Digital marketing skills should be a part of every small business owner’s education.
The reality is that getting your business noticed will be your job for the first little bit.
And, to do that well, you’ll need to know what it takes to spread awareness online.
Mastering certain digital marketing skills is a necessity for businesses to get off the ground and survive long enough to succeed.
They’re powerful skills that can change your business’ early growth rate.
Knowing them will also help you assess how your future strategies are doing when someone else takes over.
Skills like these are powerful for your business, even when you no longer use them.
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These Digital Marketing Skills Won’t Make You An Expert
Let’s be real for a second.
There are a lot more digital marketing skills than you’re capable of learning in the next 30 days.
It takes years to master the whole craft.
However, you don’t need to become an expert digital marketer.
You just need to learn what it takes to get things off the ground.
Mastering fundamental digital marketing skills will help you get your business seen by the right market and begin earning clients.
But it won’t take you to the next level.
While you may not become a digital marketing expert, you’ll also never get duped by learning great digital marketing skills. Share on XThe trick about digital marketing skills is that they always need to be expanded and updated.
Which is an option you have if you want to continue growing your brand.
Or you could pass it off to a professional digital marketing team, allowing you to get back to business.
In choosing that route, foundational digital marketing skills allow you to make sure things are on the right track.
That means you’ll understand what’s going on with your digital marketing and you’ll make the best decisions possible.
Though you won’t be an expert, you’ll never be fooled into believing someone is an expert when they aren’t.
And that means you’re not wasting time, using digital marketing strategies that get you somewhere instead.
Master These Digital Marketing Skills Quickly
Some digital marketing skills will come easily because you’ve used them elsewhere.
Others are unique to digital marketing and will take some time to learn.
However, they’re not unfamiliar.
There’s a good chance you’ve been learning many of them throughout your online life, even if you were only seeing them work.
Digital marketing skills like these aren’t advanced and don’t require a degree to understand.
Yes, they will take some effort to study and learn.
No, they will not make your business earn millions quickly.
But the effort you put forth will all make sense when you start to see the results.
I know learning new skills sounds like a lot of time and doesn’t sound appealing.
Digital marketing skills are straightforward to learn and can be learned quickly. If you put in the work, you can master the basics. Share on XThese aren’t difficult to learn, though.
And they take surprisingly less time than you’d expect.
You have the potential to master them in 30 days or less, which puts you in a great position to accelerate your growth.
The faster you learn these digital marketing skills, the faster you can jump ahead of your competition and take over your industry.
Trust me, they’re that powerful.
They’re only that good, however, if you amply apply them and keep at it.
Results don’t come quickly, but they’re strong when you get them.
Here are the digital marketing skills every small business owner should have.
Understanding The Data
Digital marketing skills all begin with data.
Data that identifies every move your target audience makes on your website, every interaction with your social media, and every interest they make public is all valuable.
Plentiful if you’re focused on collecting it, this data can tell you a ton about your target market.
Using it correctly allows you to produce content in all forms that interest them and draw them to your brand.
But there’s a problem with that idea: you have to understand the data you’re getting.
Hence, the most important digital marketing skill you can have is the ability to analyze data.
Data you collect is your best shot at understanding what your customers want so you can better offer them value. Share on XCustomer data comes to you in big ways if you have systems in place.
You can collect it in excess, allowing you to put together fantastic profiles of your ideal audience.
Through software within your website, a good CRM, and all the data your other content channels provide, you can learn a lot about your target audience.
Learn to understand which metrics matter, which don’t, and what they tell you.
Identify what engagement signals should be used through social media and what they mean.
All the data you can collect tells you how to respond and do better for your audience.
However, it’s the ability to apply the knowledge that will change your results.
Writing The Content
As the person responsible for your digital marketing, you’ll be the one responsible for your content marketing.
Social media, blogs, and other forms of written content are all massive elements of getting found online.
It’s text, after all, that Google uses to index information about your website, your business, and your presence.
Therefore, you’ll need to write content well as one of your digital marketing skills.
You’ll need a little creativity mixed with some ideas and knowledge to share.
Content is central to any marketing campaign.
Without it, there’s nothing to tell your audience.
Because so much of marketing, even online, revolves around text, it’s the writing skill that matters.
Content matters to your digital marketing more than you’d believe, and writing it is a skill you need to learn. Share on XNo, this doesn’t mean you need to be an English Major with excellent grammar skills to succeed.
There is plenty of software out there to help with that.
Plus, some of the best content isn’t based on advanced writing; instead, it sounds more conversational.
So, considering all that, it should be easy for you to learn to write content for your brand.
Every day you participate in social media and some other form of writing.
And you’re used to telling your audience how awesome your brand is.
With a few improvements, you’ll be writing great marketing content in no time.
Optimizing For Search
Google is any website owner’s best friend.
At least, it is if they want to earn website traffic.
