10 essential traits that a Marketing Leader should have!

As an experienced Marketeer, I can vouch that Marketing is NOT at all any rocket science & can be learnt by anyone. But what makes a ‘Good Marketeer’ or a ‘Bad Marketeer’ is his/her own personal traits & characteristics. Marketing can be learnt but at the same time there are few key essential traits/qualities that all Marketeers SHOULD HAVE.

Here I have derived a framework called as ‘P–A–C–E–R‘. Any Marketeer of any kind & sort has to have an attitude & charisma of a fast ‘P–A–C–E–R‘ bowler. He/She should deliver fast & consistent.

2 (‘P–A–C–E–R‘ ) famework also

 1) Persuasive (Should be self motivated, good convincing power & influencing personality)

For any Marketeer, it is important to be self motivated & give motivation to team members. He/She has to constantly interact with multiple stakeholders like Product, tech, legal, finance etc. & hence he/she will be able to put across his/her views logically & convincingly. A proper reasoning to every demand from stakeholders is important. His/Her personality should reflect a sense of responsibility & posses a power of influencing others in a logical way

Whenever a Marketeer takes any step/decision, he/she should be confident in himself. He/She should be confident about his/her team’s potential & deliverability power. He/She should have a firm outlook. If he/she is going away from trend & experimenting new things, he should show that command & suave in he/her viewpoint constantly & consistently.

Marketing without data is like food without salt. Data is fuel for every campaign. Marketeers should have a ‘Hawk’s’ eye on the data. He/She should be able to look for all important KPIs on daily basis. On top of this he/she should be able to analyze & taken correction decisions from data. A analytical bent of mind mixed with logic (& little bit of gut feel) is highly desirable

Marketing is highly dynamic. What is working now will become obsolete in future years & some new strategies will appear. A Marketeer should always learn & learn. He/She should be always willing to update his skills & knowledge. e.g. Google brings many new changes in SEO algorithm. A Digital Marketeer should always be updated in this front.

5) Creative (Should have a innovative mind set)

Marketing is all about innovation & experiments. A Marketeer has to think out of box & also to think like a customer. Just like FMCG companies sell same products in different & attractive packaging, in the similar way Marketeers has to think about the content & the ad creative in a different & attractive way e.g. sending a plain vanilla HTML based email vis-a-vis a story led emailer which catches attention & customer is enticed to take a proper action

I think a Marketeer has to continuously speak & listen to others. He/She should have that charismatic style of speaking, but not only speaking, listening is also very important aspect of any communication. If a Marketeer can communicate well, his/her half job is done

Marketing doesn’t give ROI as expected quite a multiple times. A leader in Digital Marketing should be very cool & calm headed. He/She should keep belief in him/herself, in team & remain patient. Failures are bound to happen, even more in marketing but that shouldn’t be a detrimental factor in any case. Remember that Marketeers either win or learn, they never fail.

As Marketeers build ‘brands’, they should also build a brand of themselves inside the organization & in outside world. They should always try to keep a right perception & right opinion about their personality traits. He/She should constantly contribute in thought leader sessions & attend multiple webinars/events which help them in networking & personal branding

9) Risk taker (Should be able to experiment & take calculative risks)

Marketing is all about experimentations & taking calculative risks. A Marketeer should never fear in taking risks. He/She should believe in him/herself & the team. Few hiccups are oki, but not trying new things due to the fear of failure is not OKI for a Marketeer. Remember that Marketeers either win or learn, they never fail

It is believed that if you are well connected to agencies/networks/leaders your half battle is already won. A huge connection list in Linkedin and huge database of numbers in your phone book is always desirable for Marketing leaders.