Are you ready to be a marketing leader?

Whether you’re looking for career advancement in the next 12 months or strengthening your position as a competitive candidate, taking steps towards leadership in 2021 means more than just operating at a strategic level. For marketers in today’s uncertain conditions, being adaptable, resourceful, resilient and innovative are essential skills for success.

Leadership starts with your mindset. Strengthening your critical thinking skills will enable you to change business challenges into opportunities for growth. The ability to assess information and situations to derive insights and determine the best course of action has never been more important, with the rapid advancement in digital adoption catalysed by the global pandemic disrupting even the most technologically able businesses.

Today, therefore, senior marketers need to be able to differentiate between gimmicks and those tools that could offer a competitive edge. This goes one step further than simply measuring challenges against the opportunity to create value, this is about innovating ahead of your competitors based on market and customer insights. Marketers able to spot trends before they become mainstream – and tease out business openings – are highly valued by their organisation and none more so than in times of flux.

However, communicating these ideas is equally – if not more – important than conceiving them in the first place. Learning the language of the board often means adjusting the way you communicate. To this day, in many organisations, a business-wide, commercially minded lexicon is much more likely to open up opportunities than conversations on reach, engagement or conversion. Evidence, as ever, is critical, with proficiency in data and analytics increasing by 6% amongst marketing directors in the last two years according to data from Target Internet published in the 2020 Digital Skills Benchmark.

In order to communicate effectively, both internally and externally, being an adept storyteller is crucial. Even at the most senior level, anthropologists believe our brains are wired to comprehend stories with this simple structure – they hold our attention and enable us to absorb a surprisingly large amount of information. Marketers seeking advancement should have a grasp of the power of storytelling and understand how it can be used to shape an organisational narrative – one that every employee can remember and internalise.

Understanding the skills required to be an effective leader is one thing, internalising and implementing them is another. If you’re ready to take the next step in your career, the CIM Marketing Leadership Programme, which is the equivalent level to a master’s degree, enables experienced marketers to strengthen their strategic skills. In times of uncertainty, the robust syllabus will enable studying marketers to turn challenges into opportunities for business growth using strategic thinking.

Understanding and responding to the ever-more dynamic marketing environment means creating insight that adds value to your business, by developing the vision and direction to translate it into growth. With a range of modules, from building your consultancy proposition to implementing a culture of agility, the CIM Marketing Leadership Programme will enable you to become an influential change leader ready to grow both your own professional profile and your organisation.

Ready to take the next step? Sign up to the CIM Marketing Leadership Programme today.

Build your leadership skills and knowledge