The Most Important Advertising Skills (With Examples)

Everywhere you look, there are advertisements. On your phone, in your social media, on your commute to work, on your television, when you browse the internet — everywhere.

The prevalence of ads in today’s technologically advanced world has made advertising a demanding job. With continual hard deadlines and high expectations, it is a high-paced and draining environment. But, if you’re channeling your inner Don Draper, then you’ll need the skills to succeed.

What Are Advertising Skills?

Advertising skills are hard and soft skills that will help you find success in your advertising career. Certain traits, acquired skills, and experience will allow you to be a competitive candidate in the advertising industry.

Advertising, often used interchangeably with marketing, is a subset of the marketing industry. Advertising is the messaging used via print, digital, and video ads that attempt to engage the target audience and influence their behavior towards a specific result.

Top Advertising Skills to Include on Your Resume

Every job in every industry will have a set of skills they expect job candidates to have mastered. Below are the skills employers look for in successful advertising professionals:

• Creativity (soft skill). The advertising industry is highly competitive. National campaigns are now as simple as adjusting the location specifics on your digital ads. With the saturated market we see today, your company’s ads need to stand out to succeed.

  Creative thinking skills are necessary for a position like this. You’ll be required to think outside the box to find something that no one has done before. A creative mind can be the difference between a dull ad and something that resonates.

• Copywriting skills (hard skills). Advertisements include a copy. Strong copywriting skills are invaluable in advertising. You need a strong grasp of the language you’re working in and the ability to write clearly and concisely.

  More than excellent writing skills, you need to have an understanding of your target audience and an ability to write persuasively without feeling too sales-y. It’s a delicate balance, but one you need to find success in this industry.

• Interpersonal skills (soft skills). Advertising will never be a solo mission. You will work with your clients, your superiors, coworkers in your department, and often employees in other departments.

  Your clients and superiors will expect you to demonstrate solid interpersonal skills. If you can communicate efficiently and play well with others, you have the opportunity to become a key member of the team.

• Project management skills (hard skills). Each ad campaign will need to be managed from start to finish. You must be able to handle the moving parts of each campaign — parts that may reach outside your department. That means good project management skills.

  While project management is itself a hard skill, it consists of a mix of hard and soft skills. A good project manager is:

  • Organized. You’ll have several smaller pieces that make up the whole of your campaign. Not to mention the number of hands in the pot.

  • Able to track and meet deadlines. Building an ad campaign is a bottom-up effort. You’ll need each of the individual pieces to build the larger whole. Each campaign will have continual deadlines that need to be managed.

  • Good at task management. You’ll need to schedule and assign each task, monitor progress, and provide feedback.

• Communication skills (soft skills). While this does fall under the umbrella of interpersonal skills, your communication skills are integral to your success in advertising.

  You should be able to actively listen and comprehend what your clients and your superiors want. You will also need to communicate with each member of the team via written and verbal communications. Public speaking will be part of the pitching and presenting processes.

  Solid communication skills are expected in most positions. In advertising, it’s not just expected — it’s required.

• Research skills (hard skills). Advertising research, a form of market research, will help you determine if an ad campaign will be effective. This includes the research that happens before the campaign is built and launched, as well as the analysis of the results after the campaign has been launched.

  Research in advertising goes far beyond a Google search. Data collection and analysis will play a role in every campaign. Beyond that, you need to intimately understand your customer personas and target audience.

  You will be expected to keep up with market trends and social trends to build effective campaigns. You want your ads to be relevant and noticeable — for all the right reasons.

• Analytical thinking skills (soft skills). Analytical thinking skills are the “soft” side of analytical skills. This does not refer to the hard skills required in data analysis, but the ability to detect patterns, evaluate information, and make decisions based on that data.

  It can sometimes be difficult to be both creative and analytical, but an industry like advertising calls for it. Your creative side will help your ads be unique, but the analytical side will ensure that they are geared towards your target audience and deliver effective results.

