Effective communication skills are essential for marketing success. After all, the main purpose of marketing is to communicate with customers. Expressing the perfect message that makes people think and act in a certain way is considered a valuable skill.
There are several types of communication skills. While it’s rare that a single person masters all of them, it’s important to understand each area. This way you can find where your strengths are. A general understanding—and practice—of communication skills is a big advantage for smaller businesses in particular. With smaller teams, marketing members may need to specialize in more than one type.
These are the communication skills you should attempt to perfect:
Writing Compelling Content
Although there are never-ending developments in technology, clean and compelling writing skills are still critical for marketing and public relations success. Marketing writing should be error-free. It should connect with an audience using language that’s easy to read yet informational. It should also gain attention quickly. Plus hold that interest. Identify and appeal to target audiences so they take action on your products or services.
Understanding the varied types of copy is beneficial as well. There are newsletters, blogs, ads, and press releases, to name a few. Each type requires specific execution and knowledge. Some examples of this would be research skills, SEO skills, and adherence to formats like the pyramid style. They fulfill a specific objective and should each compel the audience.
Public Speaking
Marketing professionals are often in front of customers, clients, and other representatives of the community. Public speaking involves speech writing, speech delivery, and audience analysis, as it’s important to react to an audiences’ needs. Compelling speeches are essential. They grab attention and explain the main points clearly and succinctly. Delivery skills include varied pitch, refraining from fillers such as “like” or “um”, eye contact, and non-verbal communication such as posture, gestures, and facial expressions.
Visual Communication
Brand ID and imagery can powerfully convey a message and deliver information to an audience. Even if a marketer isn’t a skilled graphic designer, it’s important to understand the basics of visual marketing. They need to know how to ensure the imagery fits the marketing objectives and overall brand. Visual images should match with your mission statement and make the company’s goals apparent. Images should also reflect the company’s strengths and have an emotional impact on a target audience.
Leadership Skills
Today, many marketing goals require a team to achieve. These teams comprise of designers, writers, technicians, editors, and public relations professionals. To effectively complete a campaign, leadership skills are needed. It’s important to understand the basics of leadership theories. What are the pros and cons? Theories include situational, transactional, and transformational. Marketers should know which approach to choose based on their teams’ needs. Leadership communication can also be used to motivate, inspire, and hold team members accountable to their individual tasks so company-wide goals can be reached.
Successful marketers are also experts at understanding different personality types and job positions. They treat everyone equally and are able to negotiate or guide effectively so that goals are met while being open to differing ideas, approaches, and suggestions.
Smart marketing professionals specialize in one or two of these skills but continue to educate themselves and gain experience in areas where they need improvement. Identify your strengths, then practice the others to improve your marketing communication skills.
Written by Laura Myers