Marketing solutions company Responsys has revealed Australian digital markets are increasingly savvy but there’s increasingly a widening gap in digital expertise.
Responsys’ Big Australia Report reveals senior marketers need to upskill when it comes to smart digital marketing.
For example, three in four (74 per cent) Australian digital marketers prioritise targeting and segmentation of their digital marketing campaigns over increasing the volume of messages sent (28 per cent). This underscores that digital marketers are taking a more sophisticated approach in the way they engage with their audience, but at the same time, the Report signals that digital marketers are increasingly time poor, with 52 per cent feeling their team is not sufficiently equipped to analyse and action the amount of customer data that’s now available through the digital channels.
“There’s now an increasing divide between marketers who are using technology to build lasting, individual relationships with consumers versus those who rely on mass distribution of messages,” Simon O’Day, vice president of Responsys Asia Pacific, said.
“While it’s encouraging that skilled marketers are now focusing on more targeted forms of digital communication, it concerns me that a significant number are failing to use existing customer data to optimise and execute smarter campaigns.”
In addition, while nearly half (49 per cent) of marketers expect digital marketing budgets to increase in the next twelve months, only 37 per cent intend to employ additional digital marketing staff, suggesting the workload of today’s marketer is set to rise. And what’s more, over half of Australian marketers (57 per cent) feel there is a lack of digital expertise in their organisation and 70 per cent believe they have equal or more digital marketing experience than their manager, suggesting the gap in digital expertise is widening among Australian marketers.
“It’s clear that the next generation of talent is hot on the heels of those in more senior positions. Unless Australian marketers start moving with the times, in a few more years we may see the younger, savvier digital marketers landing the top strategic marketing jobs in favour of their counterparts with more years on the clock,” O’Day said.
To counteract this widening gap, 41 per cent of organizations said they are looking to hire more digital marketing staff in the next 12 months while an almost even 37 per cent said have no plans of hiring anymore digital marketing staff in the same period.