Brian Halligan’s Take On What Makes a Good Marketing Professional

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Halligan, author of Inbound Marketing and CEO of Hubspot, has a well documented view on what makes a good marketing hire. It applies especially to marketers, but correlations can be drawn to virtually any 21st century job.

It’s important to remember that we are all in the marketing business. Even if you aren’t a marketing professional or business owner, you’re marketing yourself every day.

The DARC Ages

Halligan claims we are in the D.A.R.C. ages – meaning the age where good marketers are: Digital citizens, Analytical, have a big Reach, and are Content creators.

Digital citizens – Proficiency in the digital world is a must. I think the key here is not necessarily to be a master of all technology, but to be digitally literate enough to pick it up very quickly. Younger generations are really good at this – hand a 9 year old a piece of technology and she will be running circles around it in about 10 minutes. It’s amazing! Keeping up with this will be a necessary challenge to take on as digital technology continues to speed ahead.

Analytical- Halligan says, “The old saying that goes, ‘I know I’m wasting half my marketing budget, but I’m just not sure which half’ is no longer true in the inbound marketing era.” While not all marketing is done online these days, quite a bit of it is. Analytical skills will be useful when mining the vast amounts of data available – then effectively applying it to achieve real business results.

(Web) Reach – When hiring someone, it just makes sense to lean toward the candidate that has a bigger reach, who is participating in industry related conversations and has a following. Hiring someone with reach is instant PR. On the flip side – if you’re looking to get hired, this is where your personal branding efforts will bear fruit.

Content creators – Content is king! In this attention economy, great content that engages your intended audience is worth it’s weight in gold. Simple yet elegant Content Management Systems like WordPress make everyone a web developer, designer and writer. Having basic knowledge of html/css, photoshop and writing basics will go a long way. Being dependent on someone else for these items can waste time and be extremely frustrating. Develop basic skill in this area and take control of the web!

Online vs. Offline

While the D.A.R.C. skills above are valuable tools in your marketing toolbox, we can’t forget about the offline world. Perhaps the greatest skill of all moving into the future is the ability to effectively fuse your on and offline worlds. There is speculation (often by older folks) that people are losing the art of face to face communication. There is speculation (often by younger kids) that older people don’t know what they heck they’re doing on the computer.

Clearly there are exceptions, but both sides are right. Consider being in the middle of the two, work on a well rounded skill set, and have the best of both worlds.

So, what do you think? What skills are you working on?