Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a promotions manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Promotions Manager is responsible for planning and managing campaigns to promote their companies products and services by increasing short-term sales and improving the results from other marketing programs. This position requires one who has a bachelor's degree in the fields of advertising, marketing or business.
The primary roles include, determining the length and timing of promotions, working alongside product development team to incorporate events after production of the products, developing and launching discounts, samples, gifts, rebates, coupons, sweepstakes and contests, marketing promotions to various businesses, sending promotions through direct mail, inserts in the newspapers, internet advertisements, product endorsements etc., working with marketing and sales departments to create promotions, planning advertising campaigns, measuring the effectiveness and optimizing if need be.
Core Skills Required to be a Promotions Manager
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A promotions manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Multi-Tasking:
Multi-Tasking allows one to juggle and perform more than one task at a time without losing track of what you are working on or dropping the ball.
A Promotions Manager must learn the trick of multitasking and help the staff balance the competing demands of their time and energy that they are expected to handle multiple priorities every day without compromising on the effectiveness of the work done.
Inspiring others:
Inspiring is encouraging one to be their best in contributing to the vision of an organization where they are placed and entrusted to work.
A Promotions Manager must create a culture where the staff can use their professional prowess and aspire to be the best by giving them a clear vision and purpose through decisive leadership that motivates and inspires them.
Decision Making:
Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.
A Promotions Manager cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.
Performance Management:
Performance Management is a method by which supervisors and employees work together to plan, monitor and review the employee's work objectives and overall contributions to the organization.
A Promotions Manager should invest in performance management to shift the focus from the annual reports to a more continuous form of accountability by implementing periodic meetings while ensuring a continual push for progress rather than an immediate rush to meet objectives during the review time.
Appearance and Grooming:
Appearance and Grooming are the way one presents themselves in a professional environment or the workplace with the aim of gaining positive impression and respect as well.
A Promotions Manager must be an example in proper grooming and professional appearance while ensuring all the workmates adhere to the basic guidelines presented for good grooming in the workplace that represents the company wherever they go.
Dependability:
Dependability is the characteristic of being able to be counted on and relied upon by providing services that be trusted within a period.
A Promotions Manager needs to be dependable and hire reliable employees who can be counted on as consistent and beneficial to the business, building their niche as an essential element of the larger team without worrying about bringing less than your efforts.
Initiative:
An initiative is the ability to assess and initiate things independently often done without any managerial influence offered.
A Promotions Manager must train his workers to take up tasks without being asked to and work on them without being supervised to a quality that is accepted by the company, therefore nurturing a skill that grows the individual and the group as well.
Attention to Detail:
Attention to Detail is the capacity to achieve a thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.
A Promotions Manager needs to have this prime characteristic and utilize it in a high performing organization that allows both the customers and staff to understand the need to be keen to all the details required to avoid massive costs for overlooked details that are common in the workplace.
Monitoring Others:
Monitoring others is tracking employee activities monitor the worker engagement with the workplace-related tasks.
A Promotions Manager should always monitor his workers to measure productivity, track attendance, incoming and outgoing phone calls, safety spying, employee theft, employee's location, horseplay and collect proof of hours worked using the latest computer detective monitoring system that provides accurate data that cannot be debated.
Role Awareness:
Role Awareness is the ability to be informed of your role in a given environment as well as understand the expectations placed on a position and to see how they are met apparently.
A Promotions Manager must assess, measure and quantify his employee's awareness of their roles to see if they are transparent about what is required of each of them and review what kind of results they are delivering from their understanding.
Hard Skills Required to be a Promotions Manager
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A promotions manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.