In an Econsultancy report from last year, 63 percent of respondents agreed that “a good understanding of technology is critical” for modern marketing leaders. Nearly the same percentage of the same group, however, also listed soft skills as important tools marketers should have in their arsenal. This is not an anomaly—companies increasingly expect modern marketers to be both analytical savants and skilled communicators. The catch? The majority of potential employees have no formal training.
How then does one become a “Modern Marketer?” Like most questions in our industry, you will likely get a different answer depending on whom you ask. However, what you’ll find in common is the notion that the Modern Marketer must know more today than ever before: varied technology platforms (DMPs, DSPs, SSPs), multiple marketing channels (social, mobile, video) and competing goal types (ROI, CPC, reach). Additionally, they need to be comfortable working across internal teams, managing relationships with clients and vendors and learning on-the-go. It’s a unique balance of experience, knowledge and skills.
At the New Marketing Institute, we are creating such a unique and balanced skill-set amongst participants with our Marketing Engineer Program (MEP). In my last article, I talked about the inception of this immersive training program and how it is equipping the next generation of digital marketers with the requisite technical and leadership skills. In many ways, Marketing Engineers are Modern Marketers. After only a few months of intensive training, participants successfully transition into highly technical positions usually reserved for candidates with years of experience.
This success is a result of our approach to MEP, which, unlike most traditional training programs, treats participants as a team rather than as individuals. As individuals, participants learn without a unified purpose and, as a result, each one views the learning process as a competition—can I learn more than the next person? Such a process breaks people apart instead of bringing them together and minimizes learning by discouraging knowledge sharing—which, as every educator will tell you, is essential to learning.
That is why we treat each cohort of Marketing Engineers as a team, with specific roles, responsibilities and a shared purpose: to become experts in digital marketing and programmatic. In this type of environment, learning (and learners) will flourish. Our focus is on developing a high-performing team, not high-performing individuals (although they become those as well). That means focusing on the people and the process, not just the outcome.
In practice, this approach is no different from how we traditionally manage teams. Marketing Engineers have weekly team meetings (which they lead), weekly one-on-one meetings with the Program Team to discuss goals, roadblocks and successes and regular team outings to learn more about each other’s strengths and weaknesses. As a result, they view their peers as collaborators, not competition. And as a team, they can consume and share information more quickly than any one individual would ever be able to digest. We see this in action every day: an engineering major teaching someone how to code; a former financial analyst teaching the group how to create a pivot table; a teacher sharing best practices for effective group facilitation. Each Marketing Engineer brings a unique skillset that they can share with the others. Moreover, as they become more immersed in their training, this culture of sharing becomes pervasive. As a team, their greatest asset is one another.
If we’re striving to create the Modern Marketer—an unconventional marketer by yesteryear’s standards—a conventional approach to training won’t get us there. Rather, we have to leverage the knowledge of others and foster an environment of social learning, one where expertise is a shared commodity. With this approach to learning, marketers can keep pace with the increasing demands of the ad tech industry and become the “next generation” of digital marketers.