So you want to be a growth marketer. 

Dope! I support this. I love marketing and passing on some of my knowledge…. And by knowledge, I mean all of the craziness that my brain has absorbed over the years. 

If you want to be a growth marketer, here are some basic skills you need to lock down.

I’d like to preface this by saying you don’t need to be a master at all of these, but you definitely need to kick some ass at a few of them.

I’m going to take you into a snapshot of the T-Shaped Marketing framework. If you want to dive deeper into the T Shape, you can check out an older blog post I did here: What Is A T Shaped Marketer?

Anyway, that’s old news. Let’s get to the good stuff.

Here are the 7 basic skills you need to have as a Growth Marketer

There’s a phrase out there that goes, “Paid Marketing is like sex. Only losers pay for it.” 

Fuck that guy. 

He’s clearly a software nerd. If you don’t do any paid marketing, you’re either insanely lucky or insanely foolish. 

If you want to be a Growth Marketer, you HAVE TO learn paid ads. 

This comes in the form of: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Google Search, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, blah blah blah. 

Yeah, that sounds like a lot. If you’re just starting out, learn Facebook ads and YouTube ads. Once you learn those two platforms, everything else is pretty much the same format, just on a different medium. 

The world is filled with copy. Everything in life revolves around the written word. Study it. Learn it. Love it. Practice. Iterate. 

In marketing, copywriting matters. 

You’re reading this blog post, aren’t you? Are you engaged? 

If you said yes, then this copy is working. 

I look back on old copy I’ve written and cringe 99.9% of the time. Woof. 

I’ll say it so you don’t have to: social media sucks. 

Okay, that was a pretty general statement. That’s not the case all of the time. 

But social is where you can engage in 1:1 and 1:many conversations and community building with your tribe. 

And that my friend, does not suck one bit. 

Marketing funnels are a key component to successful growth marketing campaigns. Hell, they’re needed for just basic digital marketing campaigns. 

You think this is all one step and done? 

Think again. 

There’s a journey you have to send folks on to get them to your end goal. 

Learn and love the funnel. Design and implement. See how it works. Edit. Upgrade. Do it again. Making things better each time until they’re fully optimized. 

Making vibe-driven decisions? Stop. I fought the data life for a while when I first got into digital marketing. I was a creative, not a data scientist. 

But trust me. Life gets easier, campaigns get better, you look better to your boss/clients, and you start to conquer the world when you mix that data and creativity together. 

Learn Google Analytics, Search Console, and learn to build week-over-week growth charts and cohort analysis in Google Sheets. 

Those are the basics. Now go out and get them ya little data nerd, you. 

Email isn’t dead. But it is getting harder to land in the inbox. People are inundated with emails all day every day. It takes a lot to stand out and get desired actions from your readers.

When you get email right though, it’s like unlocking a secret marketing power. If you’re a freelancer, it’s also a super in-demand service too.

I gave a speech on email marketing in early 2022. Here’s the written version if you want some tips and tricks: Email Marketing Tactics for 2022

Oh, oh SEO. Search Engine Optimization. If you master SEO, you’ll never go hungry again. SEO helps you get in front of a high-intent audience through organic discoverability - the holy grail of digital marketing. 

To be a killer growth marketer, you at least have to learn the basics of on-page, technical, long-tail keyword ranking, and backlinking. 

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You know what you need to learn. Now go out there and do the work! 

And remember, failure is a natural part of being a growth marketer. So don’t be afraid to make mistakes. 

Experiment. Learn. Iterate. Repeat. 

- AJM