Marketers Desperately Need to Close the Creativity-Technology Gap

Marketing Trend: Your Career at Risk!

There's a large shortage of marketers who have both creative and technical talents. But it's just that perfect combination of skills that's needed in today's marketing environment. So we've put together an overview of skills that are proving essential for a marketing pro's career growth.

(This is a valuable combination of skills which helps businesses grow, too, so managers take notice!)

Trend: Marketers Desperately Need to Close the Creativity-Technology Gap
 
With unemployment at 9.1%, competition for jobs is fierce.   Since businesses are forced to do more with less talent, they are looking for staff that can wear many hats – from interns to CMOs a diversity of skillsets is a must. Hiring managers will bypass resumes that don’t demonstrate a good balance of technical and creative capabilities that are essential for fresh digital marketing tactics. 
 
Takeaway

For businesses to continue evolving, the marketing staff must evolve as well.  Marketers need to sharpen their technical skills if they want to move ahead and stay employed. 

• Ad copywriters now need to understand SEO to reduce costly rewrites and edits.
• Graphic designers need to understand email marketing design best practices for rendering and deliverability
• Marketing associates need to sharpen their data management skills to assist with cross marketing and application activities
• Sales directors need to understand marketing automation to institute effective follow-up and lead nurturing programs. 
• Agency account executives need to understand it all.

 
Once functions of the IT department, the technical aspects of marketing are what make “creative” employees more valuable.
 

How To
 
First: If you are unemployed or looking for a promotion, consider cross-training to learn new skills. Shadow other employees and read up on the latest ways to merge technical and creative aspects of marketing. Cross training is an excellent way to enhance expertise and offer more value to any company, and encourages a seamless culture.  Don’t forget YouTube and other video sharing websites.  They all contain training videos on the latest marketing tactics.

Second: Periodically re-evaluate marketing operations and processes. Identify areas where technology can prevent hiccups in creative processes, and then give staff a set of goals. (We recently heard from a CMO who shadowed a CTO, learning simple IT project management tips that saved hours of marketing time.) If jobseekers demonstrate the understanding of this it will increase their chances of landing the job they want.

Third:  Managers should evaluate every type of marketing software used by their company. Find out what features nobody uses and why. You will find that in a number of cases unused features can enhance your marketing tactics but are being left out because of a lack of skills.  Ask the software vendor if they offer complimentary trainings or training videos.