I’ve been holding interviews for Marketing Executive roles recently and I’ve noticed a worrying trend. New marketers coming through University and early work experience are lacking industry basics.
It’s widely agreed that digital is the future. Digital is trackable. Digital looks shiny. Digital is exciting. Digital is at the cutting edge of marketing strategy. However, there is a problem with digital in that it’s still not the world. The Office of National Statistics estimates that 38 million adults (76%) in Great Britain access the Internet every day, therefore there are still over 9 million people who don’t use the internet. It’s naive to assume that digital is all-encompassing in the marketing spectrum, one day it might be, but not yet.
It’s easy to assume that because we’re aware of innovation and technology then everyone will be. This is not the case. A major chunk of the population are late majority or laggards when it comes to the adoption curve (taking you back to CIM theory), never forget this.
So, what’s the problem here? Following these recent interviews, it’s become evident that the majority of new marketers presented to me are 95% digitally focused and when asked about the experience of more traditional routes their knowledge and experience has been found lacking.
The Marketing Executive level should have a basic understanding of the whole marketing mix and be able to build on their knowledge with real-world experience preparing them for the next step in their career. If I could offer any advice to people at this level it would be to ensure that they embrace all aspects of marketing, don’t become pigeonholed into purely digital. Within an integrated marketing campaign, there is still the need for traditional communications channels to be used where appropriate and this won’t change for a long time yet.
Yes, digital is important, yes it’s probably the future of our industry but do not ignore the market needs and audiences of the present.
There is an advantage to being a generalist marketer. You shouldn’t be affected by industry trends and should be able to adapt and still be relevant and important to employers in the market. When I first started my career there was a huge push towards Direct Marketers, that’s where the best salaries were and there was a desire for people to become specialists, spin on 10 years and these roles hardly exist anymore as the world has changed. The same may be for digital marketing, who knows what the next decade will hold, hence why it’s so important to be able to adapt and understand different needs of your audiences.
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