Industry leaders share marketer’s top areas for upskilling in 2024

Mumbrella - Opinion - Anshu Arora, Christian Nejm, Jamie Hoey, Anna Lee-Renwick

With 2024 well and truly underway, leaders from RMIT Online, Accenture Song, Wunderkind and Anni share the key growth areas that marketers will need to focus on in the year ahead.

Anshu Arora, director, customer success and growth, RMIT Online

The world of marketing is in constant disruption, with new technology and changing customer expectations and demands. As a result, the role of a marketer has radically transformed and is no longer just about crafting communications and choosing the right channels to reach customers on.

Businesses need their marketers to understand the importance of customer experience, and not only know how to best leverage data and technology to these, but do so in an ethical and customer centric way, that ultimately drives business outcomes.

To meet these evolving needs, marketers today need capabilities in customer orientation, segmentation, brand positioning, and the expertise to effectively join the dots. However, at the current pace of change many businesses are struggling to stay abreast of demands and fully leverage the potential of technology and data-driven insights.

In 2023, LinkedIn cited Data Analysis and Analytical Skills among the top 10 most in-demand skills by companies. Therefore, upskilling and adapting to the data-driven landscape is essential to make informed decisions about investments and strategies, upskilling and adapting to the data-driven landscape is essential.

Christian Nejm, customer growth lead, Accenture Song, ANZ

We are noticing CMOs shift their attention to three key areas which are driving competitive advantage. These are the areas where we predict upskilling and reskilling of marketing teams will be needed.

Firstly, CMOS are seeing the potential of GenAI to accelerate campaigns and bring product launches to market far more quickly than ever before. Content creation and variations that may have taken weeks or months, can now be crafted in a matter of hours. But understanding the prompts and input needed to do this, and applying judgement, creativity and taste to use the tools alongside existing teams is where we need to develop.

We are also seeing continued emphasis placed on enhancing the customer experience, especially through personalisation and understanding customer lifecycle evolution. GenAI gives marketers the opportunity to not just digitise a customer journey, but to use data to individualise every interaction with a customer in a way that is meaningful and rewarding. But again, this takes a mindset shift, new skill sets and potentially new relationships to be built for internal marketing teams.

Finally, we’re seeing ever-increasing investments in technology and martech solutions to drive greater value within organisations. Those investments must include talent upskilling in order to extract the true value of the tools in helping deliver the brand promise.

Jamie Hoey, Australian country manager, Wunderkind

The role of the marketer will continue to evolve in 2024 as the pressure to deliver efficiencies, value and growth with less resources at their disposal continues to rise.

The AI boom we’re currently living through is a pivotal moment in tech, comparable to the birth of the internet or cloud software. Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, conversations about how AI can drive efficiency, result in increased revenue and generate value have been dominating the marketing zeitgeist. As the AI market is set to reach $407 billion by 2027, you won’t get anywhere by sticking your head in the sand.

However, in an era where data protection is a significant concern, understanding the ‘AI stack’ also necessitates exploring how our own skill sets need to adapt in order to manage AI from an ethical, strategic and capability perspective. A privacy-first approach allows marketers to access the data they need to make insightful decisions but incorporates data privacy principles throughout the process.

Having a comprehensive understanding of data privacy empowers marketers to navigate the evolving landscape of digital marketing responsibly. It not only safeguards the interests of consumers but also protects the reputation and longevity of the business.

Ultimately, technology will impact every touch point of customer relations and give rise to internal teams with increasingly diverse skill sets.

Anna Lee-Renwick co-founder and chief product officer, Anni

Staying ahead of the curve means being nimble, responsive and adapting to new technologies. However, in an increasingly competitive and saturated market, it’s more important than ever to be cognisant that consumers are being constantly bombarded with content from all angles and that it’s not just brands vying for their attention.

We’re a time poor, chronically online society where discoverability is as, if not more, challenging as understanding how the technology itself works. Breaking through SEO no longer means working through keyword optimisations, but now includes Generative AI and social SEO. As consumers are leveraging social channels as their search engines of choice, having your brand content appear first is a skill in and of itself.

Staying ahead of the curve and remaining competitive in this environment means not only penetrating the market, but connecting with social trends and needs that are changing by the minute. For Anni in particular, we’re also working towards the creation of an entirely new category – Advice-as-a-Service (AaaS) – and encouraging the adoption from Australians into their routines. Upskilling our team to meet this need means utilising the tools and technologies available to solve consumer and business problems

This appeared in Mumbrella on January 23, 2024.

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