The biggest motivation for students choosing to study a digital marketing qualification or up-skill through attending digital marketing courses is for professional development – This could be looking to perform better in a role, achieve better results from their digital marketing efforts or simply gaining a pay rise or promotion.
So what does a Digital and Social Media Marketer expect to get paid in 2017?
Digital Marketing Salaries 2017 – They range from about £30-100K depending on experience and qualification
Those with experience and a digital marketing qualification such as a diploma in digital marketing can expect to be around £50K plus.
According to the Reed Salary Checker Tool the average digital salary is £38K which is an increase from last year and about 8,000 jobs which is a slight drop from last year but it is only January after all.
Digital Marketing Salary
There are currently over 300 jobs offering over £60,000 so we know digital and social media marketing has great opportunities for career development and we know digital skills are the most sought after by employer right now in a variety of disciplines including sales and business development not just marketing – so if you want to get the edge over the competition 2017 is definitely the year to develop your digital skills.
I am always overwhelmed by employees dedication to the business they work for when they attend courses – Its just fantastic to see the enthusiasm, passion and effort that goes into their digital marketing and social media efforts. It is the most satisfying aspect of my job when I meet people who share my love of digital marketing as well as vision of taking digital and social media marketing to the next level in business and who want to keep up to speed with digital trends, insights and strategies.
Sadly I often see that these inspirational and dedicated group of marketers don’t get the recognition they deserve and this could be reflected in their employer investing in training, offering a pathway to promotion or pay rise.
In these times where every penny spent counts surely we need to look at where we spend the money we have and what we can do to grow our businesses which in turn would help overcome dissatisfaction in the workforce.
So what can employers do? what would this look like in business?
Well we know that businesses who develop an integrated digital and social media strategy that is broken down into daily tasks achieve better results and return on investment and tend to work smarter not harder.
Only half of businesses have a digital marketing strategy!
It’s because sometimes the people tasked with this don’t have access to the skills but more often than not its knowing what are the proven strategies that work and what are the tools that will help deliver effective and efficient digital campaigns. So we see a company outsource to overcome these obstacles but to be honest half the time the agency might not be in that much better position – yes they can probably draw on case studies but an account manager who is tasked with developing your strategy generally isn’t part of the delivery team.
Outsource or keep in-house?
I can stand back and see these issues with clarity but my biggest advice to a business is to do as much in-house as possible – an agency can never feel the business mission, ethos or passion of those who are part of that team so please consider investing in training but accredited and certified training.
Sourcing quality Training
Unfortunately anyone can be a ‘training provider’ but we meet huge amounts of people who opt for a courses that have no alignment to best professional practices meaning the quality and content is unregulated. We know as a CIM study centre that we undergo regular quarterly centre reviews and monthly and annual performance assessments.
There are only about 28 Chartered Marketing Accredited study centres worldwide and about 30% are in the UK so ensure you check out your training provider to ensure you get the quality your investment and team deserves.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
As a training provider and digital agency we know the importance of keeping your skills up to date – As practitioners this is fairly easy as we are involved in digital marketing daily but we all still do additional activities to reach and even exceed our potential and keep improving. We have worked hard to attain 7 x commendations for outstanding results but many providers have no such accolades to substantiate their offering.
For individuals CPD is crucial as well as for employers – Prove your worth to current and future employers by joining our Chartered CPD Programme. It’s a great way to manage your professional development whilst also demonstrating your commitment to keeping up-to-date and learning new skills.
What is CPD?
‘The proactive maintenance and extension of professional knowledge, skills and personal qualities required to drive responsible practice throughout working life.’
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is about improving skills and knowledge, ensuring you remain current and effective as a marketing professional. It’s relevant throughout your career – whether you are new to marketing or an experienced professional wishing to keep abreast of the latest trends and techniques.
Choose courses and qualifications wisely and remember a continuous professional development is required to keep skills current and to ensure your team are working with the best knowledge to guide an effective digital plan.
All of our courses are accredited under the CIM CPD programme and by joining the CPD programmeit will help you achieve the understanding and expertise that are expected of today’s marketing professionals.
What’s in it for you?
By joining the CIM CPD programme, you’ll gain:
- new skills and knowledge, up-to-date with the latest trends.
- tangible evidence of your commitment, competence and professionalism.
- enhanced opportunities in a competitive job market.
- personal confidence in your credibility as a marketer.
- a clear route to Chartered Marketer status.
- an opportunity to track progress and receive recognition for your achievements.
- improved productivity.
- increased ability to adapt positively to change.
