Marketing competencies have never been under more scrutiny. Victoria Clarke asks where marketers should be focusing their efforts in 2014. And, is it a case of out with the old and in with the new?
At the start of the new year it’s natural to reflect on your current professional situation and assess where you are on your chosen career path. Doing so can help you focus on your current skills set, as well as help identify any knowledge gaps that may impede on future success. With the rise of all things digital, marketers’ skills must keep up with the demands put on them by new technology, tools and trends. That’s not to say old skills should necessarily be discarded – traditional marketing disciplines still have relevance – but marketers may find they lose the race to competitors if they fail to broaden their digital education sufficiently. Atul Vohra, chief marketing officer at Solera, captures the essence of this perfectly when he says: “Progress comes through a continuous search to improve. In practical terms, I follow the 80/20 principle. Very simply – 80 per cent of my time is focused on the fundamentals but 20 per cent is around new trends and technologies. And it’s that 20 today that will drive tomorrow’s 80.”
Most people think of marketers as falling in to two camps with regards to their skills. Broadly speaking, they’re either a classically trained marketer with limited experience in digital or they’re a social media whizz, for example, who wings it when it comes to the more theoretical principles. So which skills are most crucial in 2014? Does an increasingly digital landscape mean marketers should be concentrating on learning how to stay ahead with current trends? Or are these efforts fruitless if grounding in marketing fundamentals
is lacking?
Classical skills count
In the Professional Development Benchmarking Report due to be published this January, B2B Marketing (in association with Circle Research) surveyed 250 agency and client-side marketers about their marketing skills. Among the issues discussed were which skills the respondents deemed most important and where they saw their weaknesses. Nearly half of the respondents (47 per cent) cited customer insight, segmentation and profiling – including research, data strategy and management – as the most important skill a B2B marketer can possess. This was closely followed by aligning marketing with business planning and strategy (44 per cent) and marketing planning and strategy – including research, budgeting and resource allocation (43 per cent).
While customer centricity and a strategy-led approach may be the most desirable skills in 2014, they are of course nothing new. Both have their foundations deeply rooted in classical marketing theories, which supports the notion that traditional skills still have relevance in today’s marketing departments.
However, in an increasingly digital world, it’s easy to side-line classical principles when marketers are faced with the more immediate challenges of learning new technology and channels. Marketers are constantly being reminded to exploit social media platforms, mobile marketing, marketing automation and a plethora of other digital tools – it’s no wonder old-school disciplines get overlooked at times. But when measurement and reporting are seen as equally crucial competencies (cited by nearly one quarter of respondents in the Professional Development Benchmarking Report), underpinning any digital activity with the kind of analytical approach favoured in classical marketing will achieve a greater return on digital investment.
Sophie Morris, marketing strategy consultant and founder of Millharbour Marketing, supports the idea that classical marketing skills are still highly relevant in 2014 but she says they must be modernised to address the fact marketing is now a two-way engagement process.
“Digital marketing needs to be part of a traditional marketing strategy to ensure integration and therefore maximum benefit and return to the business. The main reason traditional theories are discarded is they are built on one-way communication, which is not possible anymore, but it means we should adapt the theories – not ignore them.
“If we just ‘go with the flow’ with digital marketing and don’t apply basic marketing principles, then all we end up doing is chasing more followers, fans, likes and retweets, etc. But what does that mean? What does it deliver to the business? No one should have an objective of increasing followers and fans without knowing how that translates into business and how it achieves marketing objectives.”
Anna Fenten, head of marketing for sports, leisure and hospitality at Compass Group UK&I (Levy Restaurants UK), agrees that traditional marketing skills are still highly applicable in the digital world. In fact, Fenten seems to suggest that theories such as the four Ps (price, product, promotion and place) might be considered even more relevant given modern-day challenges. She argues: “An in-depth understanding around pricing, product and their relevance to target groups has never been more prominent. Just think of dynamic pricing or marketing automation functionality, which digital offers these days – where would we be without four, seven or multiple Ps?”
Fenten adds: “In an age when a proliferation of brand touchpoints is a rule, a clear brand vision that shapes all the brand’s activities is a must, and a classical strategic marketing education will provide you with the tools to create this vision. Message consistency and channel integration have been the golden rules in marketing for decades, and I believe will continue to be such.”
