Today’s successful marketing programs are driven by technology, and the rate of change and speed of innovation is accelerating. To keep up, and stay ahead of the competition, you need talent that can help you make the most of data, move faster, and create engaging customer experience. But how do you know what skills gaps exist on your teams, and how do you overcome them? Aaron Skonnard, CEO of Pluralsight, discussed how modern organizations can grow their talent, and create the future in a digital age.
The growth and maturation of the marketing technology industry over the past few years has been significant. The marketing software market is expected to grow to more than $32.3 billion in 2018, which is up 42% from 2015 (IDC). This rapid growth in spending suggests that companies see value in marketing technology investment and consider MarTech a catalyst to drive future growth. [1]
If you’re a CMO, you have to ask yourself…What groundwork are you doing TODAY, and how will that help you set the course of your organization in the future?
You start by choosing from the 1,800+ marketing technology programs (see Chief Martec), but once you’ve done that, you still need the people to run these for you.
There is a tremendous requirement for learning: How do you keep up? You know that by continuing to use traditional techniques you can’t. You won’t see results.
So then, while the technology continues to grow for everyone, acquiring and developing technology talent is your only true competitive advantage.
If you can develop internally faster than externally, you’re in a powerful position.
You have to think about where the money is going to go. MarTech is expensive. Does your team have the skills to move forward? Ideally, you want these people on your marketing team:
- Data scientists
- Developers
- Designers
- Engineers
75% of marketers say their lack of skills is impacting revenue in some way.
– Aaron Skonnard, CEO Pluralsight
CMOs don’t know how to fix the problem. Here are a few simple things you can do:
- Embrace your technology transformation
- Requires commitment from your C-Suite (CEO, CMO, CIO)
- Develop a culture of learning to ensure you keep pace
- Money is wasted if your business just does “classroom training” because that doesn’t include employee evaluation
- Before assessments should be done to discover actual employee needs, and so training may be customized
- Can execute individually tailored self learning journeys
- Need:
- Content engine based on technology, at scale
- Assessment capability
- People that can help them (mentoring program)
- Uncover the brilliance within your own teams, so you can leverage that to fill the knowledge gap elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be valuable to see where you stack up against the competition? Need to be able to see that somehow
- Drive innovation and create progress through technology
- Create creativity in your teams
- Opportunities you may not have seen before
- Marketing innovation just like your engineering teams
(Source: LinkedIn)
You have a massive opportunity to create this vision. By changing internal structure, cross-training, and putting in a culture of learning you’ll have the most loyal team, because they’re given the chance to learn, innovate and build.
“Create the Future”
You can create progress through technology for a better world.
Feature image source: Gerd Altmann
[1] Radius, The Guide to the Marketing Technology Landscape, San Francisco, 2015.
