Get to Know the Marketer Role

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe what a marketer does.
  
• Identify the skills of a successful marketer.
  
• Explain the key activities marketers perform.
  

What Is a Marketer?

Half artist and half scientist, marketers know the power of a great story—especially when there’s data to back it up. Marketers wear many hats and have many career paths, from demand generation to product marketing to data analysis. No matter the role—at the heart of marketing is the customer. Which is why marketers want to know everything they can about their customers to deliver the right message at the right time. While it’s simple to summarize what marketers strive to do, there’s a multitude of roles, skills, knowledge, data, and activities that are fundamental to success.

So what skills do you need to be a successful marketer? Let’s take a look.

Required Skills

Whether you’re looking to build your skillset or advance your career, we’ve compiled the most common marketer skills. You can get started with many of these skills here on Trailhead, so check out the linked badges along the way.

In addition to core skills like organization, project management, and creative thinking, here are some of the nontechnical skills a marketer should have.

• Storytelling
  
• Public speaking
  
• Content strategy
  
• Content operations and management
  
• Roadmap development
  
• Customer journey development
  

A marketer should also have a basic understanding of these Salesforce technical skills.

• Email marketing strategies
  
• Email creation and sending
  
• Email personalization
  
• Transactional messaging
  
• Audience segmentation
  
• App messaging
  
• SMS messaging
  
• Data management
  

A mix of these technical and nontechnical skills makes marketers successful—no matter their role.

Key Activities

What does a marketer actually do? While it varies from business to business and role to role, there are a few key activities that many marketers are responsible for.

Define Audiences: Marketers know that who they’re talking to is just as important as what they’re going to say. They carefully outline the audiences and personas they see as key for their business. And they use data to do it. 

Develop Strategies: Once marketers know their audience, they map their customer journeys. Marketers want to see how customers interact with their brand so they can identify strategies that will meet customers where they are. And they don’t do it alone—marketers forge relationships across all parts of the business to map the journey and align on goals and KPIs.

Deliver Campaigns: Campaigns and content are the heart of a marketer’s work. This is where marketers get to connect with their customers at critical points throughout the customer experience. A successful marketer anticipates their customer’s needs and delivers personalized interactions across every channel and touchpoint. 

Measure Performance: A marketer’s work isn’t done after campaigns have launched and events have ended. Then comes the important task of measuring the impact of their efforts and using insights to pivot and refine—often in real time. An expert marketer is no stranger to using artificial intelligence and automation to make data-backed decisions at scale. 

Marketing Careers

There are many marketing roles and functions that contribute to a successful marketing program. Learning about these day-to-day marketing functions is a great place to start your journey. Check out each of these common focus areas to sharpen your skills and see what interests you.

• Product Marketing: Launch products in the market using strategic messaging and positioning. Take the Product Marketing Trailmix.
  
• Content Marketing: Create and distribute content to attract your target audience. Take the Content Marketing Trailmix.
  
• Demand Generation: Build brand awareness and retain customers with offers that matter most to them. Take the Demand Generation Trailmix.
  
• Email Marketing: Build a strategy that delivers company news, product information and promotions to target audiences—all while growing the subscriber base. Take the Email Marketing Trailmix.
  
• Marketing Analytics: Use data to keep track of customer behavior—all while personalizing the customer experience. Take the Marketing Analytics Trailmix. 
  
• Data: Build a unified view of the customer to help create personalized marketing materials. Take the Data Trailmix.
  
• Marketing Leadership: Stay on top of industry trends and implement strategies to drive company growth and engage customers. Take the Leadership Trailmix.
  

Resources 

• Trailhead: Marketer Career Path
  
• Article: 5 Essential Steps to Build a Demand Generation Strategy
  
• Article: What is Content Marketing?