By Darren Gilbert

That is the key to being successful – knowing what is happening and understanding where everything is heading. With that in mind, here are three qualities that all modern marketers should have.

Marketers must be flexible

Since the industry is continuously changing and evolving, it is critical that anyone who works in the world of marketing needs to be flexible. If you’re not, you might as well give up your job in marketing and find something else.

“Modern marketers make their own luck. They plan well but they’re agile enough to respond to serendipitous opportunities. They can rapidly react and innovate in changing circumstances,” writes Eva Papadimitriou, a contributor to Traackr. If you are not on top of everything, you’re not in the game. And that means you’re not effective.

She continues: “In the past, they relied on analytics to understand how they track against a plan. Today, they use real-time analytics to constantly ask different questions of their data, using the answers to evolve their strategy.”

Marketers must think long-term

If you want to make an impact, you need to think beyond a quick and simple event or short marketing burst. Instead, you need to think long-term. After all, if you want to build a successful brand, it takes years instead of weeks or months.

“Marketing is a 365-days-a-year task. Customers don’t hold their buying decisions until a brand’s campaign window. The best brands make fantastic advertising but also have a reason to deserve someone’s attention when they’re not in media,” writes Dare’s managing director, Toby Horry for Marketing Magazine.

In order to do this, you need to think long-term and then work towards building a brand. At the same time, don’t drop the ball. As Hobby indicates above, marketing is a full-time job. That means that you have to be on the ball and ready for action at any time of the day. In being ready, only then will you have the ability to build – and with time – grow the brand to where your client wants it to be.

Marketers must understand the impact of the efforts

In order to be effective in the world of marketing, you need know the effect that your efforts can have. It’s a point made by Colleen Eakins, a freelance graphic designer and contributor to etouchmarketing.

She writes, “To be a great marketer, you need to be able to understand the cause and effect of your marketing strategies and campaigns. Understanding that every strategy will impact the business in some way will help a marketer determine whether that strategy is the best solution for that particular business.” If you don’t understand this, it will be difficult to advance any further in your career as a marketer.

What are your thoughts? Do you know of any other attributes that a modern marketer should have? Tell us below.