How Marketing Execs Can Meet the High Demand for Digital Skills Head On
There’s no two ways about it: marketing executives with strong digital skills have never been in higher demand. The digital transformation of business has required strong digital skills for the past decade plus; but the pandemic kicked this trend into high gear. As our co-founder Edouard Thoumyre recently told the publication CPG Specialist: “The salaries for e-commerce and digital marketing people are skyrocketing.”
How do you take advantage of this trend if you are a seasoned marketing pro who wants to maintain or hone your edge?
And if you are an employer, how do you make sure you don’t get locked out in the cold when it comes to ensuring your team has strong digital skills?
Read on for our tips on building your digital know-how.
Use Social to Stay on Top of Trends
For a long time, it was sufficient for marketing pros to take a somewhat “hands-off” approach to social media. That is to say, they were aware of it, but not really “power users.” In this day and age, it’s important to use social media to stay on top of marketing trends and develop a sophisticated understanding of the marketplace.
Ask yourself if you are using social in the following ways:
- To be aware of what major competitors are doing. Where are the wins and missed opportunities?
- To stay in touch with colleagues and your network. Are you using LinkedIn to its fullest potential?
- To research new ideas. Reddit and Facebook groups are great places to road test new ideas.
- To see where the younger consumers are heading. Whether it’s TikTok or gaming platforms, where are your youngest consumers spending their time.
Always Be Training
As much as employers want to find marketing pros with top-notch digital skills, they are also always looking for those candidates who have a life-long dedication to training and self-improvement. Especially if you’ve been in the marketing game a long time, it’s a good time to contemplate areas where you want to develop your skills.
With free courses available from the likes of Google and major universities through Coursera, there’s never been a better time to beef up technical and business skills.
To learn more check out our roundup of 9 ways to enhance your marketing skills for free or cheap.
Ask the Right Interview Questions
To find a marketing executive who can seamlessly fit into your team, AND has the right digital skills and an attitude that will keep them evolving with the times, it’s essential to ask the right interview questions. When working with our clients, we recommend the following framework to help discover important but hard-to-pin-down qualities.
Encourage Skill Development
In a tight labor market, we are finding more and more companies that want to enhance their own internal talent base by assessing shortfalls and providing more training. Not only does this save money, it can also enhance employee satisfaction. If you are an employer, it’s very much worth crafting a plan to make the most of the talent you already have and figuring out which courses or resources they need to be more successful in their jobs.