Working towards Chartered Marketer status
Chartered Marketer – Join an elite community of marketers, all committed to maintaining the very highest standards in marketing knowledge and experience. Use the Chartered Marketer logo (and designatory letters) to show others that you are an up-to-date, experienced and qualified marketing professional.
You can achieve Chartered Marketer status through a combination of knowledge, experience and continuing professional development. If you’re currently a CIM member at MCIM or FCIM grade, you can work towards Chartered Marketer status.
Fast Track or maintain your current status through gaining CPD through CIM accredited courses or qualifications.
What is the biggest digital skills gap?
Gaps in knowledge such as being great at generating leads is only as good as the monitoring that goes with it to ensure optimal conversion and customer journey. We see digital metrics and monitoring as one of the biggest skills gaps generally because Google analytics is free and so is social media.
A classic example of a knowledge gap is the common scenario of a business is generating leads but not getting enough to achieve the sales figures they have projected
Most start looking at ways of generating more leads and start throwing money at adverting and using more digital channels but there are better approaches to this problem.
A company should be looking at their customer journey and the percentage of leads converting and what barriers may be preventing more web leads or sales.
Perhaps if a digital team could proactively look at web conversion optimisation then they could get an immediate lift in results from current web visitors. Using analytics a campaign and current activities can be improved to generate better results from current spends assuming they know what to measure and what insight to draw from these tools.
But its not all doom and gloom because I also meet the companies who have bought into digital marketing and are reaping the rewards.
Benefits of Digital Marketing;
- Reaching a greater audience
- Generating leads
- Converting more sales
- Engaging their current customer and increase repeat and more frequent purchases
They see the bigger picture too – these businesses have seen the light!
They see that training is an investment crucial to keep improving their digital marketing results and to grow their business.
These forward thinking leaders are forging ahead because they know that the more they invest in their teams digital skills that this will have a direct correlation to their success.
In 2017
I see an amazing opportunity for businesses to increase their online visibility through taking their digital efforts and really looking at what money they could actually save by investing in up-skilling their team and not just the marketeers.
Digital marketing exists through the entire business because it can help with;
- market research for product and service development, demand for new launches,
- aid customer service,
- build pipelines of leads for sales teams as well as helping manage existing customers to free up account managers to focus on new business development,
- it can help shorten the sales cycle,
- provide a better and more seamless experience for prospects, reduce unnecessary customer service calls though provide information through content marketing,
- increase employee productivity which can help save up to 60% of the time on tasks through automating tasks and using digital tools for efficiency gains.
The list is endless!
Processes form the fundamentals of any plan
It may sound strange but we spend most of our time looking at processes and tools in place when we review a clients digital marketing strategy.
We now if you get your lead funnel right and data management and customer relationship management procedures plus get the right tools in place before you start driving ahead with implementing digital activities then you see far quicker and far better results – its all about reducing barriers for employees and prospects!
I constantly look a digital marketing salaries throughout the UK and the roles available in today’s market – The great news is there a lot of digital jobs to be had but from an employer prospective here isn’t enough digital skill to go round.
We know a huge percentage of jobs go unfilled every month. The aspect to consider is are these jobs paying enough to obtain the skill that does exist in the UK?…Well there a lot that just are not offering the remuneration to draw that skill in but those who are either offering training as part of the package to justify the lower salary or those offering a salary that matches the skill base are seeing the benefit.
How many people do I meet a day that tell me – we outsource and are looking to take it back in-house as we aren’t getting the results or we are looking for a new digital manager or agency as our last marketing agency failed to deliver on their promises –
The answer is about 50% so about 40 people a week.
That number says 2 things to me – Many agencies don’t have the skill (or rely on the fact that a business has no knowledge what should be happening to regulate if what they are paying for is working) or ability to match their charges with a digital return on investment and many employers don’t offer the remuneration or training to take their digital efforts to a point whereby their efforts are delivering results.
A business simply could not survive in business today without digital marketing so why does digital marketing not get the investment it needs to reap huge benefits for business?
Well I can honestly say it’s often due to the lack of understanding from management – social media networks are free to join so in turn a training budget is not always allocated to getting the best return versus paid software acquisition. We do work heavily in educating a business about digital benefits as well as potential pitfalls as well as what should a digital marketer be paid.
A marketer needs all 15 of these digital skills shown in the below image in business for effective digital marketing in 2017 – Start earning what you are worth and develop you digital skills by attending a CIM Accredited Fast Track Course in Digital Marketing
Need Help then get in touch for a FREE Training needs analysis – Give our team an idea of your objectives or issues you facing such as skills gaps and they will match the best options for you to consider from courses or qualifications or guidance on strategy. Call 0800 334 4784 or drop us an email
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