Six Must-Have Skills for a Marketing Manager

There are various approaches and theories that suggest different sets of skills, expertise essential for a marketing manager. But today I am going to share my own six skills that marketing managers in particular and overall management in general must possess to effectively and efficiently carry out the marketing activities. 

The reason I have included the overall general management (other department Managers) because I believe marketing can’t be restricted to just a marketing department rather this is the business of everyone in organization and this view has been endorsed by a research too (1).

These skills should not be considered alone rather all of them are related and complementary to one another (through one way or another). Therefore it is advised that a marketing manager should work on all these skills to get himself recognized and admired by his company/organization, peers etc.

Now let’s get to it.

Six essential skills for marketing Managers

(1)   Marketing efforts measurement and assessment

You are hired not to just do all you think would help the company, business but to give them means and reasons how you are going to do it (efforts), what you (company) are going to get back, at what cost, total value created/achieved (measurement and assessment) etc. This would help you in gaining trust and support (financial and non financial) from your company/organization and would also help your team to understand how things are supposed to get done.

(2)   Out of the box thinking

Marketing has changed a lot in last three decades(2) and the change is still going on, therefore sticking with old approaches, doing things the old ways won’t work for you (company/organization) in the present times of continuous change and complexity.

A marketing manager must always dare to look outside the box and to do that you need to have the skill to collect the relevant information on daily basis as it is essential to marketing(3) and reinterpret and implement it in new ways, new approaches, new strategies to help your business, organization/company to achieve its goals and objectives.

(3)   Communication

So you have really cool ideas, thought provoking concepts, mind boggling approaches and very unique strategies. But hey you don’t know how to communicate it or communicate effectively within your organization to get the permission, acceptance, approval to work on them.

Or you are working on them and yet you find your team not doing what you think they should be doing, may be its time to check how you communicate with them. Effective communicating skill is as important as anything in marketing, not to mention that according to some marketing is all about communication(4).

Lastly we all know effective communication plays vital role in fostering relationships, breaking deals, get your company/business known (among your key potential business clients, stakeholders, investors, financial institutes so on and so forth). Now the more good you are at it, the better you will do as marketing Manager.

(4)   Online marketing

Publicis & Omnicom has merged together; these are two of the top three marketing giants globally. Now why would two rivals merge together, well marketing gurus have speculated different reasons, the prime two reasons for this merger according to most of them is to tackle the number one (WPP) and tackle the immense threat posed by untraditional rivals of the online world (Google, Facebook). The growing share of these two giants (Facebook, Google) in terms of marketing services and their effectiveness against the traditional approaches (Publicis & Omnicom) has compelled them to merge.

Now if such marketing giants can’t save themselves you better too equip yourself with skills that are essential to do the online marketing, online marketing strategies etc.

(5)   Relationship management

You have to manage relationships with your suppliers, distributors, facilitators, customers so on and so forth, without relationships you won’t be able to do what other organization do by doing effective relationship management, like by using customer relationships management models, taking customer feedback, taking social responsibility to develop relationships within target market society.

You should have skills that help you to develop relationships, where your suppliers, distributors, facilitators etc becomes your strategic partners and through those relationships you develop strategic networks/alliances with them to compete effectively against your competitors. This skill of relationship management becomes more effective by combining skills of IT (and online marketing) with relationship management techniques and methods(5).

(6)   Promotion management

The last skill that you require as marketing manager is how good you are at promoting your company, business, organization, how effectively you can use the promotion and advertisement tools to promote what you offer, why you offer and how you offer.

The importance of promotion (advertising) has been emphasized so much that according to Morgan (1996) marketing is nothing but advertising (6). Considering that research it is imperative for a marketing manager to focus greatly on developing this skill.

That's all you may also like to read Super Strategist & Super Strategies. 

References:

(1)     Webster, F.E. Jr, Malter, A.J. and Ganesan, S. (2005), “The decline and dispersion of marketing competence”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 46 No. 4, pp. 35-43.
(2)     Webster, F.E. Jr (2005), “A perspective on the evolution of marketing management”, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 121-6.
(3)     Wyner, 2008) (Wyner, G.A. (2008), “Marketing evolution”, Marketing Management, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 8-9.
(4)     Gro¨nroos, C. (2006), “On defining marketing: finding a new roadmap for marketing”, Marketing Theory, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 395-417.

(5)     Mosad Zineldin, (2000),"Beyond relationship marketing: technologicalship marketing", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 18 Iss: 1 pp. 9 – 23.

(6)     Morgan, R.E. (1996), “Conceptual foundations of marketing and marketing theory”, Management Decision, Vol. 34 No. 10, pp. 19-26.