The 10 Traits of Successful Online Marketers

Whether you’re a professional marketer or a business owner looking to do your own online marketing, you need certain traits in order to be successful. While some of these traits are inborn -- meaning you either have them or you don’t -- most can be learned and honed over time.

Following are 10 of these essential traits:

1. You love a good puzzle.

Online marketing is like a large, complex puzzle, especially when it comes to SEO. There are many pieces to this "SEO puzzle" -- keyword research, link-building, technical compliance, user experience and social-media integration being the most significant. A successful online marketer will naturally be able to see how these pieces fit together.

Examples of what a successful marketer will recognize include how social media reach impacts organic link building; how user experience affects search rankings; and the best way to incorporate keywords while still remaining technically sound. If you have a knack for solving puzzles, there’s a good chance you’ll excel at SEO.

2. You’re patient.

Online marketing requires a willingness to put in hard work now, even though you may not see the results for months (or even years) to come. There are no quick fixes when it comes to online marketing, so you must be prepared to continually work toward your goal without losing steam. A lack of short-term results may be disheartening, but if you’re patient, the results will be well worth the wait.

3. You never stop learning.

SEO and social media are constantly changing. Google tweaks its ranking algorithm hundreds of times each year, and new social media platforms emerge constantly. In order to remain authoritative when it comes to online marketing, you must be passionate about lifelong learning. This means staying on top of industry news, attending conferences and regularly networking with others in the digital marketing space.

4. You’re trustworthy.

More than ever before, people buy from people they know and trust. Being trustworthy -- and able to convey this trait to others -- is critical to being a successful online marketer. Garish, over-the-top landing pages; blatant self-promotion on social media; and spammy, keyword-laden copy will inevitably damage or destroy your online reputation. Being authentic and trustworthy is what will set you apart, helping you build long-term relationships with your customers and clients.

5. You’re a competent manager.

Most online marketers find it necessary to outsource or delegate at least a few of their marketing tasks. It’s rare that any one individual will excel at (much less have time for) every aspect of marketing: writing, communications, social media, technical SEO, etc. For this reason it’s important to have great management skills -- in particular, the ability to inspire and motivate those around you to help you meet your goals.

6. You care about your customers.

A great user experience is not only good for conversions, it’s increasingly important for achieving and maintaining high organic rankings in search engines. Successful online marketers, however, aren’t out just to make a quick buck. They want to meet -- or exceed -- the expectations of their customers and website visitors. They know this is the way to build long-term, profitable relationships based on trust.

7. You’re a great communicator.

Being able to communicate effectively is critical to online marketing success. This doesn’t mean you have to be an expert writer or speaker; it does mean you need to clearly and professionally convey your thoughts and expectations to clients, prospects and members of your team. It also requires an ability to listen and actually hear what others say, and to connect, engage and think about things from someone else's point of view.

8. You make things happen.

Industry knowledge and analytical thinking are both key to online marketing success. However, if you aren’t willing or able to actuallyexecute your plans, you’ll never succeed online. Do you frequently start projects or tasks but then fail to complete them? Do you prefer the planning stage of tasks to the actual execution of those tasks? Do you get excited by research, but lose steam when it comes to implementation? If so, online marketing may not be the career path for you.

9. You know how to tell a good story.

Marketing is getting more and more difficult, as consumers grow increasingly wary of being "marketed to." Stories have a way of cutting through the clutter and helping to create an emotional investment in your business or product. Being able to envision and articulate the story behind your brand will be a defining characteristic of successful marketers as consumers become more and more cynical.

10. You’re not distracted by the 'next big thing.'

Online marketing is usually a long-term endeavor. For this reason, it’s critical that you maintain your focus over the long haul. This means setting attainable goals -- both short and long-term -- and not being swayed or distracted by irrelevant trends or fads. It means staying on task and seeing your plans through to completion, even when those around you may be trying new strategies and shifting course. While it’s certainly important to remain flexible and adaptive, changing your focus frequently can significantly eat into your productivity and leave you in a constant state of flux.