• Marketing skills (hard skills). Advertising may fall under the marketing umbrella, but it requires a very specific set of skills. There are certain “marketing skills” that will be expected and required. You will want to have some mastery of:

  • Customer Knowledge

  • Branding

  • Competitive Analysis

  • Social media skills

  • Storytelling

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

  • Marketing Automation

• Decision-making skills (soft skills). Every step of the ad-building process will require a multitude of decisions. They may be as simple as color and imagery or they may be infinitely more complicated and research-backed. Strong decision-making skills will help you to make the right choices and meet your deadlines.

• Time management skills (soft skills). In advertising, you will deal with continual, and often urgent, deadlines. There is a strong possibility of multiple projects occurring simultaneously as well. Without time management skills, you will never be able to complete your tasks and projects on time.

  Can you analyze your workload, set a schedule — for yourself and others — assess priorities and delegate when necessary, and stay focused on the task at hand? Luckily, there is plenty of software available to help you schedule, monitor tasks, and collaborate with ease.

• Teamwork skills (soft skills). Like many other soft skills, teamwork skills are a combination of several soft skills. It boils down to one thing: do you work well with others?

  Advertising is a team sport. You may make certain decisions or complete certain pieces of the project on your own, but you will always be working with a team.

Types of Advertising

The above skills are universally sought-after in the advertising industry. The hard skills you will be expected to have will depend on the type of advertising you choose to focus on.

• Digital advertising. With digital advertising, your ad campaigns will be distributed through online platforms. This type of advertising allows you to very selectively target your audience and track success in real-time. Digital advertising includes:

  • Paid search advertising. Paid search advertising, often referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) or search ads, are the ads that show up with your search engine results. The advertiser bids on ad space associated with specific keywords; you only pay when the ad is clicked.

    This involves copywriting with very narrow guidelines and extensive keyword research. This type of advertising is extremely data-driven and competitive.

  • Social media advertising. Social media is king these days. Advertising on social media, through boosted posts and paid ads, allows you to serve ads in real-time to a targeted audience. With the ever-changing algorithms and guidelines, it requires you to stay on top of trends at a constant rate.

    Platform matters here. This is a very competitive market; ad space is limited and highly sought after. So, you want to choose your platforms wisely based on your target audience and the goal of your campaign.

  • Display advertising. Often referred to as “banner” ads, display ads are served to potential customers as they browse the internet. Served along the top or on the sides of web pages you visit, they are simply an image or video with a clear CTA.

    Display ads are prevalent and not at all subtle in their attempts to sell. They can be ineffective, but they keep your brand and products or services at the forefront of your target audience’s mind. So, they can make your next ad more effective.

  • Native advertising. Unlike the not-so-subtle display advertisements, native ads are intended to blend in. With this type of advertising, the sales message is often secondary. Served in the form of videos or articles, they are built to provide valuable information while also pushing you towards a product, service, or brand.

    These types of ads can be curated by the company itself, through influencers on social media, or affiliate marketing.

• Traditional advertising. Traditional advertising is all forms of advertising that happen off-line. Think Mad Men. You’ll be able to channel your inner Don Draper with traditional advertising.

  You may be able to get your ad in front of as many people as possible, but your targeting is severely limited. It can sometimes be difficult to determine the success of these ad campaigns as well.

  Traditional methods are:

  • Print advertising. With print advertising, you place your ads in…well, print. This can be newspapers or magazines, diner placemats, flyers, posters, direct mailers, banners, etc.

  • Broadcast advertising. These are your television and radio ads. While we typically think of the commercials that play during show breaks, they can also be infomercials or “word-of-mouth” type advertising supplied by a radio announcer or tv host.

  • Outdoor advertising. This type of advertising is focused more on branding and broad messaging. It relies heavily on graphic design and concise copy.

    Traditionally, outdoor advertising is displayed on billboards. There is little to no targeting with these types of ads (outside of the area) and it is extremely difficult to measure results.

Author

Samantha Goddiess

Samantha is a lifelong writer who has been writing professionally for the last six years. After graduating with honors from Greensboro College with a degree in English & Communications, she went on to find work as an in-house copywriter for several companies including Costume Supercenter, and Blueprint Education.