Top Skills Marketing Teams Need Beyond Traditional Digital Marketing

7 min read | Sep 10, 2025

By Marta Gongos

Modern marketers need skills like prompt engineering, community building, and cultural intelligence. These strengths complement AI tools while retaining authentic human connection and strategic creativity. Brands must revise recruitment & upskilling strategies to create effective, well-rounded teams in the AI era.

As recruiting experts in the marketing industry, we’ve learned that the strongest outcomes come from pairing human insight with AI fluency. Scaled large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT help marketers improve efficiency, productivity, and innovation. 

However, while AI technology is advancing at a breakneck pace, organizational adoption lags behind. To maximize its potential and meet the demands of the AI era and beyond, building an AI-literate workforce is a must. Keep reading to learn the top skills marketing teams need, plus hiring and upskilling strategies to help you stay competitive.

How AI Is Changing Marketing Skills

Because of artificial intelligence, the ability to generate copy, ideas, and images has become table stakes for marketers. However, core marketing skills remain essential. Top talent still needs a deep understanding of consumer behavior, a strong brand voice, and compelling content that generates leads. 

What’s changed is speed and scale. Whereas a marketer previously spent most time on execution, they now focus on orchestration: determining which AI tools to deploy, when to intervene, and how to maintain a human touch.

Learn more: How AI Is Changing Skills in Digital Marketing

Image Source: Shutterstock

5 Skills Marketing Teams Need in 2025 & Beyond

Here are the top five skills your team needs to meet the demands of the AI era.

1. Prompt Engineering

Whether your team uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or other AI systems, knowing how to write prompts is an essential skill. Clear prompts equal better copy, images, or ideas.

Hiring marketing professionals with strong prompt engineering skills helps your team:

• Get high-quality, on-brand outputs
• Work faster and more efficiently on marketing campaigns
• Maintain consistency, accuracy, and compliance

What is prompt engineering in marketing?

Prompt engineering is the skill of writing clear, precise instructions for AI tools to get the best possible results. In marketing, it’s how you guide AI to create copy, images, ideas, or even data insights that match your brand, tone, and goals.

Hiring Tip: Test your candidates’ prompt engineering skills during the interview process or in a separate skills assessment. Provide real-world scenarios relevant to your business. Evaluate both their process and the quality of the output.

2. Community Building & Social Selling

AI technology excels at automating customer relationship management tasks, but 93.4% of consumers still prefer interacting with humans over AI. So, while your team can offload routine tasks (i.e., email segmentation, scheduling social media posts, or marketing automation), you still need people who can connect on a human level.

Look for talent with strong communication skills who can:

• Build trust and lasting relationships with customers
• Start real conversations and create emotional connections
• Navigate complex social dynamics within online communities
• Translate brand values into authentic human experiences

Hiring Tip: Hire curious, empathetic communicators. Bonus if they’re experienced in community management, social media management, or customer service! These marketers often bring sharper consumer insights, relationship management skills, and engagement strategies.

3. Human-Guided AI Visual Storytelling

AI marketing tools now produce stunning, photorealistic visuals in seconds. While they can’t (and shouldn’t) replace human designers and artists, for many teams, they fundamentally change or add on to the required skillset.

Hiring Tip: Prioritize artistic and adaptable candidates. AI skills can be taught, but creativity and design intuition are harder to replace.

How can AI be used in photography?

AI can be used in photography to:

• Generate images from scratch
• Edit and retouch photos 
• Upscale and enhance low-resolution images
• Create multiple variations of a photo
• Background removal, object masking, or batch edits

4. Cultural Intelligence & Trend Analysis

The success of marketing strategies relies on your understanding of your target audiences. Knowing what resonates with different groups requires cultural intelligence and a keen eye for market trends.

Aside from must-have technical marketing skills for each role, we recommend hiring marketers who can:

• Analyze consumer data to uncover patterns and preferences.
• Perform data analysis to measure performance and inform decisions.
• Monitor social media platforms for emerging trends.
• Use market research to anticipate audience needs.
• Adapt messaging to resonate across diverse audiences.
• Use predictive analytics to anticipate trends and customer behavior.

Hiring Tip: Each social media or digital platform has unique audiences, tools, and trends. Look for talent who demonstrate platform-specific fluency, especially on key channels like Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube.

5. MarTech Fluency

Modern marketers need fluency across a range of marketing technologies (MarTech), not just ChatGPT. Every department or role relies on specific tools and software to execute campaigns. While these tools can be taught, the ability to quickly learn, integrate, and leverage them strategically is what sets top performers apart.

What tools should marketers master beyond generative AI platforms?

Hiring Tip: Look for learners, not just knowers. While candidates with direct experience in your MarTech stack can offer shorter onboarding, you may miss out on hidden unicorns if you’re too focused on past experience.

Image Source: Shutterstock

How Can You Upskill Your Team in Artificial Intelligence?

AI expertise can be nurtured through a mix of structured learning and practical application. Begin by assessing your team’s current skills and identifying gaps. Then, implement a combination of the following upskilling strategies:

• Enroll your team in reputable courses from platforms like Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, or industry-specific providers.
• Host internal workshops and lunch-and-learn sessions led by internal or external AI experts. 
• Give team members time to test AI on real projects and learn by doing.
• Create a shared resource library of prompts, successful case studies, tool recommendations, and best practices.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing in 2025 requires skills beyond traditional digital marketing; AI fluency, cultural intelligence, and MarTech mastery are now essential.
• Prompt engineering and AI visual marketing skills help marketers produce high-quality, on-brand content efficiently.
• Community building and social selling remain critical; human connection can’t be fully replaced by AI.
• Marketers must understand data, predictive analytics, and platform-specific strategies to drive results.
• Upskilling your existing team through training, hands-on projects, and peer learning ensures your workforce stays competitive.

Build an AI-Ready Marketing Team Today

Stay ahead of the AI era by focusing on skills marketing teams need: AI fluency, creativity, and data-driven strategy. As a specialized marketing recruitment agency, Ad Culture connects you with marketing talent with both fundamental marketing skills and AI expertise. 

We assess candidates for the hybrid competencies that ensure your hires can leverage AI tools while maintaining authentic human connections. Ready to build a team that thrives with AI? Contact Ad Culture today.