There’s been a lot of chatter on social media lately about the direction that marketing, and the necessary skills required for modern marketing, are headed. Campaigns now spread across many channels: email, direct mail, social media, and landing pages on web sites to name a few. New technology tools are are being used to implement campaigns and measure their performance, allowing marketers to do two very important things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Measurement allows an accurate ROI to be determined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Measuring the performance of each channel, as well as the effect that detailed design and copy changes have on response rate allow marketers to consistently improve campaign performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
While technical analysis of marketing statistics has been around for decades, until recently they were done in the back rooms at big brands analyzing campaign ROI. Compared to the creative side of marketing there were very few marketing technicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today’s marketing campaigns and programs are very complex and have touches over numerous channels. They include some combination of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rise of marketing technology in no way diminishes the importance of traditional creative marketing skills. A poor design or bad copy will certainly lead to poor results. While technology is taking a bigger piece of growing marketing budgets, it is not expected that spend on design and copywriting will decrease, it just won’t grow at the same rate as technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The growth in the use of marketing technology is happening so fast, the Gartner Group<\/a> expects that marketing departments will spend more money on technology than traditional IT departments as early as 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using these new tools require technical skills that traditionally have not been on marketing teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be effective in today’s world, marketing teams need a mix of creative and technical talents. Don’t expect to find both types of abilities and expertise in one person.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBuilding the Modern Marketing Team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n