Great marketing is not hard to define: great marketing matters. It is helpful and relevant. It is engaging. Great marketing is about recognizing customer need and increasing brand value, not company interests.
That maxim has never been more true in our digital era. Although most agree that a customer-centric mindset is the foundation for all modern marketing success, truly customer centric marketing remains elusive. Only one in five organizations (22%) even have a customer experience management strategy (Source: Econsultancy’s Customer Experience Management report).
I wrote about the need for a “modern” way of working here in part one of this series about applying the Econsultancy Modern Marketing Model (M3) to your business.
The M3 “wheel” shows 10 key areas of competency for every modern marketer. Does every person need to be an expert in all ten? No. Most marketers will be an expert in only one or two of the elements. However, all marketers must have a working knowledge of every element, as well as specializing in one particular channel or process or skillset. Sometimes, the area of specialty is “strategy” or “brand” or “product.” As we say:
Not all specialists are modern marketers, but all modern marketers have a specialty.
What skills do modern marketers need?
Econsultancy’s M3 model has 10 elements – from marketing strategy to customer insights to integrated marketing communications (N.B. You can dive deep into all 10 through our new Fast Track to Modern Marketing online training course.) Most marketers have strong skills in their specialty areas – social or analytics or UX. But the five skills below are what I consider to be modern marketing essentials – the skills every marketer needs to perform in a truly customer-centric manner: .
1. Customer journey mapping
All marketers must fully understand their customers to create a compelling experience. Customer journey mapping, voice of the customer analysis or customer decision analytics can all be paths to the same essential set of information: – Read more
