#73- 5 Skills Every Marketing Director Needs
Barbara Savona here, and I am so excited to talk about a topic that is near and dear to my heart: marketing. In this podcast, I’m sharing five skills that have been the secret sauce, or an invaluable aid, in helping my marketing career and creating my business. I'm specifically talking to marketing directors, aspiring marketing directors, and entrepreneurs because recently I have received a lot of messages from them, but I also feel the five skill sets are really invaluable for anyone.
Here’s a glance at this episode…
>> [00:20] - A special introduction message to marketing directors and aspiring marketing directors and what prompted this podcast.
>> [02:37] - Skill set #1: Communication Skills
>> [06:53] - Skill set #2: Experimental Mindset
>> [08:50] - Skill set #3: Action-Orientated
>> [10:26] - Skill set #4: Resourcefulness
>> [13:33] - Skill set #5: Observation
>> [17:53] - A personal invitation to stay in touch with me, Barbara Savona.
#1 Communication Skills
IF I COULD RECOMMEND ANYTHING, IT WOULD BE TO WORK ON YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS.
Verbal Skills
Start making it your habit to talk to everyone and all different kinds of people - not just talking to people within our industry. While you’re talking to them, find a way to take a personal interest in them, like asking their story and then really listening. To have a career in marketing, you must also be well-spoken, after all, when you speak you’re promoting yourself. You are your brand, whether you're looking to just grow in your career or you eventually want to start your own business, how you present yourself, your communication, is huge.
So for me, what did that look like? Well, I put myself in a lot of uncomfortable situations. I started volunteering to speak at apartment associations on topics that I felt comfortable with, like leasing and hosting events and eventually marketing. I got to share some of the things that I learned onsite. A lot of people think that public speaking came easily to me- I assure you it did not. The day before my first speaking engagement at the National Apartment Association, I was physically sick to my stomach in anticipation. And I had reason to be, it was a room full of 750 people. It turned out amazing, but it wasn’t easy. The point is, to continue to put yourself in situations that challenge and improve your skills.
Written Skills
Another aspect of your communication skills is going to be how you write. I have really worked hard to develop my tone and to write my emails in the same conversational way that I would speak to you.
I actually signed up for a course that Marie Forleo puts on- it’s called The Copy Cure. It was a bit of an investment, but it's for lifetime access and it really helps you to hone your writing skills. Whether you're writing an email to your supervisor or to an owner, whether you're putting together a marketing campaign or a tagline, all of these things exercise your written skills. You know, when I write a subject line for an email, it's oftentimes similar to how I would write a tagline for a marketing campaign. I’m going to spend less time, but it matters because it’s all about catching people's eyes.
So I would encourage you to practice those communication skills- get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Record a video to share on social media, communicate face-to-face or one-on-one, write a blog or your captions on social media… Just continually put yourself in those places that are going to challenge you and stretch you and make you grow in that area.
#2 experimental mindset
In marketing, you're going to try a lot of things and a lot of things are not going to work. Don’t let it defeat you. If you view every single thing as a do-or-die kind of situation, you're going to burn out before you get any further. And I just don't want that to happen to you. My tip: have an experimental mindset. This took me a long time to learn.
When you’re pitching a new idea, introduce it as, “Hey, here's an idea… Let's try it for a week… Let's try it for 30 days. And let's see what happens.” This takes the pressure off of you and allows it to be a learning experience and gives room to really flourish. I'm not saying to not put stakes on things- when you’re spending money, you want it to work. But if you put huge amounts of pressure on yourself, and have the mentality that it HAS to work immediately, it sets you up for disaster. I like to think more along the lines of “it has to work, but the version that is going to work might be 10 versions down the road.”
Sometimes it takes patience to get there. Three days in, you might look at the initial results and tweak it a bit and then analyze and adjust again 30 days from now. Really, having an experimental mindset is just being okay with needing to learn and adjust. After all, that is life, right? We're not going to get it right on the first try every time. Sometimes we do and it's amazing, but that's not always realistic. So approach strategies and opportunities as an experiment, and even with yourself, as you're creating your brand and your persona and how you're going to approach your career, and see what works and keep on adjusting.
#3 action-oriented
Number three is to be action-oriented. I am not a believer in luck- I really believe that things happen for the people that take action. In marketing, it's easy to get stuck in what I've heard called the “creativity cul-de-sac”- where you go around and around trying to come up with the perfect idea, but you never take action or go anywhere with it. Instead, let's go ahead and brainstorm a little bit, but then let's take action. We learn from taking action (especially with the aforementioned experimental mindset) versus rehashing something until you get it perfect. There is no such thing as perfect. If I am looking to hire someone or promote someone from within, I'm going to look at someone that takes action. Even if they don’t get it exactly right initially, results come from action.