Limitations in tradition
While most marketers agree that traditional marketing skills still have value, there is an argument that doing something the way it’s always been done because it’s the accepted convention, may mean marketers stunt their professional development. Chris Russell, MD at Tribe, disagrees that traditional
marketing skills are necessarily the right area for marketers to concentrate their learning efforts. He suggests: “We’re all in search of the elusive tipping point and I believe traditional marketing training is leaving many brands behind. The world has changed and marketing needs to be more flexible and responsive to make an impact.”
B2B marketing has historically been regarded as lacking in creativity and innovation – perhaps this is a result of traditional marketing skills being too rigid in their foundations. If that’s the case
then Russell’s advice of “you need fresh thinking to be ground breaking” will certainly resonate.
If marketers fail to adapt their skills sufficiently to address an ever-increasingly tech-filled world, then the digital natives rising through the marketing ranks may just pip classical marketers to the post when it comes to that next promotion. While Andrew Buckley, head of commercial products at MasterCard, is a firm advocate of classical skills, even he nods to this outcome when he comments: “If you rely on the ‘young people’ to explain social, fairly soon they’ll be shaking your hand at your retirement party.”
Synergy is key
So far, we’ve largely explored the idea of classical marketing theories versus more cutting-edge digital skills but that isn’t to suggest the two should be considered separately. Instead the most lucrative skillset a B2B marketer can boast places these two approaches in rather a symbiotic relationship. While the general consensus is that traditional marketing disciplines should still underpin all activity – digital or otherwise, digital should equally be embedded within each of these fundamentals. As Vohra suggests, marketing fundamentals could be thought of as the building bricks on top of which digital skills are laid.
“[Digital] should be ingrained within each fundamental. Great customer experiences are all about convergence-use of web tools in bricks and mortar, and providing superior ‘hand holding’ virtually. Every marketing initiative needs to have digital integration,” he says.
Buckley concurs: “We don’t have ‘paper’ on the list of fundamentals, so similarly I don’t think ‘digital’ should be a separate item. Rather it should be part of the fundamental marketing action list of acquisition, loyalty or cross sell, etc.”
Approaches to learning
If digital competencies are best considered embedded within all marketing fundamentals, it’s important marketers balance their professional development to support this synergy of skills. As Vohra suggested at the start of this feature, an 80/20 split between focusing on the fundamentals and that of new trends
and technologies may well be a shrewd learning objective.
Nicholson echoes a balance of fundamental and digital skills is key to success. He reminds marketers, “We still need to be great at all the established skills such as proposition development, target segmentation and competitive differentiation. These are all still fundamental, but of course we need to understand new channels people use to consume messages, and understand that social and search are as inherent to marketing now.”
The challenge for marketers is that pressure to adopt and implement the latest digital channels and tools in order to remain relevant is huge. It’s no wonder, therefore, that marketers get bogged down in a swamp of siloed digital skills without actually knowing what they really mean in terms of achieving marketing and business objectives. Placing too much emphasis on learning about the latest tech and trends could lead to a number of pitfalls, as Fran Brosan, chairman and co-founder at Omobono, warns. She says: “There are two traps you fall into. One: you fall into a Jurassic Park approach to your marketing (just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should). In other words, you do lots of clever stuff that is largely irrelevant to your target audience. Two: you confuse clever presentation with the value of the product/service and messaging.”
Professional development routes come in all shapes and sizes, and the learning of new skills will ultimately be determined by the culture of an organisation as well as the preferred methods of the marketer. There are ways marketing departments can be set up and structured to support professional development with most experts agreeing on the principle that integrated teams are the answer.
Buckley also suggests good leaders will give their teams a mix of learning opportunities, from formal training to on-the-job new project experience. However, he emphasises education is also the responsibility of marketers themselves and suggests acquiring new skills may not always tally with an individual’s immediate role requirements.
“It’s important that individuals seize learning opportunities and personally invest in their own development. I recently learnt how to build an IOS app, not because I need to for my job, but because I wanted to know what it entailed.”
Whether marketers are looking to improve on basic fundamental skills or their digital capabilities, the need to be self-driven is absolutely paramount. As Vohra puts it: “Grow or die. All of us should be in a constant state of dissatisfaction with ourselves. Progress comes through a continuous search to improve.”
