First of all, a true marketer is a tactician, but not a person who just does some narrow-profile tasks, such as setting up contextual advertising or developing a banner design. Being a marketer doesn’t mean it comes easy. They have got a lot on their plates, such as budgets, goals, advertising campaigns, and priorities. Of course, they need to be constantly creative, hard-working, agile, and persistent, too.

Know the product you advertise

If you don’t know a product better than any of your customers, you cannot be a good marketer. Don’t wait for other team members to teach you the product – study it yourself.

Quality comes first, but pace and efficiency are also important

At Ahrefs, we value the quality of our work and how quickly it gets done. With that said, perfectionism is as much of an enemy as procrastination. A good marketer can balance quality, pace, and efficiency to deliver great results (“quality” can often be an ambiguous term as it is based on the opinion of more experienced team members, community feedback, or simply ROI).

We would like to give you some more precise guidance on the balance of quality and tempo, but this is one of those things that you should find out for yourself in practice.

Original idea

In most cases, you are told what to do based on existing roadmaps. But skilled professionals can easily find high-performance tasks on their own, or be creative and proactive about the tasks they are given. Take full responsibility for completing a task and find ways to maximize your return while minimizing the resources used to complete it.

One exercise that helps you come up with original marketing ideas is to always think about the essence, that is, the growth of the company.

• What else can you do to get more clients or keep existing ones?
• What can hinder customer acquisition or retention?
• What marketing tricks can have a positive impact on your brand?

As you keep asking yourself these questions, you will inevitably find more opportunities to act.

Networking

Always look for ways to find interesting people and keep in touch with them. If you are actively working on points 1-6, you will find that other people themselves will want to contact you.

Teamwork

Don’t be self-centered: your job should help the entire company succeed, not just you. Don’t compete with your teammates – you are on the same team. Therefore, help others when you can, it will only make your team stronger.

Being a marketer requires a huge personal desire to explore new things, find extraordinary ways of developing a company – this is a unique way of thinking.