A level head and seatbelt are the first things that come to mind. And I’m only partly joking. Digital marketing in 2018 can seem nearly overwhelming at times.
You have literally dozens of tactics you could choose to employ, and exactly none of them come with a guaranteed outcome.
Then there are 1,000’s of marketing technology vendors. Which ones are the best for you? I talk with marketers trying to make these decisions every day. I don’t envy them.
Let’s take marketing automation. Is Pardot better than HubSpot? Is Marketo better than Pardot? Is Net-Results better than all of them? (yes, of course it is. check out my Quora profile 🙂
100% seriously: I’m the founder & CEO of a marketing automation company and I can tell you it’s nearly impossible to answer these questions. Truly evaluating one platform vs. another requires extensive hands-on experience with each. No marketer has time for that. It’s tough.
And that’s just one choice, which marketing automation platform to choose.
Between an unending number of potential strategies, tactics, tools, and massively varying marketing skill sets, it’s incredibly difficult to predict outcomes and guarantee results.
And this brings us back to the question – which digital marketing skills are the most important in 2018?
It doesn’t matter what decade it is or even century. It doesn’t matter what profession you’re in. Life is always complicated. It always has been and always will be.
Diligent commitment. Unending persistence. Curiosity. Patience. A level head and a seatbelt.
Pursue these characteristics and you’ll find your way through the maze. There’s no one answer to your question. It depends on everything 😉
