Today’s world is both more connected and more competitive than ever before. It is no longer enough to offer a great product or service. If you cannot back up your offerings with impeccable communication that advocates your brand’s success and expertise to your customers, another company will step in. It is critically important to hone your communication skills in order to set yourself apart from everyone else, especially if your industry is a global one with competitors all over the world. Even if you have a local business, however, your sales and brand loyalty will be better when customers understand exactly what you bring to the table. Marketing businesses can help you achieve your goals and perfect your message.
This article explores how marketing professionals can sell communication as a service and what that looks like for their customers.
What do marketing professionals do?
When you picture a marketing professional, you might imagine a team thinking up catchy jingles or taglines. While that can be one element of the career for some professionals, the field is actually an incredibly diverse one, with marketing experts accomplishing all kinds of goals for their customers.
Marketing professionals can help businesses communicate with the public, develop creative strategies for different forms of media, create promotions and sales to optimize the selling funnel, and build their online and offline sales expertise. If you’ve ever thought that an organization has a cohesive brand image—something that you remember and recognize even when you aren’t focused on the business—you’re familiar with the work of marketing professionals. Brands like Apple, for example, have an expert marketing team behind them, helping to build an iconic and highly unique brand image that their customers enjoy.
From the devices developed to the kind of customers attracted to a brand’s products and everything in between, marketing is a crucial part of building a successful business.
Why does communication matter in marketing?
We’ve discussed communication in broad terms, and you know that it’s important in marketing, but you might not know how or why it matters. One thing to remember about marketing is that the entire industry is built on communication. Without the ability to interact with fans and the more general market, businesses have an uphill fight to find any sort of sustainable success. Almost everything connected to the field is based on clear and effective communication, including things like website design and brand logos.
Communication, in general, is important to marketing businesses, but what skills should someone interested in a career change into marketing learn? We’ll go into more depth about specific skills and their importance here, but remember that mastering them doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Look for a well-established institution like St. Bonaventure University. With a proven history of educating marketers in creative strategy, design and communication, top institutions such as this help students to hone their communication abilities and hit the ground running once they begin their new career.
With that said, not all kinds of communication are overly important. There are some skills that are more highly prized than others, and we’ll take a closer look at them in the next section.
What communication skills do I need to succeed in marketing?
Communication, in general, is important to marketing businesses, but what skills should someone interested in a career change into marketing learn? We’ll go into more depth about specific skills and their importance here, but remember that mastering them doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Look for a well-established institution like St. Bonaventure University. With a proven history of educating marketers in creative strategy, design and communication, top institutions such as this help students to hone their communication abilities and hit the ground running once they begin their new career.
If you have yet to register for a class or are still pondering your next career move, here are some of the most important communication skills you’ll use most often in a marketing job:
- Oral communication
- Written communication
- Professional language
- Persuasion
- Public speaking
- Active listening
- Non-verbal cues
- Emotional intelligence
Let’s look at each of these in more detail!
Oral communication
Oral communication masters are able to present themselves especially well when speaking directly with another person. It is true whether the conversation is taking place in person, via video, or on the telephone. As you might expect, this is a crucial skill when working in the marketing industry for a few different reasons. First, good oral communicators are able to relay their expertise and ideas to potential clients effectively. Especially important when first interacting with new clients or clients’ customers, individuals who excel at speaking are also good at adapting their communication strategy mid-conversation based on feedback from conversational partners.
Oral communication is most effective when combined with the ability to interpret and use non-verbal cues as well as persuasion and professional language. All these skills are designed to optimize quick communication as much as possible and are often leveraged with marketing clients in mind.
Written communication
Written communication is almost always an important skill for marketers. If your oral communication is also high, written communication can make you a nearly unstoppable communicator, no matter how the conversation takes place. If you don’t speak quite as well as you’d like, on the other hand, written communication can help you connect a bit better with your clients. From emails to memos and catchphrases, written communication can take a good marketing professional and turn them into a perfect one.
When paired with oral communication and professional language, written communication is a crucial element of any marketer’s career.
Professional language and persuasion
We’ve briefly mentioned both of these elements before, but professional language and persuasion are important enough to merit their own section. When used properly, both of these skills can dramatically boost your career and overall success in the marketing field.
Persuasion is the art of swaying someone to your point of view. A persuasive individual is excellent at selling things because they can craft their strategies with specific clients in mind. This skill is especially powerful when combined with oral communication and the ability to translate non-verbal cues. A marketer with this trifecta is an asset to just about any team or organization.
Public speaking
If you’ve taken public speaking in high school or perhaps somewhere in your undergraduate university education, you’re probably familiar with how important the skill can be. People who are good at this form of communication are able to hold a room’s attention while calmly and confidently relaying information. It, in turn, makes what they’re saying more compelling and engaging, leading to more interest in their words.
