Now that the return to school has begun, the smallest of the house are drawn to the purchase of books and the novelty of starting the new year. They will acquire new knowledge and new skills, starting a new training plan. For many people, whether or not they have children at home and as an echo of so many years of having lived back to school in the first person, September is the month of new beginnings, of great plans, as is January.
If you also add that he has returned with renewed desire after the holidays, the situation is understood in a better way. Going back to school of your own is therefore tempting. September is a perfect month to resume training plans and improve skills and knowledge. But what should marketers who decide to join this trend prioritize? What are the key skills to look for in marketing courses and continuing education?
The challenge of digital: yes or yes
Phygital experience, omnichannel strategy, the challenge of mobile payments … The list of great topics that mark the agenda and in which the border between the digital and the physical becomes much more blurred or disappears is increasingly long.
Marketers have had to learn a lot about what the internet is and how technology changes things in the last decade, but while that knowledge is very valuable, it is not enough. The digital transformation of companies is not over and marketers must keep pace with those changes. They must adapt to that reality that is always in the process of adjustment and to what technology demands at all times.
Right now, marketers must prioritize certain issues. Experience and mergers between retail and ecommerce must work, because that is what consumers want. They also have to face much less glamorous issues, but very necessary to survive in this context, such as paradigm shifts (such as the blackout of cookies) or the new situation in privacy.
The agenda of the moment
Among the issues that marketers must keep in mind to survive 2021 and that should be in their training plans , the topics on the agenda of the moment occupy prominent positions. Among those issues are from sustainability to feminism, through the well-being of the staff. In fact, on this last point, workers do not care about the ideal office: what they want is better trained bosses .
On the issues of the moment, marketers should not assume that it is worth it to ‘ring a bell’ or to read a couple of reports in a couple of media. The reality is much more complex and the needs of marketers much broader. You just have to use feminism as a guide to understand it. Marketers can’t fall for platitudes and generalities if they really want to understand what their consumers are asking for. To do this, they must train, reading specialized books, attending conferences or taking courses.
The same could be said of all the big issues on the agenda of the moment. For marketers, assuming they must take marketing courses on ultra-specific issues in their work is not difficult for them. Understand this point, on the other hand, possibly quite a bit more.
Data literacy It is one of those terms that from time to time sneaks into the analyzes that are published in English, but it is one of the elements that marketers must bear in mind in their training plans. Among the skills that companies demand the most from their employees, regardless of their department, is “data literacy”, which could be translated directly as data literacy.
Basically, companies need their workers to understand data, its importance and how to use it. This is also much more important for marketers, since data is now the water and bread that keeps the marketing strategy alive and the way that allows them to reach consumers effectively. It is not about the marketer and his team becoming potential CIOs, but it is about having a good understanding of how the data environment works and what can be learned from it. Like everything else, these skills have evolved over the years and marketers must constantly update them.