Eric Siu breaks down the marketing skills that matter: data analytics, copywriting, picking one content channel and doubling down on it, delegating, omnichannel strategy, and SEO. He walks through how Single Grain grew traffic using these fundamentals.
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Today we are going to talk about the top marketing skills to master in 2020 and beyond. But before we do, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell button if you're coming from YouTube. Subscribe wherever you're coming from because you want to grow faster both personally and professionally. All right, you know, people use the word data is the new oil. The way I look at it, data is very important and a lot of people don't know how to do basic data analysis, right? So you kind of have to understand analytics first. Because you have to understand what the story that the data is telling you, and then you can actually take some action on it. So you do have to understand data analytics, and if you actually want to go deeper into the field, you should understand data science. There is an online education company called DataCamp, and they actually teach data science. And then also you can go to Coursera, you can go to edX, you can even go to YouTube if you want to learn about data science, and I'm sure there's a ton of free videos out there. I would say around the data analytics portion, Avinash Kaushik—he has a blog called kaushik.net. It's KAU. S-H-I-K dot net. I started learning marketing quite a while ago, and he still writes on his blog. He's got he's got a really good blog. I would recommend reading AnnieLytics as well. This woman's name is Annie, and it's Lytics. It's like analytics. So AnnieLytics dot com. So those are two or three resources to check out. So that's the first thing I think you you have to understand that's the story that's being told, right? A lot of companies, especially in Silicon Valley right now, they raise a bunch of money from venture capitalists, which is no problem, right? As long as they have, you know, a solid business model. But the problem is they think, a lot of companies when I talk to them, oh, we're just gonna figure out Google Ads and Facebook Ads and we're gonna scale that way. But everybody knows how to do that now, right? So how do you differentiate yourself? They know how to like run the ads, but beyond that, you know, there's skills that are lacking, right? So I think, you know, to kind of make sure that you're protected for the long term, you have to understand how to do copywriting. So I recommend reading a book called Breakthrough Advertising and another one called The Boron Letters, Breakthrough Advertising used to be like, I think I purchased a book for a couple hundred dollars. You can actually get the reprints now for $125. Just Google Breakthrough Advertising book, right? And I think you should be able to find it. Boron Letters you can find on Amazon. It was written by Gary Halpert, which is one of the all-time greatest copywriters. Um, had a son that he wrote the letter to called Bon Halpert. And I think Bon Halpert actually has a newsletter right now. Um, so those are, you know, there's, and then there's actually another email that's called Email Player. So check that one out too. When you learn the skill of copywriting, you're learning how to talk to people, you're learning how to get people to take an action, right? You're not writing long walls of text, you're basically learning how to copywrite for Twitter, you're learning how to copywrite for LinkedIn as well, right? Anybody that knows how to write long-form copy, those are still, those people are very hard to find nowadays, but if you know how to write long-form copy, you can really write copy, any types of words to persuade people, right? And that's what you're trying to do with your marketing. A lot of times you're gonna be using words when you're sending emails to people, You're going to be, you're going to be writing ads, you're going to be writing a book. You have to understand, like if you've become really good at copywriting, I think you're going to be levels above people, right? Um, versus the people that, you know, just know how to run Facebook and Google ads. You gotta know how to go beyond that, right? I also think it's very important for 2020 for people to understand that they need to pick one content channel that they're good at and stick with it. So using the copywriting example, I like writing. If I were to pick writing channels, I would pick maybe, Twitter, and I would pick LinkedIn organic, right? And I would just write on there. And whenever I write on there, not all the time, but I tend to see better performance there over time. Now, I also like doing audio too. I don't have a problem with doing video, but video requires the editing portion that I don't know how to do. It requires some design work as well, which I don't know how to do. You know, that's where you need to, you know, get outside help. But you do need to understand that content, having one kind of foundational content channel that you go after, and then learning how to repurpose that, that's gonna be very important because The one thing that you're going to have that's defensible for the long term is your brand, right? So it doesn't matter if you're working for somebody and it doesn't matter if you have your own company. You have to understand that your brand is going to take you far. Like I've seen a lot of people where they work for companies and because they blogged at the same time and they built some kind of personal brand that they're able, they were pretty, um, it was pretty easy for them to find other, uh, other gigs, uh, that were, you know, next level, right? So I would, I would take that into account. For me, I like writing, I like podcasts too. So those are the channels I kind of go after, right? So, What are you good at? And if you're good at video, understand that that video can be repurposed into audio files, can be repurposed into stories, can repurpose into social media posts, and the list goes on and on and on. If you're going to repurpose content, you have to learn, okay, who's going to actually do it, right? Can you delegate this out to people? Even if you're working for someone, you can delegate. You can find people on Upwork. You can go to these other sources and figure out how to delegate this out to other people, right? But you have to figure out what that repurposing framework looks like, that workflow looks like. Because there's so many sources nowadays, disparate channels out there, and it's becoming more and more competitive. Ads are getting more competitive, SEO is getting more competitive, so how do you stand out? You gotta think about how you can take the omnichannel approach, and if you're gonna do that, if you're gonna take the omnichannel approach, who is going to help you do that work? You know, the 5th piece here is basic SEO. The entrepreneurs that I know that understand SEO, they are, they're next level versus, you know, some of the other entrepreneurs I know. Like, there's, the way I look at it is, the ones that understand business and SEO, and the ones that understand kind of business and acquisitions, those are the ones that have a different, they have a different, um, they're wired differently. And those are the ones that I generally learned the most from. You know, when you understand SEO and you understand business, you probably understand all these other elements, right? Um, cause SEO is like a little puzzle and then business is also a puzzle too. You're, you're, you're creating culture, you're hiring people, you're firing people. Um, you're figuring out how to maneuver the business for the long term. Same thing with like when you're, when you're doing acquisitions, you're, you're doing all this maneuvering, you're playing all these little games. A game within a game, right? You know, when you understand basic SEO, I, you know, you, the sky's the limit, right? Because you understand foundationally how you can build websites and build traffic quickly and then how you can collect email addresses and how you can parlay that into retargeting people, making lookalike audiences and, you know, having, uh, having a chatbot on your site too. Um, and then just, you know, you have email popups to collecting emails. You're just doing all these different little things. It gives you leverage for the long term. So I think having that basic foundational understanding of SEO, Um, is going to take you a long way. When I look at it, Single Grain, our ad agency, the website, when I first came into it, 4,000 visits a month. Now we're about 250,000 visits a month. And because we're able to build that leverage, um, we have so many people hitting our website. There's people on our email list. We were able to get a 7-figure deal because we combined a tool with the traffic that we have collected, that email address, put them into a sales enablement tool. But you can see the foundational piece was the SEO piece, right? So Again, this comes back to copywriting. If you know copywriting well, then you can parlay that into, you know, starting out with SEO first. Once you start getting going, you start getting some revenue going, you hire other people to help you, you understand the framework that you want, and you build and you build and you build. And before you know it, because you started with SEO, now you have a legitimate, legitimate business and your business is getting bigger and bigger. Now, now you can play, you know, the game of acquisitions down the road, right? So that's how I see it. These are the 5 top skills I think to master when it comes to marketing. Um, a lot of these are foundational, right? I think if you understand the foundational pieces and you want to go deeper, you should have no problem doing so. Let me know what you think I missed in the comments below, what you think are the top skills to master in 2020, and also whatever platform you're coming from, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us grow faster. And don't forget to check out the next video over there if you're coming from YouTube, and we will see you tomorrow.
