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Communication and Collaboration

Digital marketing is often well integrated into an organization. It is well connected with sales and customer support teams, product development department, IT, etc. You need to be able to clearly communicate your goals to those teams, explain why certain things and changes to a site are important and collect feedback.

On top of that, digital marketing is not easy to report, so you need to have good communication skills to “sell” it to the management.

It is a good idea to note in your resume what kind of cross-team and collaborative working experience you have, even if it’s limited to working with freelancers.

Project Management

Any digital marketing strategy consists of lots of pieces. Some of those tasks are quick, others can take weeks to complete, and most of them are on-going.

Getting things done is a key skill required for an effective digital marketing process. A good project manager has the ability to articulate even the most complicated messages via email,

phone, or in-person meeting. They know what communication method is the most effective and what will work best for their audience, based on the situation. Successful project managers know when to keep silent and listen.

They are able to understand not only the clients’ needs but also how to meet those needs by taking into account the suggestions of their team. There are quite a few tools and apps helping teams manage projects and get things done. Getting to know some of them is a good frst step to mastering this skill.

Remote Working

If there was one distinct and long-term way COVID impacted business lives is that remote working has become much more widespread and popular.

Prior to worldwide lickdowns, many companies were shying away from letting employees work from homes. The pandemic has changed that: These days lots of organizations have realized that they don’t have to invest huge budgets into relocating employees and covering offce costs. Remote employees can be just as productive.

An ability to work effectively from home is essential to virtual career paths, like digital marketing.

Data Literacy

You don’t need to be a professional data analyst to be a good digital marketer. In fact, a data analyst is a separate profession that is in high demand now.

However, you do need to be able to effectively use web analytics platforms in order to measure results and adjust your strategy accordingly. The most common web analytics platform you’ll come across these days is Google Analytics, so start using it for your own site if you haven’t done that yet.

It is also helpful to familiarize yourself with cross-platform digital marketing tools that can consolidate several data sources (Google Analytics, Search Console, Facebook Insights, etc.) These will help you create professional reports, monitor your channels and analyze your marketing data.

Conclusion

While developing your various digital marketing skills is important, don’t wait till you excel in all of them. At the end of the day, your unique personality is your biggest asset. Start working on your personal brand, keep an eye on relevant job opportunities and never stop learning!

The post Marketing Skills You Must Have in 2023 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Whether you realize it or not, you’re familiar with Web 2.0 already.

You navigated to our website, clicked on this article, and you’re now reading it. Consider yourself a Web 2.0 aficionado. 

Web 2.0 is the web you’ve grown to know over the past 15-ish years. It’s the web that marketers have learned to use to help customers in need, social media exists…and the reason data privacy is a regular conversation in Congress these days.

Web 3.0 is the next version of the web. 

It seems overwhelming because it involves a lot of new worlds that you’re not familiar with, like cryptocurrency and blockchains. But, you don’t need to understand every detail of crypto or blockchains to know what Web 3.0 is.

You don’t understand exactly how the current web (Web 2.0) works, do you? Nope. Yet you’re navigating it with ease, marketing, buying products, and connecting with your network daily.

Let’s go over what you need to know about Web 3.0 to understand where you fit into it with your digital marketing expertise. 

What is Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 is an updated version of the current web. Just like you create a beta product, turn it into an official product, and optimize and improve that product as time goes on—the web follows the same process.

We’ve used 3 versions of the web, Web 1.0, Web 2.0 (your current web experience), and Web 3.0. 

Web 1.0 (1991-2004)

Web 1.0 was a simple time. There was no such thing as a login button, commenting, or sharing. Every page was static, which means it was the digital version of a newspaper. You could read it all you wanted, but there wasn’t anything else to do on that page.

For almost a decade, you didn’t have anything to distract you from the content you were reading. This will go down in history as the “quietest” time on the internet. People using the Internet weren’t looked at as consumers of ad campaigns the way they are now.

They were simply consumers of the information on the websites they visited. And those websites were complicated, hard to navigate, and slightly overwhelming to our Web 2.0 adjusted eyes. Here’s what CNN’s website looked like in 2000:

Then Google ads launched (that same year). This would mark the Internet’s shift from people using the Internet as an informational product to becoming the product themselves.

