Marketing Technology Careers

New Opportunities in Marketing for Tech Geeks

Say what?

That’s right, you read correctly. There are new opportunities emerging in marketing that – gasp – are not creative. Yet, I believe these new roles have the ability to contribute to a successful campaign as much as creative ingenuity.

Technology is changing the face of marketing in more ways than just engagement and advertising. It’s bringing to light the need to recruit and hire personnel with technical acumen. Creative skills have always been a crucial part of marketing and will continue to be so. But, as the digital landscape continues to morph and grow, marketers will struggle with delivering content dynamically and quickly without people that possess technical ability. The tools available today (and certainly in the future) are much more sophisticated and integrated than ever before.

Additionally, more and more marketers need to understand the data that is cultivated and stored inside their organization and be able to maximize the value from it. See if this sounds familiar: the marketing department wants to more fully understand customer perception and attitudes. They hire expensive vendors and purchase additional tools capable of collecting this data only to find out that the Customer Service department is already gathering a large portion of this information through their customer information systems. What ends ups happening is the implementation of disparate systems and duplicate customer information. This happens over and over again throughout the corporate world. It is often said that an organization is “data rich, but information poor”. Meaning, most organizations are swimming in data, but what they lack is real integration and analytical insight as to what the data means or how best to use it. Here’s where marketing geeks come to the rescue.

The skills required to integrate marketing campaigns across multiple channels seamlessly and understand the data that is required to be successful are in high demand. One such job is a Marketing Technologist. DigitalPeople’s case study describes the marketing technologist’s primary role is to assure that technology is being used in the most effective manner and that it offers a competitive marketing advantage. They work more closely with business leaders to prioritize IT strategies and make them executable as they relate to key marketing strategies. Companies currently looking for this type of role include Dell, Baptist Healthcare System, and NBC Universal. Scott Brinker states a marketing technologist is a marketer who understands technology and a technologist who is passionate about marketing. A more elevated role is Chief Marketing Technologist, one that is equivalent of the Chief Information Officer. This person reports directly to the Chief Marketing Officer and oversees all things marketing – marketing software, data and analytics, social and mobile platforms, apps development, content marketing, web mechanics, and digital advertising networks.

These new roles and responsibilities open the door for a whole new group of people who may have not given a career in marketing a second thought. But, as the future of marketing becomes more technical, marketing tech jobs are hot!

So, marketers…get your geek on!

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