Creating a great product or service is a great first step in starting a viable business. Once you create this product or service, however, you need to get it noticed, Not doing so means your business will not see the growth that you would like it to. The best entrepreneurs in the world understand the power of marketing and use marketing in different ways, depending on their aims and objectives. Knowing the type of strategy to use for your product or services will also determine your business’ success and this is one of the reasons why understanding marketing is so important to entrepreneurs. In this article, we will look at the essential marketing skills entrepreneurs need if they want their businesses to be successful.
Content Creation and SEO
Your marketing strategy will not work if you do not have content. It is content that attracts people to your brand, explains what your business does, gets people to join your mailing list, and much more. Content creation goes beyond creating a blog or website as you will need the same skills to create social media content, YouTube videos, infographics, and other marketing content.
Content creation and SEO are very different, but they often go hand in hand. One of the best ways to direct traffic to your online assets, be it a landing page, website page, social media profile, or blog, is through the right content. You need to learn how to create SEO content for each of these assets, understanding how this content would differ depending on who you are targeting and where you will post it.
Content creation and SEO are also intertwined because you cannot drive traffic to your content without optimizing it for SEO, and there would be nothing to optimize if you do not have the content. You want your business or brand to be found online, where you will find most of your customers, and so you need to learn both so you can include them as part of your entrepreneurial skills.
Email Marketing
Most entrepreneurs think email marketing should only be left to a team of marketers. This is not always true because an entrepreneur might need to do some outreach on their own. A common turn-off for people an entrepreneur might want to reach is poorly crafted emails. Because people often receive hundreds of emails a day, they will pass yours over very quickly if it is not compelling enough. This is where email marketing skills come in handy.
The first thing to learn is how to create email subjects that lead to high open rates. An entrepreneur should ensure the content inside the email is crafted to appeal to the reason the recipient has received the email. For this, an entrepreneur needs to know how to craft different types of emails.
Some of these types include cold emails, sales engagements, onboarding emails, churn emails, and re-engaging emails.
Marketing Analytics
If you want your business to be successful, you have to market your products and services to the right people. For this, you need marketing skills that include knowing how to gauge the performance of your marketing activities. The best way to do this is through marketing analytics.
Marketing analytics entails the study of marketing data to gauge the performance of an organisation’s marketing activities. It involves the use of technology and the right tools and analytical processes to sift through and organize marketing data so a business can understand what influences their customers and potential customers’ actions and behaviours, refine its marketing strategies and campaigns, and ensure a good return on investment.
Having the right marketing analytics skills allows an entrepreneur to find answers to questions such as:
- How the business marketing campaigns are performing and have performed in a given period
- What the entrepreneur can do to tailor their marketing strategies so they can perform better in the future
- How their marketing strategies and campaigns compare to those of their competitors, both in terms of execution and performance
- What marketing channels competitors are using, and where they are focusing their marketing budgets
- What they can do to improve marketing performance and return on investment
- Whether there are marketing investments that the business should focus on more to produce the results they are looking for
Marketing analytics is much more than using the right tools. An entrepreneur should also have the skills to know what to measure, how to measure what analytics tools to use, how to fill any existing analytics gaps, scaling up data collection and analytics capabilities, as well as acting on their findings.
Completing an advanced degree confers entrepreneurs with these skills, allowing them to be better marketers and entrepreneurs. The digital marketing analytics program at Aston University has world-class marketing analytics modules that are tailor-made for entrepreneurs. Other modules in the program include digital marketing, international marketing, and advanced data analytics tools techniques and strategies.
Graphic Design
Granted, it is easy to find someone to create the digital assets you need for your new business. The problem that arises is that those who can create the assets you require will often charge a lot of money. If you do not have the budget, you will have to go with cheaper options that could make your brand look worse.
Instead of contending with this, you could learn graphic design. This is an underrated and underappreciated skill. It does not mean that you have to take a few semesters of design tools, but you should at least understand the fundamentals so you can use the available tools to create amazing graphics.
Also, these skills can come in handy should you outsource graphic design work, as you will know if the assets you get back would work or not and why.
As an entrepreneur, there is a lot you already need to know. Marketing is a crucial skill that is ignored by many. Learn the marketing skills above, as they will make you a better entrepreneur. These skills will also come in handy when you are just starting and do not have the budget to hire or outsource.
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