Top Ways To Sharpen Your Marketing Executive Skills

Are you thinking big and aiming high to grab one of the rare executive seats? Then you'd better hone your marketing executive skills!

How and why?

Depending on many important factors,  including education, certifications, additional skills, and the number of years you have spent in your profession, it is safe to say that a marketing executive is among the well-compensated jobs.

In fact, in just a decade, the salary of a marketing executive increased by almost 50%.!

Check this out: 

Breaking Down the Market 

Of course, salary is a great motivation. So let's look at how the salary of marketing executives changed in a decade.

Preparing for the Position

Know precisely what training you'll need to thrive on the job. If you enjoy cross-functional topics that sit at the intersection between statistics, psychology, history, finance, business, advertising, and economics, then marketing might be the perfect job for you. 

Some companies may opt for an MBA, but many organizations don't require these. However, a good and extensive educational background and some certifications provide an edge to land a marketing executive position.

Essential Marketing Executive Skills

There are numerous industries where businesses must promote their products or services to target audiences. 

These can be in the public or private sectors, and in recent years the demand for marketing executives has soared. 

Do you want to be among the movers and shakers of the marketing world? 

Do you think you have what it takes? 

The highest degree of personal values, ethics, and integrity may not always win the marketing battle but most always win the marketing war.

Soft Skills

• Collaborative. A marketing executive must be an exceptional team leader and team player. It is essential that a marketing executive can act as a mediator between different parts of the team and the management, and the clients to resolve issues and foster productive relationships.
• Adaptable and creative. A successful marketing executive must value innovation and always look for innovative solutions. Must be someone who knows when and how to take calculated risks.
• Customer-oriented. Any marketer executive worth his salt knows that customer experience comes above anything else. Thus, the customer's overall experience is vital. An intelligent marketing executive knows that his primary job is not to rack up sales but to fulfill the clients' needs and wants actively.
• Great communicator. Words are powerful. A considerate and precise combination of words can break through barriers and rally people behind a cause. An effective marketing executive knows how to get his message across effectively and quickly.
• Analytical and inquisitive. Data often drives marketing. But, due to advancements in computing and information gathering, marketing executives who can sort through all of it and find the most relevant parts will immediately establish themselves as indispensable parts of their organizations. 
• Continual positive outlook and enthusiastic vision. This is an essential separator between great, sound, and poor marketers. There are always missteps. What is important is you take the positive learnings and move on, always forward bound.
• Reliability, consistency, and dependability. These three traits separate the average marketer from the rockstar marketing professional. And always bear in mind to have a sense of being human. It builds brand loyalty. Being human and using humor makes your efforts and campaigns likable, and people like brands that make them warm and fuzzy.
• Unyielding trust in your company and yourself. Real winners KNOW there are no short routes and that they will "win" in the end by doing the little things right. Hope, after all, is free. Keep on hoping and striving for the best outcome.
• Passion for excelling and for being the best at what you do. Believe in yourself. Your best and worst enemy is yourself. Be passionate about the things that can yield positive results. 
• Push the envelope. The marketer who appreciates the past is dedicated to the present AND pushes the envelope with a vision for the future. This is the type of marketer who will achieve success.

Hard Skills

• Data Analysis. Data-driven marketing is an essential component of business growth.

Data-driven marketing is vital to success in a highly competitive global economy.

 64% of marketing executives strongly agree

A marketing executive must be able then to analyze campaigns using specific metrics and data points. 

• Writing and Content Creation. 'Content is King' will forever hold in the marketing industry. 

-47% of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a salesperson

-84% of people expect brands to produce content 

-91% of B2B marketers say they use content marketing in their overall strategy.

• SEO. Modern customers prefer to conduct most business online—researching for products and potential sellers or simply browsing for a piece of content. That is why SEO has become ingrained in nearly every digital marketing initiative. 
• Social Media. Social media transformed the way marketers reach out and communicate with their target audience as consumers prefer to interact with brands online. Effective marketers use social media to accomplish goals, from brand building to lead generation and increase ROI. 

