How to identify the Marketing skills your business needs
You might have plans to do more with LinkedIn, send customer emails more regularly, or finally give your website some attention.
But who will do the work? And how confident are they about doing it?
In a small business, it might be you or one or two colleagues who coordinate your content or social media, or keep the website up to date – alongside everything else they're responsible for.
I'd recommend starting with a review of the skills you already have in your business, where there might be gaps, and what you or someone on your team could benefit from learning.
Start with what your business needs Marketing to achieve
What would you like to achieve in the months ahead? More enquiries, better relationships with existing customers or greater awareness of a particular service?
Then think about the work that could help you get there.
If you'd like more repeat business, for example, improving the emails you send to customers might be more useful than learning another social media platform. If people aren't clear on what you offer, your website content may need attention.
I often find that small businesses have plenty of ideas for what they could do. The challenge is deciding what matters most and making sure the people doing it have the know-how.
Review your Marketing activities and who owns them
Have a think about the marketing activities that take place week on week: Who writes the LinkedIn posts, sends the newsletter, updates your website, or follows up after an event or webinar? Who decides what to say, when to send it, and whether it worked?
In a small team, these responsibilities typically develop as you go – someone is good with words, so they write the posts. Someone else knows how to use the email platform, so newsletters become their job.
There's nothing wrong with making use of people's strengths. However, being able to operate a tool isn't always the same as knowing how to get the best from it.
Equally, don't assume training is the answer to everything. A newsletter that’s late one week may be due to workload or unclear priorities rather than a lack of skill.
Where are the gaps in skills and confidence?
I recommend reviewing the individual tasks rather than asking whether someone is “good at Marketing”.
You might enjoy writing articles but aren't sure how to structure them for your Blog in a way that supports SEO. Your colleague may be happy posting on LinkedIn but less confident deciding what to share, or understanding which posts are useful to the business.
If someone else is involved, ask how they're finding those particular tasks – What comes easily? What takes longer than it should? Is there something they'd like to learn or take greater responsibility for?
This matters beyond getting the work done. A less experienced team member could welcome the chance to build a new skill. Someone else who's done the same task for years might be ready to deepen their knowledge.
I worked with a small business owner who had very little confidence using LinkedIn – she wasn't sure what to post, how to position herself or how to use the platform to reach potential customers. Through our coaching sessions and the practical guidance I provided, her confidence increased – as did her understanding of how to use LinkedIn to reach her business goals.
While I set up and initially managed her LinkedIn Company Page, she gradually took ownership. She planned her own posts and understood how they complemented her personal profile posts and other marketing activities. When our collaboration ended, she'd developed her LinkedIn skills and felt more confident in building her personal brand. She also felt clearer about her business direction - she was more certain about what she wanted to achieve moving forward.
Which Marketing skills should you prioritise?
According to Marketing Week's 2026 Career & Salary Survey, 42.1% of respondents identified a lack of understanding of marketing effectiveness within their teams.
That's research among marketing professionals, but the underlying point matters for smaller businesses too: it's useful to know not just how to do something, but whether it's helping your business.
Depending on your priorities, here’s a list of useful areas to develop:
Email Marketing: Planning what to send, writing useful emails and checking the results.
Content creation: Finding relevant ideas, writing blogposts and making better use of the knowledge already in your business.
Social media: Choosing what to share, keeping activity manageable and understanding what it's achieving.
Website management: Writing clearer pages, making updates and understanding the basics of SEO and GEO.
Campaign planning: Bringing everything together around one objective, rather than treating emails, content or social posts, for example, as separate jobs.
You and those who support your marketing activities don't need to become Marketers – but understanding how these activities work together can help you decide where to spend your time.
Don't overlook Generative AI skills
The same Marketing Week survey found that 66.5% of respondents had identified an AI skills gap in their teams during the previous year. It's worth considering how Generative AI could help with tasks such as shaping content ideas, producing first drafts or organising information.
That said, I wouldn't put learning how to use Gen AI tools ahead of understanding the task itself. If you don’t know who a marketing email is for, what it should say, or why you're sending it, an AI-generated draft won’t tell you. You risk confusing your audience and potentially damaging trust in your business – knowing what good looks like helps you use these tools well and recognise when their output needs work.
Turn the skills gaps into a practical development plan
From experience, I'd recommend picking one or two areas where developing your skills, or those of someone in your team, would make a noticeable difference to the business while also helping you or them grow professionally.
That might mean getting comfortable with a website system, or learning how to plan a series of emails – and what you want from them. Maybe empowering a colleague to take more ownership of content creation.
I also recommend keeping the bigger picture in mind – be clear about what you want to do afterwards, rather than simply choosing a learning topic.
Time needs factoring in too. CIM research published in May 2026 found that 78% of marketers surveyed saw workload as their biggest barrier to developing new skills. (Limited resources and heavy workloads are par for the course for small businesses.)
There's little value in setting aside time for learning if there's no opportunity to put it into practice afterwards. My advice is to start with a manageable goal and make room to try things out.
Developing your team's Marketing skills
Through my work with small business owners, I've seen how useful it is when someone goes from knowing how to carry out a task to understanding how to do it well and why it matters.
That's what I focus on in my tailored marketing upskilling sessions – whether I'm working with an owner who wants to feel more confident, or a colleague developing their responsibilities.
We can work on a specific area, such as email marketing, content creation, LinkedIn or campaign planning, using your business and the activities you actually need to deliver as the starting point.