So take action, try things. Those two, the experimental mindset and being action-oriented, go hand-in-hand. Be the one that raises your hand, takes the lead, rallies the troops, and says, “Hey, let's try this.” and is known as the person that is willing to do the hard work and take the action.
#4 resourcefulness
An example of resourceful flip flop follow-up that really stands out!
Number four is resourcefulness. And I think this is so undervalued and it's so important with multifamily. Sometimes you have a huge budget and sometimes you have a very small budget or very limited resources. The more resourceful that you can be, the more valuable you are. A lot of times, people with large budgets have the ability to try many different things. But many times I have found that my best campaigns have come from working with clients that had very little money and we wanted to hit a big goal that made us get really, really, really creative (and resourceful). Sometimes those constraints, the limited budget or time, really force the most innovative campaigns.
When I was first hired as a property manager, it was at a very rough community without any budget. When you walked into the leasing office it wasn’t in the least bit inviting- it was just brutal. And I just kept thinking to myself, if I dread coming in here every day, I can't imagine people coming in and wanting to lease. So with approval, I bartered with a vendor to donate some paint for the office. After closing up the office one night, I painted it myself. I went to a thrift store and bought décor with my own money and then added some refreshments, inexpensive little flower arrangements, and things like that.
I knew that from a marketing perspective, our first avenue is through our eyes. That's the first window to everything. It was really important for the leasing office to make a good impression and I got resourceful. I still remember when my owner walked in and he kind of looked at me like, “how did we pay for this?” It was really a big stepping stone in my career when I shared how I had gone about remodeling that leasing office and I was quickly promoted to a supervisor position.
Resourcefulness is key no matter where you are- if you're working with a big budget or a big lease-up, you still have to be resourceful. Things are going to happen that don't go your way- people are not going to show up to work one day, vendors are going to mess up, and the turnout at an event will be unexpected. And it's the resourceful, action-oriented, and experimental person (they all work together) that is going to get ahead.
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#5 observation
My fifth tip, and I think this one is the one that has truly made my career, is the ability to look outside of our industry and to look at all different kinds of industries, all kinds of advertising, and adapt it to our industry. So for me, one of the things that I really enjoy doing is going to a store and playing an observation game. Walking into a store, I immediately ask myself, “how does this store make me feel?” And what is it about it that is giving me that feeling? Is it the music? Smell? How everything looks? How the people are treating me? How things are merchandised?
I started to really pay attention to the correlation between my sensory experience and the feelings that I was having inside and how that was affecting me as a buyer. And I started to do that with everything. I started to notice what magazine ads made me stop in my tracks. What color combinations I was drawn to… what font combinations did I love … when I was driving, what billboards made me actually stop and look at them? What music taglines stayed in my head for days and days and days.
I started following a lot of other industries, first hotels and the hospitality industry. When I first started getting into the digital marketing world, the Amy Porterfields and the Marie Foleos were just getting off their feet. I really emulated their emails and I watched how they got into video marketing, and how they were embracing social media. And I just kept thinking to myself, how can I adapt this to multifamily housing? I still do that to this day. I'll walk into a Trader Joe's and I’ll snap a picture of something that they've got on the wall. I was at my chiropractor and I noticed the language that they use. I also pay attention to the things that I don't like, the things that are not appealing. I have a folder for email subject lines that made me open the email and I adapt them to emails that I'm writing to our members. Or I might see an idea and then I'll bring it to the Sprout team and say, okay, we've got to do this for property management.
So start training your eye, start training your mind, to look for other avenues of advertising in other industries and see how you can bring what's working for them and adapt it to your community, your management company, your career. That is a skill set that I think is going to be huge for you. And it definitely is a skill set. You have to train yourself to notice those things. And for some people, it comes easier, but you can definitely train your eye. You can start saving things that appeal to you. You can start looking for trends, watching things with a watchful eye, and pay attention to what your friend groups are talking about. And then work on creating that connection to the campaigns that you love.
So for those out there, chasing your dreams, keep chasing ‘em and keep honing your skills. If you are looking to grow in your career as a marketing director, and you want to connect with me, I'm on LinkedIn as Barbara Savona and I am on Instagram @sproutmarketing- you can shoot me a DM. I'd love to stay connected.
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