What is a rare and valuable skill each marketer should develop?

It's hard to pick one skill... product marketers have to master a variety of skills to be effective in their roles - influencing people, messaging, content creation, sales enablement, opportunity assessments, competitive analysis, etc. But if I had to pick one, I would advise product marketers to continuously refine their messaging skills. And what I mean by messaging is the ability to simplify complex topics and subjects into clear, concise and compelling stories and narratives that will resonate with the target buyers and users. Always ask yourself, how do I want my product or service to be perceived by the customer? How do I make it stand out in crowded field? How do I convince the customers that our product/service is the best solution to address their needs and pain points? This I believe is one of the most important, if not he most important, skill to develop for all product marketers.

Today's marketing is being disrupted at an exponential pace. We are constantly being overloaded with content and the traditional marketing channels are quickly getting saturated -- all leading to users quickly losing trust in traditional marketing methods. The one skill that is invaluable for each marketer is adaptability, primarily because of

1/ Constant market shifts: With the infusion of AI into our day to day, business models and products are changing rapidly. So are user preferences. Keeping up with the latest on "where to find your users" and "how to influence them" is key.

2/ Data is no longer king on its own: As marketers, we are starting to have more data to consume but with very few meaningful insights. Adapting to new perspectives of looking at the data will make it easy for you to draw patterns and make decisions on how to adapt your campaigns

3/ Campaign volatility: No matter how well-planned, campaigns encounter roadblocks. Maybe a platform changed its algorithm, or a competitor made a surprise move. Adaptability means not panicking, but pivoting to new tactics, re-targeting efforts, or finding a creative 'hack' to stay on track.

Data reporting and analytics. Having the ability to gather data (read: SQL skills are both rare and valuable for Marketers), cross-reference data, and - most importantly - draw insights from this data are essential for efficiency in your marketing experiments. A lot of marketers are masters in taking insights and developing a story or a plan, but having skills in the magic that happens before the plan is where a Marketers can stand out.