The rise of digital marketing training

You can listen to this article here:Five years ago it was ok just to get by with digital, but companies are now finding that in order to stay relevant and succeed, an online presence is crucial. Over the past three years we’ve particularly noticed a rapid surge in requests for SEO, Google Ads, Analytics and Social Media training. There’s an increasing demand for skilled digital marketers who can help businesses succeed in the digital world.

Here are the 5 most important factors that we think are driving the growth of digital marketing training in New Zealand.

The boom in digital marketing and digital advertising

The overall upsurge in digital marketing training in New Zealand reflects the growing importance of digital to a company’s bottom line. Digital marketing and digital advertising have become an integral part of the marketing mix. The internet is such an accepted part of people’s daily lives, that going digital is the only way to reach them. The stats back up our observations too.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) report for 2017 reveals that digital advertising is leading the way. According to the ASA report, in 2017 digital advertising generated $785 million dollars worth of revenue – that’s 30.65% of the total advertising revenue in New Zealand. This was up $2 million on 2016 figures. Trailing behind digital marketing in second and third place were TV at $566 million and newspapers at $353 million. This shows just how popular a medium digital advertising is right now and how it’s growing even more so. Businesses are jumping on board with this trend and looking at how they can increase their involvement in digital.

More ways to connect and engage with customers

Digital marketing goes beyond traditional marketing, and has opened up more ways to connect and engage with existing and prospective customers. Businesses can now use digital channels such as:

• Company blog
• Search engines,
• Google ads
• Display advertising
• Social media
• Email / e-newsletters.

The biggest benefit of using digital marketing is that many forms are extremely cost-efficient, more so than traditional marketing. Digital marketing is also ever changing, due to the rapid developments being made in technology. You need to move quickly and adapt to change if you want to keep being relevant to your customers.

Staff that quickly need to upskill

Since everything is turning digital nowadays, businesses have an increasing need for staff with digital skill-sets. The shortage of digital marketing talent in New Zealand (and around the world) means that businesses and digital agencies are recruiting inexperienced staff, or perhaps staff who have done a Digital Marketing diploma with a lot of generalised course content. These staff need to quickly build their digital marketing skills, so businesses are sending them on short training courses for more specialised up-to-date training.

Tech savvy millennials

Millennials are incredibly tech savvy, especially around social media, and businesses have to get onboard or risk losing buy-in from this sector of the market. Making sure that millennials are part of your digital marketing campaigns, and overall strategy, is a smart move. Marketing to millennials requires the recruitment of younger, more tech savvy marketing staff who are ‘in touch’ with this generation. This ensures you stay on top of new trends and current platforms. This is a young target market that craves culture, community and experiences, so you need to produce online advertising content that has a high engagement level. The millennial staff that you train up are not just digital marketers, they’re your secret weapon to reach Gen Y.

Businesses taking digital marketing in-house

Businesses may have previously outsourced digital marketing to an agency but a lot of them are now creating their own in-house digital marketing services. Not only can companies enjoy a significant cost savings by keeping marketing in-house, they can also avoid having to deal with poor account servicing by digital agencies. Many businesses complain of a lack of transparency with agencies, and not having control over their data, so going in-house is a way of taking back that control. A critical element to making in-house marketing successful though is hiring staff with the right skills to achieve your company’s digital marketing goals. Digital training is necessary to get staff up to speed, and that’s what we’ve been seeing recently.

How can Clickthrough help?

At Clickthrough we provide training courses customised to each company’s requirements and designed to help boost your staff’s skills in SEO, Google Ads, Social Media Marketing and Google Analytics. Our Clickthrough trainers are experienced Google Certified tutors who will get your staff up to speed quickly, and ensure they have their finger on the pulse of digital marketing. Find out more about our training courses 2-for-1 Xmas offer or contact us today to book a course.