Single most important skill in Internet Marketing

Dedication

Perseverance

Anyone can learn tactics. Fewer people actually implement them. And even fewer actually stick to it long enough to see great success

Newspaper journalist are unable to easily determine how many people actually read their stuff, because newspaper management is oblivious to how many people read a particular article. That's off-line media. But online a blogger can tell right away when he is writing something readers care about. The ability to tune into the audience needs fundamentally changes the relationship between writer and reader. Therefore in my opinion the ability to write material that really connects and move ones audience to action is the most important talent of a marketer,

Market research. EVERYTHING flows from this. SERIOUSLY!

In my opinion there are lots of skills needed to be successful in this very competitive market place. But if I had to pick one it would be the ability to treat your internet marketing business as a real business. Lots of people play at this and think its as easy as clicking a few buttons and they are making a full time income. You invest your time and money and build your business over time, the same as an off line business. Get to know your customers and what they want and need and then go above and beyond their expectations.

FOCUS. I understand this is probably a boring answer and if someone would have said that was the "most important" thing when I first started I likely would've rolled my eyes. The reality though is that it takes incredible focus to find what is working and then scale it to great levels. It isn't about luck, it's about repeating the same productive actions over and over and over.

I think selling. If you can't sell, you can't do anything in life
you can't make more money at your job
you can't get married
you can't even tie your own shoes.... ok maybe not that...

If you can learn that then I would say CONSISTENCY! I guess that's the most important one at least for me because a lot of people get start in this industry, they try something and when it's not working after 30 days they quit or move to the next thing.

Credibility. Being believed. This is a very skeptical market and if
you can get people to believe your promises, then that is the greatest
skill in my opinion.

-Ray Edwards

As Gary Halbert said:

Putting a Hot Dog stand in front of a starving crowd with money.

You need to put in consistent action and focus on increasing conversions.

Create the irresistable offer and put it in front of your buyers. Done.

( But easier said than done. ;-) )

Alex

Taking consistent action.

Most people fail online because they lack consistency. They move from one thing to another. They give up once they fail. You can learn how to do marketing. You can learn how to sell. You can learn how to create products. But all these are useless without consistent action.

Cheers,

C.G.

Doing Stuff That Pays You... Not Doing Aimless Action

I agree with travisl. Its definitely perseverance. Its what you always hear. They kept at it until it worked. I am still persevering after 6 years of not getting there.

The ability to move from one unprofitable niche to another. Most people take out a 2nd mortgage just to earn a few bucks per month in a niche that they are IN LOVE with.

As soon as you realize that a niche is hard to reach, hard to sell, hard to get accepted in, etc... just leave it alone and go into a different and easier niche. No need to beat a dead horse.

I'm just trying to say is that the single most important skill in Internet Marketing is the ability to get the hell out of a dead niche and start over in a potentially profitable one.

the most important skill is learning to test to see what yields higher results

All areas of your mindset needs to be in check. If you are mentally, "just not your best", "something is just missing", then no amount of skills will bring you success.

I would say staying up-to-date with search engine algorithms and adapting to them quickly is very important.

Only one is difficult to nail down.

I have pretty good focus, perseverance, and not sure what else... o' yeah, hopefully continual learning, applying, and teaching amplitude

I lined up a basic squeeze, three actually, and sent a free report with an auto-responder... the backbone of the industry.. with 20 days out emails, after 2 or 3 funnel tests and 200.00 bucks on testing with one sale, I stopped (I was able to get a 45 to 50% squeeze out of the experience). Between that and trying to keep up with click banking my funding ran dry. I did wind up with 200 subscribers.

I was patient enough to wait until I understood tracking first and made sure I was testing... that took me some time to understand.... it paid off... other wise I would not have identified the problem so early on in my runs.Way worth the education.

Traffic and Convertible funnel in that order... lol, and of course you want to get them connected with your auto-responder at sometime, the rest you can work on as you go.

I could be more focused and consistent, what I needed was an affordable funnel that would convert. Since then I have learned from boat loads of products. Little over a year of focused product buying, it boils down to having traffic first to a convertible sales page/funnel.You can send traffic all day long,but it has to have a destination before you can exchange. Of course if I could get traffic,it would not take long to find a funnel that converts. Take either of those two out of the equation and you are playing catch-up the whole time. If you are unable to afford continual testing and email response testing until you start seeing a return you are bumming. If you can get good quality traffic at the best price to a convertible funnel with a respectful ROI you are in. Without those you are up the creek

Bob

Persistent

I think there are actually two skills that are needed, as I have learned so far since I have been online.

#1 - The discipline to be consistent; I haven't had enough of this in the past myself and I am working on improving this one this year. I believe consistent action is huge.

#2 - Copywriting; I am working on a course myself and I believe this goes hand in hand with building your list and writing your email campaigns to provide value to people, consistently.