In marketing, the ability to “sell” yourself is crucial to success. If you can’t convince other people that your skills are valuable, you might very well find it more difficult to land your dream job. And once you’ve landed your dream job, good public speaking skills can keep you on your boss’ radar in a great way. Marketers have meetings, presentations, and even conventions just like most other careers, so you’ll likely have the chance to show off your ability to speak well in public fairly often.
Active listening
So far, we’ve been focusing on direct communication with other people. Words matter, and how you say something is just as important as the meaning behind the words. Equally important is the ability to really listen to what someone else is saying and take that information into consideration when communicating. Without the ability to listen to what someone is telling you, even the best speakers might not be successful.
Active listening is especially useful when combined with emotional intelligence and the ability to understand non-verbal cues.
Non-verbal cues
Non-verbal cues refer to signs people give about their feelings without saying a single word. Think about the last time you were “over” a conversation. Most people sigh, cross their arms, or tilt their heads to the side when frustrated with the situation in question. When you pay attention to these cues, you can pick up on how your words are landing. You might consider studying body language to improve this skill.
Remember that you might not be the only person in the conversation who can interpret non-verbal cues. If you are frustrated, upset, or even simply happy but want to keep that emotion to yourself, you must pay attention to the way you’re communicating without your words.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the art of understanding the emotions other people have as well as your own. More importantly than understanding your own emotions, emotional intelligence allows you to manage your behavior even when your emotions run high. It, in turn, makes communication with others more effective, even during periods of stress or pressure.
When paired with the ability to interpret non-verbal cues, emotional intelligence is an excellent skill for marketers and can be the difference between success and failure.
Now that you understand why communication is so important as well as what skills can help marketing professionals excel at their jobs, we’ll look at how they can leverage these skills and sell them as a service to their customers.
Selling communication as a service
Given everything we’ve discussed so far about marketing, the idea of selling communication as a service might make more sense. Communication is just as important for other professionals as it is for professionals, but few jobs rely on it quite as much as marketers. It makes them the perfect people to share the wealth, so to speak, and take over communications for a business. In this section, we’ll look at some ways marketers sell communication skills to their clients.
Creative strategy
A creative strategy combines innovative approaches and strategic goals to form a company blueprint. This strategy determines where the business is headed and lays out objectives, goals, and milestones to meet along the way. Brand identity and brand growth are often critical parts of creative strategies, and marketers are typically heavily involved in their creation.
By effectively communicating their vision for the brand in question, as well as how they expect to reach it, marketing professionals are selling their communication ability to their clients. They are ensuring that not only do the clients understand exactly what they need to do to grow their business, but also the board members and everyone else involved in it.
Public relations
Interacting with the public is often one of the most difficult aspects of running a business. Public relations (PR) is designed to help make that experience a bit easier. A good PR professional can help build and maintain beneficial relationships between customers and businesses. They target the specific communities most likely to purchase the product in question and ensure that the company’s branding matches their values and goals.
Marketing professionals are excellent public relations professionals. Understanding who the target audience is, as well as how to reach them, is their specialty, making them ideal PR experts. Businesses typically hire PR teams to maintain a positive public image as well as to develop and host events and sponsorships, as well as various other activities related to PR.
Digital media
Businesses are increasingly based in the digital world. It can be a tricky change for traditionally in-person-only businesses because the way you market in person is not necessarily the way you effectively market online. On the contrary, marketing professionals must rely on different platforms, strengths, and approaches to excel at digital marketing. One of the most important elements of a successful digital plan is digital media.
Digital media refers to media created and used in the digital sphere. Businesses are increasingly producing unique content to be posted on various social media platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube, among others. Marketers play an important role in the creation of this media by understanding not only the kind of media their target audience will enjoy but also the right platforms to publish it. If your audience exclusively watches YouTube, for example, streaming on Twitch is probably the best choice.
Visual design
You might think a product’s quality and functionality are its most important traits, but that’s not quite the case. Humans are programmed to take a number of factors into account when judging something. One of the most prominent of these is appearance. Items that are more visually appealing are often the products customers will choose, even if the less appealing item is cheaper. Marketers understand this element of consumer behavior and are able to make visual design suggestions for both products and virtual design (such as a website or app). Ideally, their feedback translates to happier customers and better sales.
In this area, communication is important for a few different reasons. First, marketers are often better able to interact with designers and accurately convey their vision than business owners. They are also adept at explaining the importance of visual interest among the target customer group to business owners so that they can make future designs with a wealth of information in mind.
Conclusion
Marketing is an incredibly rich field with many different professions to explore. Whether your goal is to travel the country as a public speaker or to find a business you love to work at for the long term, chances are good that the field will offer you the opportunity to pursue your interests. If you’re interested in learning more about marketing and how communication can help you excel, the good news is that the topic is a popular one. Keep the information above in mind as a basic overview, and do some research into the specific communication skill that interests you. You’ll be growing businesses in no time!
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