Euro 3 Plast: Our new research shows strong demand for Digital Skills

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

Our new research shows strong demand for Digital Skills

Latest survey indicates digital is popular with marketers yet a skills gap is apparent

For this research completed in August 2016 we got over 700 responses, showing the interest in skills development that we had hoped for. In the research, we were looking to establish a picture of the current level of skills within the industry and generate a picture of how marketing professionals see their personal skills and those for their business right now. The results reveal some interesting trends regarding the future digital plans of digital marketers and the feelings of managers who are recruiting for digital marketing positions. If you happened to be one of the people who took the survey, then a big thank you to you!

Download resource – Developing Digital Skills 2016

This Research explores one of the key marketing challenges for businesses today: what skills are needed to compete using digital marketing? It’s also highly relevant to individual career development for marketers too! It is free for basic and expert members.

Access the Developing Digital Marketing Skills

Career plans

Digital marketing is clearly well liked by those who choose to make it their profession. And rightly so, where else could you find marketing assassins, SEO ninjas and Social Media junkies? The sillier job titles of our industry aside, our survey shows that a good chunk of digital marketers are looking to keep the ‘digital’ part of their title job. An impressive 65% plan on developing their current digital skills or moving to a more senior role whose focus remains on digital marketing. Slightly less than one in five wanted to move to a more general marketing or management role that wasn’t explicitly digital as part of their career progression. Marketing itself is also clearly a popular profession given, only 1% of respondents plan on leaving the industry! A great endorsements of the field if there ever was one.

Recruiting for digital talent

Digital skills are highly sought after, and there is clear evidence for the existence of a skills gap, given over the vast majority did not think the recruitment of people with the skills listed was easy. That said, there were a few people in our survey thought it was extremely easy - were they lucky or is there just something most don’t know?!

What is interesting is both a majority of managers are reporting that recruiting for digital talent is hard, whilst a large chunk of digital marketers want to progress to more senior digital marketing roles. Clearly looking to train up staff to take on more senior digital marketing roles should me considered by all businesses large enough to put such a program in place. Of all the skill groups we looked at strategy and planning along with analytical and reporting skills were the most difficult to recruit for. This means employers should concentrate staff development programmes to develop skills in these areas.

Only 1 in 10 feel their development is strongly supported by their employer

Our research has demonstrated the need for employers to invest in their employee’s skills development. But are they listening? It doesn’t seem so. Only 11% felt strongly supported, whilst in total 58% did not feel slightly supported or strongly supported.