Back in the Mad Men days of advertising, all you really needed to make it as a marketer was some machismo and a pack of Lucky's. Or so it seemed anyway.

Now, with the ongoing segmentation of the consumer Market (capital M), making  it as a marketer requires an evolving skillset. Part Content Writer, Part Coder/Programmer, Part social media expert.  And experience with the ancient arts of traditional and direct mail marketing doesn't hurt either. After all, even rocket scientists still study history.  And, on the opposite site of the coin, to be a successful business owner, you'd better get a handle on the very same issues as well.

Everything is about the Web now (even more than yesterday it seems) and the WEB is all about content – original content. So, where are you going to get it? What is it going to say? Where are you going to put it? And that content better fit in as perfectly with the search engines as it does with your marketing message(s). Because of that a new marketer has to know all about webmaster quality guidelines, webmaster tools, and analytics. They better know about RSS feeds and how to syndicate content (blogs, page copy, press releases, reviews, white papers, photos, videos, etc) across multiple channels.

A new marketer better know about backlink strategies, how to use ftp and dig into some code. Not necessarily to write it but to appreciate it enough to find surface level stuff, like images, meta tags, and page text.

A new marketer better know how to localize efforts down to the very core segments that make up your customer base. No more one-size-fits-all advertising. 

You get the idea. Think of it this way. Back in the days when mega-brands still stalked the earth, the consumer Market was like Pangea. Now, as new marketers, we need to realize Pangea is gone, and where navigating through a world that's more like the Galapogos Islands – your brand or business being more like separatingly evolving Finches. Each media outlet produces a different kind of bird (albeit subtle), so don't buy one kind of bird seed.  Observe those separate communities. And then engage them.