8 Reasons Why Your Marketing Sucks

If you ask 10 CEOs to tell you what marketing is, you’ll probably get 10 completely different answers. And get this. If you ask their marketing veeps the same question, you’ll get the same result.
Marketing defies definition. It confuses everyone, even those who do it for a living. I know that because that was my job in a former life, and I’m the first one to admit that I never considered myself an expert. Besides, my brethren could never agree on what their job titles meant. They were all over the map.
As I explain in my new book, Real Leaders Don’t Follow: Being Extraordinary in the Age of the Entrepreneur, marketing has always had a perception problem. It’s truly ironic that the field responsible for branding has a brand identity that’s about as unambiguous as Facebook’s 58 gender options.
And yet we live in a commercial world where consumers and businesses make buy decisions based to a large extent on a field that nobody seems to understand very well, not even those who make big bucks doing it. Don’t you find that just a little bit unsettling?
Now you know why I quit marketing. I was tired of explaining to every CEO, board, and management team what marketing is and why it’s so important to the success of the company. I felt like Sisyphus, the sinner condemned to roll a boulder uphill, only to watch it roll back down, again and again, for eternity. I always wondered what I’d done so terribly wrong in a prior life to deserve that.

If you find marketing to be somewhat elusive, don’t feel too badly; you’re in good company. And while I intend for this to be instructive, not critical, there’s a very good chance that your company’s marketing sucks. Here’s why:

You have no idea what it is.

In his seminal book, Marketing High Technology, legendary VC and former Intel executive Bill Davidow said, “Marketing must invent complete products and drive them to commanding positions in defensible market segments.” I couldn’t agree more. And anyone who finds that confusing should not be running marketing.

It’s so easy to fake.

As VC David Hornik of August Capital says, “VCs like to think that they are marketing geniuses. We really do.” He goes on to say that they meddle in the marketing of their portfolio companies because “we can fake it far more convincingly than in other areas …” As I always say, marketing is like sex; everyone thinks they’re good at it.

You’re a follower of _____ (fill in the blank).

Marketing may be as much art as science, but it’s still a complex and nuanced discipline that takes a great deal of experience to develop some level of understanding or expertise. I don’t care if you’re into Purple Cows or The Brand Called You, popular fad-like notions won’t get you there.

You’ve lost sight of the big picture.

In some ways, growth hacking is no different from traditional marketing, and I mean that in a good way. That said, I see a lot of businesses chasing lots of small opportunities or incremental growth improvements with no overarching vision, strategy, or customer value proposition. That, in my opinion, is a recipe for disaster.  

It’s built on flawed assumptions.

Most product strategies and marketing campaigns are built on assumptions that nobody ever attempts to verify because their inventors think they have all the answers. The problem is they don’t know what they don’t know. Never mind what customers say and do. What do they know?

You have an MBA.

MBAs may be good for something, but marketing is not it. I’m not saying marketing can’t be taught, it’s just that, in my experience, it’s better learned on the job in the real world. Davidow, Theodore Levitt, Regis McKenna – none of these innovators who literally wrote the book on marketing had MBAs. Maybe there’s a good reason for that.

You’re not measuring the results.

Show me a marketing program and I’ll show you beaucoup bucks spent on a mostly “shoot from the hip” approach that lacks sufficient metrics to determine if it’s effective or not. If you don’t measure it, how do you know if it’s delivering a return on investment?

You’re a marketer.

One of the reasons for marketing’s perception problem is that senior-level talent is hard to find and few execs have the ability to articulate the importance of the function. And since CEOs tend to be a pretty cynical bunch, marketing has, to a great extent, been marginalized in the business world. Sad but true.
Marketing is an enigma. It’s both art and science, creative and analytical, intuitive and logical, amorphous and tangible. It’s two sides of the same coin. That’s probably why it mystifies most. And yet, marketing is, without a doubt, among the most critical functions in every company.
That may be a perplexing paradox, but companies that somehow manage to unravel the mysteries of marketing have a far better chance of making it than those that don’t.