The insights shared by our marketing respondents indicate a quickly changing field that requires widespread skills and knowledge. Let's take a closer look at the current state of the digital marketing landscape.
Mondo's annual Tech and Digital Marketing Salary guide reported a "huge demand" for digital marketing professionals, with a 70 percent increase between 2016 and 2017. As this looks set to continue, digital marketing roles will likely be filled, at least in part, by professionals transitioning from other fields. The findings from our marketing respondents seem to support this notion, as there is an almost even split between those who started in the field (47 percent) and those who did not (53 percent).
Small marketing teams are the most prevalent across the board, with 60 percent of Marketers working in teams of 10 or fewer employees. Marketing respondents were also involved with a number of marketing activities, including content creation, research and strategy, campaign implementation, and content optimization.
Looking at the areas of involvement in relation to the seniority of a marketing professional, we see that the more senior a Marketer is, the more involved they become in research, strategy, and campaign analysis.
Despite their size, marketing teams are leveraging many digital marketing channels. Content marketing is the most widely cited, with 79 percent of digital marketing professionals making use of this channel. Content marketing is followed by organic social, email marketing, paid social, and search engine optimization (SEO).
When it comes to digital marketing tools and software, there are some clear leaders in the industry.
MailChimp was by far the most widely used email marketing platform. Similarly, 89 percent of digital marketing professionals use Google Analytics to measure their campaign performance.
Salesforce is the most popular customer relationship management (CRM) platform, with 49 percent of respondents citing it as their organization’s CRM of choice. And when it comes to content management systems, 68 percent of marketing professionals are using Wordpress.
In terms of social media management, respondents seem to either use Hootsuite to manage their social platforms or nothing at all. The most widely used platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, with Facebook coming out on top for both organic marketing use and paid social media marketing. Instagram, however, is 23 percent more popular for organic use than paid use.
Compared to other disciplines in the Digital Skills Survey, marketing respondents relied on a smaller range of industry tools, primarily using a few major platforms to get the job done.
Respondents ranked the overall level of digital marketing literacy within their organizations quite low, in fact, 73 percent ranked teams outside their own as having only basic or intermediate knowledge of digital marketing.
When it comes to professional development, Marketers have done it all. With the exception of MOOCs, all other learning formats (webinars; workshops, seminars, or conferences; and in-person and online courses) had been explored by over 50 percent of respondents.
We asked Marketers what areas they will be focusing on as they move into 2019, and while responses were varied, content strategy, social media strategy, and brand strategy came out on top.
When it came to what would have the most significant impact in the next five to 10 years, marketing respondents were the first group in the Digital Skills Survey to cite AI as being significantly more impactful than Machine Learning. Voice-based experiences were the second most cited, but interestingly, 89 percent of respondents have yet to work on voice-related marketing projects. Similarly, 87 percent have yet to work with augmented reality and virtual reality.
Perhaps most surprising, though, is the fact that 65 percent of Marketers do not work at companies that sell products online. Given the increased importance of e-commerce over the last few years, it will be interesting to see if this number changes in next year’s Digital Skills Survey.