These 4 Crucial Skills Will Make You A Better Marketer
4 skills that will make you better at telling and selling.
Back in the day, before my voice dropped and I discovered the joys of paying my own bills, my brothers and I spent a lot of time on outings with our dad. Pops would take us to the mall to buy everything from groceries to clothes and everything in between. One of his favourite pastimes was dissecting random ads on billboards, posters, and in-shop ads.
“See, they put a pretty lady next to a car to link her to the product. There’s no correlation between the two, but it’s a trick to get you to focus on the lady and think positively about the car.”
It’s incidents like these that stoked my early curiosity about how advertising worked. “Why would anybody fall for that, can’t they see they’re being manipulated? Why does 9.99 pricing work so well? Black Friday doesn’t even make sense; why are people urgently buying things they didn’t need just a day before?”
Those early teaching moments also vaccinated me against much of advertising’s seductive effects—I’m now hypersensitive to anything that sounds even remotely like a pitch. I’m more likely to call you out on your attempt, especially if I’ve already decided to buy your product.
The 4 Crucial Marketing Skills
Over the years, I’ve become exposed to many aspects of marketing, advertising, sales, consumer psychology, cognitive behaviour, and neuropsychology. Our brains are fascinating tools but easily manipulated once you know how they work.
I’ve also binged on the works of advertising greats from David Ogilvy to Les Binet and even Don Draper. In that time, I’ve come to assemble a list of skills I think are crucial to anyone who wants to get better at marketing, advertising, and sales.