Walking Dead Survival Guide for Marketers
Who Impacts Purchase Most?
Recommendations from family and close friends have gained the most credibility when it comes to purchase decisions, while celebrity reviews are the least reliable, according to the survey.
It makes you wonder why everyone wants a celebrity to endorse their product. Of course athletes are considered experts at their craft, so that would be an exception to the rule.
Read more at ClickZ
The Selfie Syndrome: How Social Media is Making Us Narcissistic
State of Digital Marketing Talent: Skills Lacking, Specialists Needed
The Talent Gap
- 22% of respondents say the need for digital marketing specialists is growing.
- Of greatest need are specialists in analytics, email, content marketing, mobile marketing, and social media.
- In all of those areas, there is a significant gap between how important executives believe the skill-sets are and the perceived talent level of their teams:
Finding Talent
- 40% of respondents are not able to find sufficient talent to handle their digital marketing workloads.
- 70% of large enterprises and 75% of agencies say referrals from professionals are more helpful than the other resources they use to find talent.
- 36% say students just out of school do not yet have the real-life experience required for their open positions.
- 70% of large enterprise respondents and 72% from agencies say young employees have a sense of entitlement and expect to advance or be hired for upper-level positions before proving themselves.
Verifying and Building Skills
- Just 32% of respondents are satisfied with their company’s efforts at assessing new digital marketing hires.
- 30% of large companies and 24% of agencies say they are unable to adequately distinguish between those with the right digital marketing skills and those without.
- 83% of agencies include training in their orientation programs. However, just 32% test to measure skill acquisition.
- 28% of large enterprises and 39% of agencies plan to introduce formal training programs to improve digital marketing skills.