Web 2.0 (2004-Present)

Web 2.0 is almost old enough to drink in the U.S., where the legal age is 21. It’s been with us for some time now and has become the web experience we’re used to. We’ve forgotten about the Web 1.0 days, including the plethora of blue hyperlinks and lack of ads and data collection.

In Web 1.0, people used the web to get information from its pages. Today, the web uses its pages to get information from people.

• What product are you shopping for, and how likely are you to buy in the next few days?
• Did you forget something in your cart?
• Here’s a discount code to help you finally click the buy button.

This data collection has become the backbone of digital marketing. We use Google and social media ad platforms to target our ideal customers—down to the detail. Before data regulations and privacy concerns started catching momentum, marketers had a seemingly endless stream of information about their customers thanks to these ad platforms. 

This is the defining factor of Web 2.0: Companies collect user data and sell it to advertisers. 

And it’s led to a lack of privacy for users. Even as laws are enacted to attempt to salvage consumer data, navigating which cookies you want enabled, GDPR, and how to stop the spam emails bombarding your inbox isn’t entirely clear.

We don’t even know what web experience other people are having. Every newsfeed is personalized to that user’s interests, showing differing content even if we follow the exact same people. 

As Web 2.0 has matured, so have web users. More people realize they don’t want to be the product, especially if they’re not getting paid for their contribution to mega-companies profits.

And that’s led to the rise of Web 3.0, a web where we’re the owners of our content.

Web 3.0 (Present)

Web 3.0 is considered the next evolution of the Internet. It’s built on blockchain technology because the major sticking point of Web 3.0 is that it’s decentralized.

Blockchain technology is a well-kept record of public transactions. This differs from the transactions you’re used to (that aren’t on the blockchain). These transactions are maintained across several computers in a network and are accessible by anybody interested. People like blockchain technology because it’s less susceptible to hacking and public transactions create transparency that hasn’t been available before.

They also love it because it’s decentralized. Instead of having one company or person in charge (centralized), blockchains create a decentralized web experience. For example, Mark Zuckerberg has control over what Facebook does (and, of course, has lots of help and insight from his team). As users of Facebook, we didn’t get to vote on the company’s recent name change to Meta because we don’t own the company. 

We’re users of Facebook and we ride the wave wherever the platform chooses to go…and take our content.

In Web 3.0, the idea is to give the web back to the user. There are two main ways this is done:

1. Instead of having a centralized leader, Web 3.0 is run by decentralized autonomous organizations, DAOs, where the people with the most tokens in that organization get to vote on how the company changes. Without a controlling authority, it can’t be shut down, and content essentially can’t be censored (which is also an argument against Web 3.0).
2. Our digital identities don’t become tied to our real identities, which is how Web 2.0 is set up. When you look at a product on a Shopify ecommerce store, that product pops up in your Facebook newsfeed and YouTube ads. In Web 3.0, you can view pages, products, and make purchases without it becoming a part of your feeds and online experience.

Just like Web 2.0 started once Google Ads got momentum, Web 3.0 got its momentum as blockchains and cryptocurrency become popular with more people. And as marketers, we have a golden rule: advertise where the attention is.

How to Market in Web 3.0

We have some relieving news: marketing in Web 3.0 is the same as marketing in Web 2.0. The marketing foundations can’t change because the platform changed. You use the same copy strategies in newspapers as you use on Facebook ads. The only difference is the platform (and some updated imagery).

Take a look at this 1978 gin ad with the cheeky copy, “You’ll enjoy this Christmas tree even more after you take it down.”

Image from Marketing Brew

It’s not much different than Bombay Sapphire’s Instagram post with the caption, “Guaranteed not to be re-gifted.” The only two differences are the updated, clearer photograph and the platform (in-person versus Instagram).

See how the same rules of marketing applied BEFORE Web 1.0 and in Web 2.0? Marketing in Web 3.0 will follow the same marketing foundations, with one additional step. 

Step #1: Who’s Your Customer Avatar

The first step in marketing any product on every version of the web is knowing who your customer avatar is. Without this step, you can’t write copy, create the right messaging that sells your product, or know WHO to market it to.

