Which Marketing Skills Do You Need to Grow Your Business in 2016?

Staying ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing can seem like a daunting task, especially if you have a team to keep up to date as well.

We find ourselves in the digital age and along with most other processes in business, marketing is now mostly a digital concept, (think social media for one thing - it didn't exist 20 years ago) and so I've put together this handy guide to help grow your business with digital marketing.

1.) Networking

It might seem a little off-topic to start this article by mentioning a 'traditional' type of marketing however, 'word-of-mouth' marketing is still the most effective means of marketing that businesses have in their arsenal. 

What has changed, is that networking no longer means going to specific networking events, printing flyers and handing out your business card. Those things are still important and can help but in this new age of digital marketing you can now network online via social media. You can make professional relationships via tools such as LinkedIn and Twitter and satisfied customers can leave online reviews and feedback via platforms like TrustPilot, Facebook and Google+ to promote your business a wider audience.

To truly succeed in business these days you need a good internet presence which includes an active website and daily activity on various social media and review platforms.

2.) CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

CRM skills are, in effect, customer support skills (but on a larger scale) and encompass some of what I mentioned above. To truly have a good relationship with your customers everyone in your team needs to be trained on how to communicate with your customers whether this is via telephone and email or via newer methods such as online help desks, live chat tools and social media responses.

Having a business that has a very high standard of CRM skills is crucial to keeping your customers happy and coming back. Things like keeping an updated customer database so that you can source customer data in a click or two will really help to make your customers feel valued.

3.) Communicating a Message

Marketing is all about communication. You and your team need to understand what message you want to get across and how to do just that. This needs to be applied across all of your processes and forms of marketing, whether it's how you respond to customers, the design of your website and brand or the way that you network.

​Your business message needs to be clear and consistent to attract loyal, returning customers.

4.) Tech Savvy 

All of the tools and platforms mentioned in this article take training and understanding of certain technology to use and to work to your advantage. There's no point asking someone who knows nothing about hashtags or followers to manage your social media presence and it wouldn't be wise to ask someone who doesn't communicate very well to run your customer support desk.

Customers are now visiting online stores and mobile apps before even considering purchasing a service or product and it is crucial that these tools are all correctly set up and managed by people with the right training and experience to present your business in the best light.

5.) Analytical Skills

When you created your website did you create a Google Analytics account? If not, please follow this link for instructions on how to create one.

Once your account has been created and is running for a few days, you'll start to notice data coming through it. You'll see things like; new visits, recurring visits, referrals, bounce rate etc and it can be extremely confusing.

You'll also see status reports if you use helpdesk software such as Zendesk or Freshdesk and you'll receive insights from various social media platforms that you use such as Facebook and Twitter.

All of this data is extremely important to your business. It can answer question such as:

• What type of an audience am I attracting? 
• Where do most of my website visitors come from?
• What posts performed best on my Facebook page?
• How many new customers did we get from Twitter this month?
• How quickly are we responding to customer enquiries?
• How long is it taking us to resolve technical issues?
• Which employees aren't hitting their quotas?

This data can help to shape your business. If you know how to read it, it can give you insights into how to improve or change your processes, how to better target your marketing efforts and which employees aren't performing as well as others. 

Ensuring that you and your team (whether in-house or outsourced) are fully trained and knowledgeable with the above skills and that you are utilising these marketing skills on a daily basis, will help to grow your business.

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If you have any questions on anything in this article or want to know if our virtual assistant or social media services can help grow your business please feel free to get in touch.