Which, I assume, you want to do for your business’ website.
The sooner you start optimizing your website for search, the better your long-term results will be.
So, you need the digital marketing skills that allow you to optimize for search.
Understanding how to research keywords and create content revolving around them is central to getting found on Google.
That means you need to understand the SEO basics that will start the process right.
Every small business owner should learn SEO basics to help them assure their site gets found early. Share on XIt’s clear that you want to find page one of the SERPs, but you’ll never get there if you don’t work at it.
Starting that process early is the best incentive to learn how to optimize your site and your content for Google.
Thankfully, you don’t need a ton of extra skills to make search optimization happen.
Many websites offer tools to help you make the changes you need, including Google itself.
And, if you’re using a content management system, like WordPress, there are a ton of software options available that you can easily add to your site.
Those software options will not only tell you what you need to do but also help you make the changes yourself.
When your site is ready to be found by Google, your odds of traffic go way up.
Listening To Your Audience
Your audience is the single best source of information about how to market to your audience.
Sounds redundant, right?
It’s not, though, because your audience is constantly giving you feedback on your digital marketing efforts.
The way they react to what you do tells you what changes you need to make.
Even when there seems to be no reaction, they’re telling you something.
That’s why your ability to listen to them is one of the most important digital marketing skills you can have.
Bad content loses your audience’s attention. Plain and simple. Share on XBecause your audience will tell you exactly how to adjust to them, your ability to listen to them is imperative.
Pay attention to the audience’s feedback on your content and think about what you can do to make it more of what you want it to be.
Adjust based on the requests they have and do your best to answer their questions.
When you notice similar comments or questions in repetition, address them in new content.
Above all, make sure you’re learning how to make your content better and more enjoyable for them to consume.
Without their attention, your content serves no purpose, and poorly created content loses their attention.
But if you learn to hear what they’re telling you, adjusting your content to get the most attention available becomes easy to do.
Communicating With Email
Email marketing is one of the oldest digital marketing skills around.
And, despite many believing it’s no longer worth the time, it still offers some of the best returns around.
So, you need to ask yourself, “How well do I handle email marketing?”
There’s no doubt that email needs to be a part of your digital marketing efforts.
It’s far too important to your ability to nurture your leads and communicate with your clients.
People prefer to hear from your business through email, and at a relatively common frequency.
Provided you’re producing quality email content, your efforts through email can create a great opportunity.
Email marketing is a huge chance for your brand to earn way more from your marketing efforts. Share on XBecause this is one of the digital marketing skills you may be less in-tune with, learning it might be concerning for you.
However, it’s fairly simple to learn the email best practices that will help you boost your results and create better quality.
With a little effort and time, you’ll become a master of email marketing quickly.
If you stay consistent at protecting your open rates, you’ll start to see those great email results before you know it.
When you do, you’ll see the benefit of email digital marketing skills.
Handling Social Media
You’re on social media a lot if you’re normal.
Most people spend around two-and-a-half hours on social media a day.
Which is probably a lot more than you thought.
But that means social media is one of the digital marketing skills that won’t take much work.
Overall, your exposure to good social media content is high, and your competence at the different platforms is likely decent.
Probably, you’ve already got enough skills to handle growing your brand’s social pages to a point where people start noticing them.
Your social media needs to focus on communication and connection if you want it to be successful. Share on XThe real key to handling social media, though, is understanding how to communicate in each of the platform’s unique styles.
Not only do you have to create content in the right format, but it also has to match what the average user expects from the platform.
And that’s something you probably already understand, even if you don’t realize it at the moment.
With that in mind, it’s time for you to go claim your brand’s social media platforms and develop its online presence.
Focus on using social to communicate with your audience and create connections.
Avoid the temptation to force sales, placing your effort towards delivering value to your followers.
Give much more than you ask if you want your social media to grow.
Placing Paid Advertisements
You need to understand the value of paid ads.
Especially following the idea that you’ll be handling your social media.
Facebook and Instagram ads are insanely underpriced, and other paid ads are still very affordable with great returns.
Building digital marketing skills to properly handle paid ads can turn things around for your brand very quickly.
Paid ads can make big shifts in a small amount of time, and they don't have to cost a fortune. Share on XAs one of the fastest ways to earn a spot in front of your audience paid ads can draw traffic to your company.
Most systems have a way to keep control of your budget and what you spend per opportunity, making it easy to stay affordable.
And optimizing your ads to catch attention and draw people in is relatively simple to do.
With a little bit of budgeting, you can use paid ads to earn tons of new social media followers and website leads.
That’s going to give your growth rate a huge boost very quickly.
Digital Marketing Skills Are Key To Early Growth
The bottom line is this: to grow early, you often have to do the work yourself.
Learning these digital marketing skills will help you do so with great results.
Take the time to learn them and watch your business take off online.
