The Dance Between Tools & Skills
More than ever before, marketing tools are at the forefront of marketing strategy. From the amazing power of open AI to the user-friendly ease of Canva to drag and drop, plug in and publish web platforms that make web design a cinch, marketers are more empowered than ever to do it themselves.
The DIY digital marketing landscape is a great way for businesses to accomplish their goals, but a tool is not a substitute for talent, skills and experience.
Technology tools are leapfrogging every day and becoming a great asset to businesses, both large and small. However, the technology’s benefit cannot override training, experience and talent.
While you need to tap into the power of the barrage of marketing tools, you should still ensure the intangible skills that specialists and experts bring to the marketing mix. Let’s explore that!
Exploring Marketing Tools Vs. Skills
Having a tool does not make you an expert carpenter.
Sorry for the truth bomb, but it’s important to understand that just because you have a hammer and saw doesn’t mean you have the skill to build a house.
Humor me while I lead you further into this analogy:
Of course, you can develop the skills needed to build the house with your hammer and saw, but it takes time. An experienced carpenter has gone through training and mentorships, learning new techniques along the way.
This analogy can be applied to website-building tools like WordPress, social media post-creation tools like Canva or easy-to-use email platforms like MailChimp. I’ve seen it too many times…someone can use the marketing tools but doesn’t have an understanding of contrast, textual hierarchy and white space to be able to put together a good communication piece — much less one with a level of sophistication.
Experienced professionals can help you know what you don’t know.
The whole picture should be considered. While the tool itself may be easy to learn, it may not (for example) take into account how it will impact SEO or the user experience. It may not be able to grow with you or emulate and reinforce your brand. (Case in point: Some fonts whisper while others convey authority. What works best for your brand?)
Marketing professionals have a trained eye that helps them take a high-level view of marketing tools and how they impact your business’s omnichannel marketing efforts.
This is not to take away from the talented people who do graphic design or build websites as a hobby or side hustle. But it is to reiterate the analogy that owning a hammer doesn’t make one a skilled and nuanced carpenter. And frankly, the tool is only a sliver of the pie, often not providing the entire view you need to succeed in your marketing efforts truly. Knowledge is one thing, but knowing how to use that knowledge is wisdom!
Certain marketing channels can be testing grounds, while others should not be.
Depending on your unique marketing mix, you and your marketing team can determine your most important communication channels and which are more experimental and auxiliary.
Design and copy are more than just pretty pictures and grammatically correct words.
While tools like Chat-GPT, Jasper, and DALL-E may be able to follow a prompt in creating copy and images, they do not have insights into your strategy and may not be able to guide you through marketing best practices, such as frictionless customer experience and brand and design theory.
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype and jump from one new tool to the next, and there is a benefit to staying up to date on all the latest trends and tech in the marketing space.
While testing out these marketing tools, it is also key to enlist the services of marketing and design professionals. The use of these tools requires skills in design, marketing and communications. I’ll reinforce this again here, too: knowledge of your strategy!
I can get a little long-winded on this topic, so to keep it simple, I am here to say that marketing, branding & communications is a craft. And, at the end of the day, if you are spending that time learning to be an expert in the tools of this craft, is it taking you away from refining your own business?
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