What does the future hold for marketers
In this blog I will explore what I personally feel the future holds for marketing professionals.
This is kind of the other half of a blog I wrote in the last few weeks about the future of sales people, but this I want to talk about marketing professionals. I must point out that I am talking about small business marketing folk who have to get involved in everything.
So like sales people, marketing has changed and is still changing everyday. The main change is again technology.
In this instance technology is not just a major factor, but now a required skill set. 10 years ago you didnt really need to understand that much technology to be a small business marketer. Today its probably one of the first skills to demonstrate.
It is not just about using technology either, saying you can use social media is not enough. Setting up and understanding Google Analytics is a good start.
There is still some creative involved but the old skills of designing great brochures and arranging the stand for the trade shows are slowly going away. Or actually there are not going away as quick as they should.
The reason is many small business marketers never had these technology skills and the idea of learning them is either too much work  or simply beyond their comfort zone.
The other skill that marketers need today is sales skills. Marketing now is measurable more than ever before and should be measured correctly and sometimes that;s sales. You should be able to answer how many leads each blog posts generates, you should be able to answer how many sales came from those leads.
If you cannot then you need to change something. I can put systems in place today some free and some low cost that will tell you who visits your site, what pages they read and what emails they read and click. I can tell you where people click on your website and even how far they read your blog posts. Can you do this? If not find someone who can help you. You can even ask me if you want?
So the future of marketing professionals is a more balanced skill set where marketing and sales and technology are all one. Ideally your teams merge and sales and marketing literally becomes one department.
Technology spend is of course rising and working with IT becomes important. Again IT need to understand the new sales and marketing team and work not just along side them but with them.
Sounds overwhelming? It is a little. The world  is moving fast and I do fear for this generation of workers who just do not either learn or adapt.
On a positive note there is so much free resource out there to learn all the skills you need for free and it is not as complicated as it may seem. Lean in and get stuck in. Those that do will reap the benefits. Those marketers that adapt and take on these new skill sets will be in demand and will command better salaries as they directly affect the bottom line.
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Author- Speaker - Consultant. Passionate about all things digital.