The field of marketing is incredibly broad and encompasses a wide variety of skill sets, from SEO and coding to website design and social media. Furthermore, marketing for a startup business is much different than marketing for a traditional, corporate company. When startups look to hire a marketer, they’re going to look for different skills than a traditional company might need. The stakes are much higher when adding a new member to a one or two person team, as opposed to a large marketing team of 10 or 20 people. Considering 90 percent of all startups fail, the pressure is on to find someone who can wear multiple hats — and wear them well.
Startups typically have minimal resources to devote to marketing, and yet their marketing plan could make the difference between the success and failure of the business. Because of this, they’re going to look for someone who is energetic, creative, willing to learn through trial and error, and someone who can work independently. In addition to these personality traits, it helps to have some marketing skills that are specific to startups. Below we’ve compiled a list of five skills that every marketer should have on their resume if they’re interested in applying to startups.
1. Knowledge of SEO and content creation.
If you’re a writer, good at content creation and familiar with SEO, you’re golden to a startup. Startups especially need help creating an online presence, and you can assist them in this by blogging and creating video content, as well as creating SEO goals and tracking your progress. Content creation is what’s going to make a startup stand out to a customer, and consistent, valuable content will help create and maintain a lasting relationship with an audience. Some people would say that writing skills are even more important than industry knowledge because of this (but we can’t deny that it’s obviously ideal if you have both).
SEO is also imperative to a startup, but it’s complex and requires a lot of time, so most small business owners need help in this area. Any knowledge of SEO strategies you have will be valuable to a startup, and the good thing about this is that it’s easy to learn on your own.
2. Basic coding skills.
You’ll be even more valuable to a startup if you’re familiar with SEO strategies and have some basic coding skills. These two things typically go hand in hand, and oftentimes they’re lacking in the skill set of a startup business owner. Coding can help streamline a lot of processes, which is essential…