If these two skills are mastered, any individual is way ahead of the curve and will be more successful in the long run.

Focus and perseverance. I found my biggest hurdle was focussing on one system and not being distracted by new shiny objects in my inbox everyday

1. Getting into the mind of your prospects!

How are you going to craft your marketing message and fulfill a need if you don't know everything about your prospect, his beliefs, problems, obstacles and concerns?

Anything else is pretty much secondary..

2. Elimination of obstacles

The ability to analyze what you're doing wrong without getting overly emotional, learning from mistakes and constantly adjusting your course.

If something is not working, you look for the problem, you learn the lesson and you move on, you're constantly looking to improve everything you're doing and after some time you end up having more and more success and failure rates become lower and lower.

At some point you're getting unconciously competent at all that stuff and it becomes super easy and you always see what mistakes you're making, which helps you to eliminate obstacles that stand between you and your next goal.

Eliminating obstacles is also what keeps you focused on exactly what it is that you have to do, which helps you leverage your time and only work on those things that are really needed.

Of couse you can't do all this without..

3. Perseverance

which you can only have by believing that it's possible.

the basic business traits would remain same whether marketing on internet or anywhere else. if u can form emotional connection with ur customers then u'r success.

persistence and creative mind . Also you must know how to effective organise your time

Ability to find the targeted audience. It's like finding pearls out of the ocean. Seriously, If you could do this, you have won the half battle.

You can't succeed if you quit and you have to stay focused. People give up too quickly. This is a problem I know I have. I want instant results and when I don't get it I lose focus and quit. I'm trying to stay focused this year.

Yes persistence, skill, targeted traffic and all that stuff is very important, but....

The most important skill is...

Being able to Manipulate Human Behavior!

I know it sounds kind of negative but marketing is marketing. How to get people into your sales funnels and get them to take out their credit cards to buy stuff from you.

Good question...I like and agree with maxqsoft's answer, "The ability to tune into the audience needs fundamentally changes the relationship between writer and reader. Therefore in my opinion the ability to write material that really connects and move ones audience to action is the most important talent of a marketer."

How many times has a word or phrase captured your attention and moved you to action? It happens every time you optin or buy an idea, product, or service! That said, let's take an example of just one header promoting a product or service...

"Absolutely Coveted Guru Secrets Revealed"

There is a ton of intellectual appeal in that headline/header. Intellectual impact words are best used to attune copy and sales messages aimed at people and businesses involved in the fields of education, law, medicine, research, politics, and similar fields. While not restricted to these groups, by giving presentations which are weighted with Intellectual impact words, your clients and customers will be more positively influenced and you are more likely to attain a more favorable response.

Copywriting.

Innovation,

the skill of looking at a situation or an idea or a product and see things most other people will never see. To see possibilities in situations that other people don't see

To be able to take a raw idea and refine it, repurpose it

Its the one thing that cant be taught or bought...

Everything else in the lists above can either be learnt parrot fashion or can be bought by paying someone else to do

Now I hadn't expected so many different answers... seems like perseverance and similar come back in several answers, but that's a character trait rather than a skill, right?

Perseverance. For sure.

Here is my top list in order to succeed with internet marketing.

1.) Educate yourself from an expert in internet marketing (mentor)
2.) Learn whatever skills are necessary to build an internet business.
3.) Take action every single day - learn to be consistent.
4.) Never, I repeat, NEVER give up.

If you keep going, you will eventually succeed and reap the rewards. If you quit however, you'll only be a quitter!

My single answer would have been FOCUS....but after browsing over the thread, I see a lot of factors that come into play. FOCUS alone won't get you nowhere if you are not selling, or targeting the wrong market for example.

I believe that most all of these answers a great! However, there must be a synthesis of many of these skills together in order to be a great marketer. I don't mean that we have to know everything, but there are several key skills that each marketer must possess and I think many have been mentioned here. Thanks for all of the good answers. Challenges me.

Sales. After all if you don't know how to sell in print or in person, very little is going to happen.

I think it is a combination of things in my experience, although I have learned a lot and put it to use, I feel I still have a long way to go. What has seemed to help me with internet marketing is dedication. It's one of those things that if you effort in, and you do it the right way, you can get results.

he is asking for an "skill" not a IMers character, i think the most single skill to consider more useful is "turning website visitors into loyal readers into loyal customers".

Internet marketing is 2 words...

The internet is merely the medium used to convey your marketing message.

Marketing is where it is at. It should be 80% of what you do.

If you don't understand marketing, then spend 80% of your time learning it.

Specific skills?

How to write killer copy.

Then you can sell snow to the Eskimos... assuming they have internet... of course.

Pre-Selling
The ability to sell something without presenting
yourself as a hardcore salesman is a very important
skill. That is what is called Pre-selling

Learn new trends and implement them quickly into your business. Ability to adapt in fast paced environment.

Ad copy and relating to your customer, client, JV partner etc.