The Customer Avatar Worksheet shows you who your customer is, on a deeper level than where they live and how old they are. Using the Customer Avatar Worksheet, you’ll figure out:

• What your customer avatar’s goals are related to (and not related to) your products: Do they want to spend more time with their family, and your productivity platform helps them get back 1 hour per day?)
• The values your customer avatar has for their career and life: Do they value the environment and reducing their fossil fuel emissions and your e-bike helps them stay aligned with that value?
• The challenges they have creating friction and pain: Is finding a dropshipping company to sell their merch through costing them hundreds of dollars in samples and your product connects them with vetted merchandise dropshipping factories?

You’ll also figure out what books and blogs they’re reading, who they look up to in their industry, and where they spend their offline time networking with like-minded people. This makes your content (and brand) relate to them in a way that a company that hasn’t done this work can’t possibly.

Step #2: What After State Does Your Product Create For Them?

The After State your product creates for your customer avatar is their end goal. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel they’ve been yearning for, and your product gets them. We break this up into the Before State (what are they experiencing now?) and the After State (what do they want to experience from relieving their pain points and challenges?).

The Before and After Grid asks 5 questions per “state”:

• What does your customer avatar HAVE in the “Before” state? What does your customer avatar HAVE in the “After” state?
• How does your customer avatar FEEL in the “Before” state? How does your customer avatar FEEL in the “After” state?
• What is an AVERAGE DAY like for your customer avatar in the “Before” state? What is an AVERAGE DAY like for your customer avatar in the “After” state?
• What is your customer avatar’s STATUS in the “Before” state? What is your customer avatar’s STATUS in the “After” state?
• What is an EVIL plaguing your customer avatar in the “Before” state? How does your customer avatar conquer it and bring more GOOD to the world in the “After” state?

Between your Customer Avatar Worksheet and your Before and After Grid—you have the exact messaging you need to market your products and services to your customer avatars. Your copy is practically written for you already, and now it’s all about overcoming their hesitations and making sure they’re 100% clear about the product/service.

Step #3: What Do They Need to Know About the Product in Web 3.0?

If you’re not marketing on Web 3, you’re still answering a similar question. If you’re selling a coaching program, your prospects need to know what to expect inside the program. The same applies to Web 3.0. Your customers need to know what to expect from the product, and in terms of Web 3.0—what benefits they get from choosing this web experience. 

This is why filling out the Customer Avatar Worksheet and Before and After Grid is so important. If your customer avatar is tired of Facebook selling their data and stalking their every move across the Internet, you have your selling point as to why this customer wants to buy your product/service and experience it on Web 3.0 versus Web 2.0

Before State: Has anger towards their newsfeed showing them products they searched on another platform and feels like their every move is tracked by massive corporations. 

After State: Has the freedom to navigate the web without centralized corporations collecting and selling their information and feels free in their Internet experience.

Or, if your customer avatar wants to move off of platforms that have centralized authority (like Google, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, etc.) and towards platforms that are decentralized and give their users ownership over their content—that’s the messaging in your marketing.

Before State: Has a negative bias towards centralized authority on platforms deleting content for violating terms and conditions without being clear about why and feels like their platform isn’t a reliable place to grow an audience anymore.

After State: Has removed the worry of a platform accidentally deleting their content or profile despite not posting content that violates terms and feels safe growing their audience on a platform they can take with them throughout Web 3.0.

Welcome to Web 3.0

Web 3.0 isn’t as overwhelming as it may have seemed. If you’re ever feeling like it’s going above your head—remember that you don’t need to understand every detail of cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and decentralization to use these platforms. You need to know the idea, not every detail of the complex systems that manifest them into reality.

You’ve used the same mindset in Web 2.0. You don’t need to know how the Internet cables connected around the world are transmitting the world wide web from New York City to Tokyo. You just need to know the basics to understand what the web is and how to use it.

As Web 3.0 becomes a bigger part of the Internet experience, marketers need one reminder: marketing on Web 3.0 follows the same rules of marketing in newspapers to billboards to websites:

• Know your customer avatar.
• Figure out the After State to write compelling messaging.
• Remove their hesitations by explaining exactly what the product is (ex. what Web 3.0 benefits they’re getting from it).

Isn’t it nice to have a skill set that transfers through the different variations of the web?

The post What Marketers Need to Know About Web 3.0 appeared first on DigitalMarketer.