The digital revolution has changed the face of marketing. The fundamental basics may remain the same, but advances in technology have opened up a multitude of channels and techniques that organisations are able to use to communicate to their audiences.
Alongside the increasingly complex landscape marketers are working in, is the inevitable increase in the need for specialist roles in the digital sphere. The upshot is that during the first decade of the 21st Century the structure and staff that make up marketing departments have been altered almost beyond recognition.
What’s in a name?
Just take these job titles for starters: head of search marketing’, online marketing manager’, digital account executive’ and content editor’ – just a few of the new roles that have already firmly rooted themselves in marketing teams – roles that up until around 10 years ago were unheard of.
David Thorp, head of research and professional development at the CIM, says that over the last year, the number of different job titles of delegates attending the CIM’s training courses is close to a thousand, which is, “a significant increase on the number of job titles recorded just a few years ago.”
Simon Bassett, MD of specialist marketing recruitment firm EMR Recruitment, agrees. “Over the past five years, the number of digital roles we deal with has risen from 10 per cent to 25 per cent – at least a quarter of all our jobs have some element of online attached. Of course, job titles such as head of online’, digital marketing manger’ and online marketing manager’- in fact, anything with digital’ or online’ in the title – have become classic roles already.
“But I’ve noticed more recently that niche roles are cropping up and becoming more popular. For example, our clients are increasingly looking for marketers to fill positions that specialise in customer interaction with titles such as, online customer experience manager’, head of customer engagement’ and interaction manager’.”
Recruiting the right people
At the top level, this has had a profound effect on how marketing departments are functioning, explains Mhairi McEwan, MD at marketing consultancy Brand Learning. “Digital marketing and the influx of new jobs associated with it requires a whole new way of working, moving from a command and control style to shape and manage,” she says.
“So whereas the traditional, offline marketer would be used to working using a straightforward, linear approach, now it’s all about prompting and leading multiple conversations and activities on a number of different fronts. This is a complete mind shift for many marketers,” she says.
This means it is also necessary for a more complex structure within marketing departments and recruiting the right mix of people with the right skills in order to facilitate this fundamental shift is one of the major challenges facing heads of departments.
Bassett says that one issue that comes up time and time again is that when clients are looking for candidates for these new roles, they expect them to have years of experience. “A company with a vacancy for a social media manager is looking for candidates with five years experience,” he says. “The problem is, no-one has that because social media has only been around for about two or three years. The skills are still new so there’s a small talent pool, making it much harder to find the right people.”
Bringing in expertise is ultimately the key to success in the digital sphere, and this decision should be led from the top, says Shakeel Butt, director of creative agency Landau Reece. “You need board level buy-in and a strong leader who can see that digital marketing is relevant and understands enough of the technology to set up a team.”
Thorp agrees, but warns that traditional marketers – particularly at senior level and those who are more comfortable with traditional marketing channels – “need to ensure they don’t divest full responsibility for new media to others. Ultimately, it is their responsibility to have a good understanding of where digital creates or adds value.”
Getting a good balance
He adds that this could potentially create a Catch-22 situation. “Become too specialist and your career progression could hit a cul-de-sac. For example, will a head of digital be a good candidate for a marketing director post if they become too specialised?” he says.
“This can pose both management and succession challenges, and lead to frustration amongst the affected members within larger marketing teams; higher churn as specialists feel they have no choice but to move every two years in search of better salary or prospects; and a talent shortage for management when considering succession planning.”
There are also issues that arise in smaller organisations that can’t afford to bring in new people or create new roles. Thorp says these companies often push their existing marketers to develop new skills alongside their core marketing skill set.
“The average marketing manager now needs to develop a deeper awareness of online marketing strategies,” he explains. “This can create issues around developing marketing talent: the pressure on generalist marketers’ to have an even broader, and arguably unattainable, range of skills such as creative; technical; numerate; analytical and more.”
So how deep an understanding do traditional marketers need of the digital world? Gifford Morley-Fletcher, head of strategy for inbound marketing at Base One, says that because digital marketing touches and mirrors most areas of non-digital marketing, everyone in the team needs to understand a certain amount about digital marketing and what it can do.
“The messages all need to tie together, which means integration between on and offline is key.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that offline marketers must have the same depth of knowledge as their online colleagues though, he says.
“It’s useful to have some knowledge of technology, but what’s really important is to understand what the different tools can do and how they work together,” he says.
“You don’t need to know how to do it, but why you should do it, what it can do for you and how it fits in with everything else.”
Whatever way you look at it, he adds, there is a positive aspect to introducing new digital skills to a team. “They are covering a new area and broadening the horizon for the company and also for the people around them,” he comments. “When someone comes in and starts tweeting or blogging, by it’s very nature it involves other people – it’s not called social media for nothing.”
Training day
So how do marketers get into these kinds of roles in the first place? Bassett says that a common route is that one person – perhaps a marketing assistant – will start to work on the online aspect of the business. Two or three years later, after gaining plenty of experience in the online world, they are then able to move on with the specialist knowledge.
The other key method is through training and it appears that attendance on digital marketing courses is on the increase, with seven out of the 12 most popular courses the CIM run being digital-related (digital courses actually only represent 15 per cent of the total number of courses). One of the most highly attended courses is Social Media Marketing. The IAB also offers opportunities for marketers to learn about digital marketing – in January this year it relaunched its Digital Foundation course.
This has now been stretched to cover five days because according to Jack Wallington, senior programmes manager at the IAB, “It seemed important to cover everything from social media to email and lead generation, and understand how they work together.”
But is it too late for some marketers to learn new skills? McEwan is keen to point out the bigger picture, saying that ultimately, “digital marketing is still marketing. Where people go wrong is they get sucked into the technology and don’t think about what they’re actually trying to achieve. The core principles of marketing still form a critical base -it’s still about having a clear marketing strategy based on deep customer insight. Rather than teaching digital marketing as something that exists in its own right, we feel it’s important to weave in the impact of digital technology and help marketers adapt their own skills and evolve.”
Blaise Hammond, MD of Racepoint Group, says it’s true that marketers in their early to late 20s may find learning digital marketing skills comes more naturally and they may well be more attuned to building a career around online marketing then those that started their careers in the 80s, who will have to work harder at learning it.
Butt agrees, saying, “It’s easy to get left behind – but it’s important to realise that we are only at the beginning of this change – we’re on an ongoing journey and the technology will be continually updated. So whatever profession you’re in, it’s vital to continually update your skills. Once you give up on innovation, that’s when you stop learning.”
