Why digital marketing is no longer ‘the marketing of tomorrow’
“ I ask different questions in interviews these days. It used to be all about the marketing mix, presentation skills and networking ability. Now I want to probe their approach to developing a lead score, or maybe their thoughts on impact points in our lead generation funnel, or even just which influencers they follow, and why. It was never a conscious thing, but somewhere along the line my interviews became completely digital marketing focused “
Marketing Director, Brisbane
It wasn’t so long ago that Digital Marketing – and particularly the social media side – was seen as a quirky offshoot to the serious work of sales and marketing. Many of the functions, and even much of the management, was left to interns and new hires, who operated with limited budgets and even more limited attention from their supervisors.
In recent times, companies started to develop a broader understanding of the digital marketing world, and began to up-skill their existing marketing teams to include aspects of online marketing into the mix. Skill sets such as ‘Google Advertising’ began to creep into position descriptions for new roles, and there was a flourishing of ‘consultancy’ positions as companies tentatively dipped a marketing toe into the online world.
In the last year in particular, with COVID restrictions and lock-downs in place across the country and around the world, the move to acknowledge the critical importance of digital marketing has accelerated, with an explosion of job ads and soaring demand for training. Companies with a weak online presence have found themselves in a scramble to catch up, while more established players are seeking to lock in their commercial advantage in the space. The consensus is clear among all; The digital economy is embedded in every corner of our lives, and it’s not going anywhere.
At an operational level, this shift in focus means that there’s a matching shift in resource allocation within the marketing budget, with a greater share of funding going into digital marketing now as opposed to traditional marketing. At an employment level, demand for skills such as content creation and curation, social media strategy, martech and analytics is soaring, while there are few areas of marketing that match the earnings of those with skills in in technologies like SEO and SEM. For the first time, digital marketing professionals have equal footing in the decision making process at companies across the economy.
Skilling for the ‘new world’ of marketing will be a critical focus for customer-facing organisations for years to come, and demand for trained staff will only continue to grow.
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