Joining a Martech Team: Core Skills That Help
A common question that gets asked in the Martech space is “What does it take to get hired as a Marketing Cloud professional?” A stellar candidate should really have a good mix of both soft skills and technical skills. This is the case across numerous different roles and fields. For example, a mechanic who stays up-to-date on the latest automotive electronics area can be a highly-competent one, whereas one who also ensures that repairs are always done on time can be great one. And as a Marketing Cloud professional, your combination of soft skills and technical skills can be key for helping to ensure client success. Here is a breakdown of what a decision-maker may find appealing in a candidate:
Technical Skills
A few “must have” skills relate to being effective with using the platform. Capabilities such as experience working with Marketing Cloud, an understanding of what the different areas do (i.e. — Contact Builder, Journey Builder, Automation Studio, Cloud Pages, et cetera).
Being able to do more than merely basic tasks within the system and knowing how various components work together would be beneficial too. Examples of what this looks like is understanding what Marketing Cloud Connect is for, knowing what tasks can be automated and how to do so effectively, being able to run SQL queries, et cetera.
“Good to have” items relate to broader Salesforce factors — understanding the ecosystem really. This includes things like understanding what goes into a cross cloud implementation, being able to use SSJS and AMPScript (while knowing where one works better than the other in general and how either works best for a certain use case), understanding SOAP and REST APIs, et cetera.
Soft Skills
Being able to use the platform’s studios, builders, and general feature sets can only get you so far if you do not also have the adaptability that it takes to make shifts in case unexpected things arise on a project. And soft skills that a company could be looking at relate can to areas like communication, being collaborative, and having a strong work ethic. Those sorts of things come in handy both when things are going well on projects and also (perhaps especially) when things are not.
Being creative will help as well. While certain things are likely to be standard across projects (for example, email sends), each individual project is unique and will have its special requirements. That is why out-of-the-box thinking can help with being able to approach each new project with truly fresh eyes. Adding to that, it would be even better if you have (or start building) the public speaking skills to be able to present your and your team’s ideas about a project.
As Marketing Champions, we (Deboleena Bhattacharyya and Mahogany Beckford) felt that it is useful to provide insights that will help prepare future technical marketers. In writing this article, we thought a lot about our work as professionals who use Marketing Cloud and also what we have seen as being assets in our peers and colleagues. The skills we listed here are not 100% of the skills that it takes to be able to find success as a technical marketer. However, if used as a direction for thinking holistically about how to prepare for a Marketing Cloud role, we are sure it will do a lot to help.
