Marketing is a great field to be in for those who love to be constantly challenged and learning new things. The marketing landscape is evolving all the time, and marketers need to stay on top of current trends and potential opportunities and threats to stay relevant and maintain company profitability. The following are several resources I utilize to enhance my knowledge of the industry and stay up-to-date.
Follow Blogs
There are so many great blogs out there by insiders who research marketing trends and current best practices. Here are a few that I especially like:
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
Watch Videos on LinkedIn Learning
One of my favorite resources for honing my marketing knowledge and skills is LinkedIn Learning. These videos are included in a LinkedIn Premium subscription, which you can pay $30 monthly for. If you are a college student or graduate, you may also be able to access LinkedIn Premium for free by creating an account with your .edu email address.
LinkedIn learning includes THOUSANDS of videos ranging from hours-long courses to short minutes-long tutorials. You can learn about how to use Microsoft Excel to sort data and create pretty charts, or how to use Google Analytics to analyze your website traffic, or how to edit HTML and CSS code.
Once you complete a course, you can even add the certification to your LinkedIn page and stand out to recruiters!
Take Hubspot Courses
Hubspot.com is one of the leading customer relationship management (CRM) tool providers, and it is also a top resource for learning about inbound marketing strategies. Hubspot offers free courses for sales and marketing professionals through Hubspot Academy. There, you can enjoy dozens of free courses, including some courses that allow you to take a final exam and earn a certificate. Like the LinkedIn Learning certificates, these can be added to your LinkedIn page to help you stand out to recruiters. Hubspot certificates also tend to carry more weight than LinkedIn Learning certificates since you must take an exam to get certified. Thus, these certificates also make great additions to resumes.
Pay Attention to Business News
As a marketer, not only should you be staying up-to-date on the nitty gritty current trends and best practices for digital marketing platforms and content types, but you should also be thinking big picture and paying attention to changes in consumer demand and behaviors. What are your competitors doing that is working well or not well? Are there emerging opportunities or threats based on political and economic factors? For instance, will there soon be a new tax advantages for companies under a certain carbon footprint? Or will there be increased demand for larger apartments and houses as a result of more people working from home? These are important considerations, and it is critical that marketers don’t get too buried in the nitty gritty details of implementing marketing plans that they forget to strategize and analyze the external factors that could affect the business.
My favorite business news source is Business Insider. You can also check out the Business tab on any mainstream news source like NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, CNN, Washington Post, etc. Some news sources are free, while others will require a subscription. Many will also have a free or discount trial period so you can sample the content and decide if it’s a good investment for you.
Read Books
This one ranks last on my list since I have a lot of room to grow here! While I have not personally read any of these yet, some business and marketing-oriented books on my reading list include:
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
- Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller
- Integrity Selling for the 21st Century: How to Sell the Way People Want to Buy by Ron Willingham
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Lean In by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is one book I have read and highly recommend to all women in business and men as well.
If you, like me, never seem to find the time to read, then you may benefit from trying out Amazon’s Audible subscription for on-the-go ebook listening during your morning and evening commutes.
