Marketing in the digital age: why not everyone will be taken into the future

The marketers have been waiting for the last few years when advertisers' budgets for online advertising will exceed TV, and in 2018 this finally happened. Key sites and sellers offer every year more and more new formats and technologies. Not all of them shoot, but the digital environment itself works on the principle of test and learn, so it is important to track trends. There are several of them.

Digital Marketing Trends:

• OLV (online video) continues to grow, with short versions of commercials becoming more and more popular, and, as a result, low-budget production. We will smoothly enter the era when it will not be necessary to write and read :) - everything will replace video and speech recognition. But our children and grandchildren will most likely see this. And we need to learn how to organize low cost production.
• All major brands are experimenting with eSports integration. In my opinion, this direction will have more chances to attract advertiser money, if integration models are developed in relation to sales, besides the key sponsorship now. Cybersportsmen, no doubt, among those who earn or just a lot or very much. In addition to the prize money, the player’s salary can reach $ 15,000 per month.
• Of the important trends that will continue their development: data-driven marketing (data-based marketing). If you want to increase your value in the labor market, feel free to write this phrase in your resume. Your potential salary will immediately grow by 20-30%.
• Personification, mobile applications and voice control of interfaces are also among the sought-after areas, as well as the profession of application developer, UI / UX designer and the now fashionable product owner in the field of web and mobile development.
• Large companies allocate SMM in a separate direction with large investments in special projects and native integrations. Due to the specifics of their work, SMM managers are always in sight, and, in my opinion, their salaries are overvalued. At the same time, ordinary video-bloggers (not Selebs) start earning more and more.
• Perhaps the most interesting thing for communications professionals is the development of situational marketing and Influence marketing (promotion through opinion leaders). The main intrigue lies in the fact that the best cases of situational marketing were invented and implemented on the client side, without the involvement of agencies because of the very short implementation dates: World Cup 2018 was an excellent example of the quick response of brand brands of major brands.

And so now big brands are facing a dilemma: to raise the creative direction in-house or continue to work with agencies. This trend, like many before it, comes from the IT industry, where most of the projects are implemented in-house due to the specifics of IT product development, which is transferred to digital marketing.

Digital marketers: creativity in the era of automation. Marketing automation has long been a common place, on a par with business automation and digitalization. And I guess this will lead to a reduction in marketing staff. Question: who will cut? Most likely, analysts and middle managers will be the first. Also begins to move in the direction of flat orgruktur. In a few years, such organizational structures will prevail in the market.

The sharp growth of projects with big data is not happening yet, mainly due to the small number of realized cases with a proven business effect. Money in the economy is getting smaller, so everyone is looking for growth points and if they are not there, then the direction quickly collapses.

Optimization will also affect many technical aspects in the field of adaptation and creative development. For example, now resize (resizing) and adapting banner or video advertising for different resources make the whole design studio. Automating this process will significantly save advertiser’s time and money.

To err is right - a skill that will be claimed more than ever. In the new digital world, the professional qualities familiar to us all will not be enough. For quick career growth, soft skills will need to be developed first.

The World Economic Forum has published a report on the professional world of the future, which predicts how technology will change our jobs. According to this report, the skill of integrated problem solving will be the most valuable that the applicant can boast.

Therefore, it is important to develop critical thinking skills. We need to learn to ask uncomfortable questions: “And what's next?”, “Where do we want to go?”, “What happens if we do differently?”. This is not easy, but only such an approach can lead to the correct result.

In addition to the critical, it is necessary to develop and systemic thinking. As Einstein said: “It is impossible to solve a problem at the same level of thinking at which it arose. It is necessary to rise above this problem, rising to the next level. ” This is systemic thinking, which is the basis for solving complex problems.

In a situation where the amount of new information exceeds a person's ability to comprehend it, the speed with which projects are launched and the ability of teams to quickly learn from mistakes, make adjustments and go further will be important.

The topic of mistakes in the professional environment is often taboo: as a rule, it is not customary to talk about mistakes in professional communities. Marketers talk only about successful cases, about rewards. If you look at all the conferences and professional awards, then we will see a cloudless path of continuous success.

But in fact these stories are isolated cases against the background of a large number of unsuccessful projects. A huge part of every success that remains invisible and unrecognized is the experience of mistakes. And in a situation of constant change, this is the most valuable part. The more times you tried something, made a mistake, discarded, the more likely you will find what works.

Where to go further: the direction of growth of digital-specialists. Recently, horizontal careers have been increasingly discussed: it is more important for marketers to gain more skills in related industries than to grow up the career ladder. The more unique skills a specialist has, the higher is his value in the labor market.

Therefore, the more diverse the tasks the employee solves, the higher the guarantee of finding a well-paid job.

 I think that now there will be another peak of demand for specialists of a wider profile. It is possible to have in the staff of people with a unique, but narrow specialization, when there are resources for this and the need for a quick recruitment of expertise that is not in the company. In a situation of limited resources and optimization, in which most companies are now located, having a wide range of skills becomes a competitive advantage.