A marketing executive must know how to utilize to his advantage the use of social media.

• Technological Proficiency. Technology continues to change the way marketers work on a day-to-day basis. 55% of B2B companies utilize marketing automation as their preferred strategy. Marketing automation is just one of the many tools that marketers use. 

Other examples include web analytics, social media management tools, email marketing platforms, and many more to be effective. A marketing professional must have a certain degree of technological savvy.

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Marketing Executive Roles and Responsibilities

Marketing executives seek to maximize profits by developing sales strategies tailored to their customer's needs and promoting products, services, or ideas.

Principal Responsibilities

Marketing executives charge many aspects of a campaign throughout a product, service, or idea. As a result, executives are likely to be given a lot of responsibility early on and expected to manage their own time and duties. 

These responsibilities may include the following:

• Supervising and creating marketing campaigns
• Conducting research and data analysis to identify and define target audiences
• Developing and presenting concepts and strategies
• Promotional actions
• Assembling and disseminating financial and statistical data
• Writing and editing creative copy
• Maintaining websites and investigating data analytics
• Putting on events and displaying products
• Database updates and the use of a customer relationship management (CRM) system
• Coordinating internal marketing and the culture of a company
• Performance evaluation
• Managing social media campaigns

How Marketing Strategies Drives Sales

Customers have become more discerning, and at the same time that they easily can ignore campaigns. The stats below gives you an overview of what strategy offers the highest ROI.

Be Ready for Challenges

Excellence in marketing executive skills is more crucial than ever as organizations turn to the discipline of marketing to solve their organizational woes. 

Why? - Knowing these strategies, stories, fields, and aspects is handy to know more suitable and effective campaigns for a product or service. Identifying the target audience and knowing the best way to approach that audience is the overall goal of the marketing department. That's why to have excellent knowledge of these is a MUST.

Marketing Executive vs. Marketing Manager

Marketing executives and managers both help organizations promote their products and services. 

While marketing executives plan and develop promotional materials and advertising materials, marketing managers supervise other marketing executives, sales managers, and analysts who assist an organization in identifying potential markets. 

These positions work collaboratively to ensure that every marketing team member is on the same page.

Marketing Executives

Marketing executives are typically in charge of creating, supervising, and reviewing promotional materials and campaigns for a company. 

Because they spend so much of their time meeting with clients or pitching their work to potential clients, they must have excellent social skills. 

This occupation necessitates meeting quotas as well as scouting for new business. 

Marketing executives with experience and education can advance to supervisory positions.

Marketing Executive's job description:

• Producing press releases
• Making sales pitches to customers
• An examination of the sales and advertising markets
• Creating objectives for sales and promotional effectiveness

Marketing Managers

Marketing managers oversee other sales and marketing departments and determine the demand for a product or service. 

They must be exceptionally analytical to forecast product demand based on data and marketing trends. 

They must be able to communicate effectively because they work with many other staff members and departments. 

This career requires leadership and organizational skills to positively motivate and lead others. 

Marketing managers must also be creative to develop new and unique ideas to help organizations promote themselves. 

Marketing manager's job description:

• Contract negotiations
• Discovering new and improved marketing strategies
• Creating marketing campaigns
• Setting product prices in a competitive market

Final Note

The status of a marketing executive has elevated as great marketing professionals are looked to for leadership. That is why don't be a part of the statistics that despair when faced with marketing's most significant challenges and roadblocks.

To be successful in marketing, you must be passionate about the companies and brands you support. 

As a brand advocate, you can ensure that all marketing messages are accurate and share your vision.

Marketing entails more than just developing marketing strategies and business processes. 

A senior marketing executive must gain the support of business leaders at all company levels. 

Among the many successful marketing executive skills, is knowing how to value developing business relationships.

FORGE AHEAD and be a rockstar marketing executive!