Ashley Furness is a Market Analyst for Software Advice. She conducts expert research and runs the company’s CRM blog. Her professional experience spans journalism, sales, advertising and SEO marketing. She’s a seasoned writer having produced copy for New York Times-owned North Bay Business Journal and the Austin Business Journal, among other publications. You can follow her @CRMAdvice on Twitter.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects marketing employment to jump at least 13% between 2010 and 2020. That’s great news for those looking to break into the business, but job seekers be warned: The desired skills from today’s marketer are changing quickly.
This month, I interviewed more than 30 marketing and recruiting specialists to find out which new job titles they expect to appear in the next decade. Job seekers should use this list as a cue for future in-demand skills that they should brush up on today.
Marketing Integration Planner
The Marketing Integration Planner would identify ways to deliver a single marketing message, campaign or branding effort across multiple digital channels. For example, using a pay-per-click advertising campaign to promote a viral video, or using SEO keyword analysis to help craft a press release. The goal would be to find out where their customers are already interacting with the brand, and emulate their nonlinear, multiscreen purchase behavior.
Skills: Multichannel Digital Marketing, SEO, PPC, Adwords, Social Media Strategizing
Crowdsourcing Specialist
This role has two parts: listening and promoting. Companies can no longer dictate their brand identity to the customer. The crowdsourcing specialist would monitor conversations happening on the Web about the brand and develop messaging that responds to customers’ voiced expectations. On the promotion side, the crowdsourcing specialist would send out calls to action.
Skills: Social Media, Message Extraction, Personal Branding, Writing
Content Marketing Coordinator
This position would decide what content vehicles – such as websites, blogs, videos, infographics, webinars, social media and others – should be leveraged and how. The individual would decide how that content would be promoted and cross-promoted, then track its performance. Finally, the content marketing leader would look for externally-created content about the company on the web and find ways to leverage it for SEO and other marketing purposes.
Skills: Storytelling, Web Design, Video Production, Social Media, SEO, Public Relations, HTML5, WordPress, Marketing Research
Vice President of Marketing Data Analytics
Marketing campaign success shouldn’t be based exclusively on one metric – such as increased traffic, number of conversions, or fans on Facebook. All of this data should be analyzed together to understand exactly how strategies are impacting the overall perception of the brand across all channels. To this end, the Marketing Data Analytics VP would decide when, why, and how marketing data should be tracked. This includes data collected through marketing automation, website analytics, social media, email campaigns, mobile, SEO, content marketing, PPC, and other channels. This information would be shared with brand and campaign strategists who design promotions.
Skills: Google Analytics, High-Level Statical Analysis, Predictive Modeling, CRM, MA
ROI and Marketing Budget Officer
Marketing budgets are shifting from quarterly allotments for print, direct mail, and media advertising to constantly shifting spending from one channel to another. Return On Investment (ROI) data is often instantly available – from paid search ad spending, for example, so marketing can be more nimble with resource allocation. The budget officer would track ROI from all promotion channels and adjust spending based on those results.
Skills: Multichannel Digital Marketing, Accounting, Budgeting, On-Demand CRM
What’s Does it All Mean?
It’s doubtful that every marketing department will need all of these positions. The point here is to show the future of marketing through the most highly-desired skills and emerging job titles. Essentially, marketers can no longer dictate their message to consumers and expect results. The smart ones will look to the audience to drive the message and delivery – then track, measure and continually adjust.
“All the top-down, brand-driven marketing disciplines aren’t dead; they just must be balanced now with the consumer-centric disciplines that require brands to let go of the steering wheel and let the consumers drive,” Protagonist Partner Tom Cotton says.
If you want to remain a competitive candidate, it’s a great idea to work to add some or a few of these essential skills to your portfolio: content creation, Google Analytics, Adwords, social media, SEO, PPC, WordPress, Web design and multichannel digital marketing.
