Digital has fundamentally changed the way we buy, make decisions, and interact with one another. Digital skills are becoming increasingly important in businesses but there is often disparity between the demand for these skills and the talent pool. This is called the digital skills gap.
In this So video, the team discuss the findings from our latest Digital Marketing Skills Benchmark report, which now in it's fourth edition, and how it highlights some very significant shifts in skills in the past year and explores the impact this will have on organisations.
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Transcription:
So, what digital marketing skills are most in demand?
It’s a tricky one and a good thing to base this on is to look at our digital marketing skills benchmark and go, where are the skills gaps? So that will tell us where there's a bit of a problem, but then also to go off and look at the ads that are out there for the jobs that are being advertised. Try and look through and say, where are the most jobs being advertised in this area of digital marketing.
So, what then comes out on top?
Pretty much universally at the moment it is analytics and data. That is due to the fact that one, it's a huge skills gap. We've seen that in the skills benchmark, but also with the advent of GA4, the new version of Google Analytics, there's a real skills gap in that area. And as an industry, we're not great with data. So that's one.
The other two that are coming out top is social media and content. Now that's interesting because there's huge demand but our benchmark also shows a huge skills gap recently, but there's also a confidence gap.
People think they're good at content and social media, but the reality is lower down. So it's quite easy to go, oh yeah I'm good at content. Is that really true? We need some way of kind of putting a metric against that and measuring the success of that content and so on
I think in reality, I would say if you can be good at content, something creative, good at social media and so on, but also you can measure it, iterate it, that's where there's a big opportunity. So I would really kind of lean into the analytics and data, but then use that to apply it to the area that you're kind of most interested in. And that that becomes a bit more interesting.
So, is there any other skills focused roles?
So yeah, I think that if you look at search engine optimization, that's a constantly moving feast and really understanding that in detail is always massively in demand. Paid display and paid search, they're changing all the time as well.
But there's more machine learning in those spaces now. So to some extent, those tools are becoming easier to use, but I would still argue expertise in those areas is really, really important as well.
Bear in mind the creative aspects of this as well. The design, the video production, audio production, those things have massively in demand skills, but you need a lot of experience to get good at those kind of things as well.
So if you look at the digital marketing skills benchmark, we've got 14 different areas of expertise, and what we're actually seeing is there’s skills gaps in all of them. So I think it's working out what you're passionate about and where there's demand, but all of them need to be tied together with data as well.
And I mean, Ciaran, you've done this for your career, you've kind of gone through, iterated and improved and learned. And that's what you've been passionate about. It’s always been about telling the story, see what the story is. And a lot of that is around manipulating and playing with the numbers.
But if you can't measure it, you can't. And I think a big part of the success that I've had is being the guy that's able to do that. Sometimes it's about being brutally honest and going actually, this is really rubbish, what we're doing is really bad. That's great. You can only improve.
I'm not very good at maths, but I am quite good at playing with numbers and seeing stories within them, I suppose, so it's not necessarily even about mathematical ability, you just have to apply yourself and play with it a lot, and you need to be really good at spot the difference.
For me, it's about not adjusting too much so you can spot the one thing or the two things that made the difference.
So, is there any other key trends that you would know?
Yeah, I mean, huge growth in AI tools within digital marketing. So having some sort of knowledge and understanding of that can be really, really useful, but also understand their limitations. It's not you can just apply everything. If you read everything online, you're gonna make a million dollars tomorrow using AI tools, and it's amazing. Yes, there is big opportunity, but it's saying how do I apply that to this organization.
So you've got these areas of discipline; SEO, paid search, email. Yes, you need some expertise in those but you also need some the skills of analytical thinking and problem solving. You combine those two things with data and that's what's going to give you a great career within within digital marketing.