The field of Digital Marketing is expanding to the new horizons and marketers today are required to demonstrate continuous learning. A marketer cannot level up in his or her career without major marketing skills such as driving traffic to business websites, lead generation, inbound marketing, content strategy, SEO, advertising, and analytics etc.

But the list of skills set doesn’t just end there; digital marketers are also expected to have hands-on experience in relevant fields, i.e. writing, UX, research, technology, subject matter (in the industry they are employed in), sales strategy and so on.

Technically, as a marketer, you need a broad mix of skills to be successful in the industry, and continuous learning is the only way to stay ahead of the competition.

With Covid19 pandemic forcing most of the marketers to work from home, there’s a huge opportunity for marketers to acquire new skills and polish the ones they already have.

Since, the field of digital marketing requires you to have a broad mix of interpersonal and communication skills, analytical ability, creativity and imagination, art of negotiation, teamwork, staying up to date with trends, research and a great deal of other skills, it can be overwhelming to decide what skills you should work on during the quarantine period.

This article will discuss the five core skills digital marketers should pick during the lockdown period.

1- Time Management

Effective time management is an indispensable skill for every marketer; no matter how great marketing materials you have developed or how great your plan is, if you don’t know how to get more done in the shortest possible time, you cannot achieve better results.

Like everyone else working from home, marketers also face numerous distractions. A short (3 hours) course on time management fundamentals here on LinkedIn cannot only help you increase productivity while working from home, but can also help significantly in getting more done in less time out of every marketing campaign.

2- Product Management

With Covid19 pandemic, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in almost all the industries, i.e. from small scale local businesses to global leaders almost everyone is investing more in digitalization. This paradigm shift is creating new roles like product managers and it requires core product management skills. 

If you are a hard core marketer, acquiring product management skills can place you on fast track career growth as a product manager, and the VP or director.

According to Digital Authority Partners, a product manager is the champion of a digital product, i.e. he is not a salesperson, an engineer, a developer, a designer, or a stakeholder, but someone who knows a little bit about all of these.

There are tens of free product management courses available on LinkedIn and Coursera that can help you enhance your digital marketing portfolio.

3- Content Marketing

Whether you are into marketing FMCGs, promoting luxury brands, or selling B2B products and services, at the heart of every digital marketing strategy there is content. According to Content Marketing Institute, content marketing generates 3 times more leads than traditional advertising methods — and costs 62% less.

What’s more exciting about content marketing is that it’s constantly evolving. For instance, a few years ago it was text content dominating the major content verticals, but with the rise of Social Media and low cost internet available to masses, rich media content is more in demand now.

Moreover, each content marketing vertical has its very own salient features which make it not just different but also challenging. Let’s say, the strategy for promoting video content through Youtube will be entirely different than promoting a video over Facebook. So, if you already have hands-on experience of working on Youtube, it’s time to learn Facebook marketing dynamics.

If you already have thorough knowledge of the platforms, you may want to explore the content development fundamentals or how to increase the performance of content marketing campaigns using different tools.

Content Marketing Institute is probably the best place to learn from and polish your content marketing skills, however, this free content marketing course offered by Hubspot Academy is also a great resource.

4- Data Analysis

Businesses today are driven by analysis. Companies track their customers’ preferences by collecting and keeping data on their website visits, likes, retweets, check-ins etc. Using these data analytics, businesses tweak their strategies, fix the issues and create more impactful campaigns.

If you are a budding marketer, understanding Google Analytics, Facebook & Twitter Insights is the first step to get started. However, if you are a marketer with some years of experience in SEO and Social Media management, taking an advanced data analytics course is the way to go.

Coursera has a great deal of data analysis courses to choose from (https://www.coursera.org/browse/data-science/data-analysis)

5- Creativity

Almost every other business wants to go viral and they are always looking for people who can help them go viral.

We are living in a hyper connected world where some trends become popular and some don’t, some products become hits while others flop.

Why do some ideas reach sky rocketing fame while others fail?

Well, if we closely study the viral campaigns, we find tons of behind the scene work and expressive use of creativity and imagination with precise planning and effective execution. Creating viral marketing materials and strategy requires a mix of creativity and planning. There are certain ways with which you can make ideas stick and you can always learn those ways.

Remember that Social Media today is one of the most powerful tools to go viral, but if you do not know the techniques to harness this power, it may backfire. That’s why you need to polish your creativity and align it with planning.

The Bottom Line:

For a marketer, learning should never stop; not even during the pandemic. Consider the work from home time as a growth opportunity. I am sure, working on the above 5 skills will help you make most out of your work from home time and by the end of the quarantine you’ll find a great marketer within yourself!