As the working world becomes increasingly more digital, the importance of marketers able to operate independently, and remotely, has never been more prevalent. According to our recent survey on the State of Martech 2020, 72% of Marketers have struggled to hire Marketing Automation talent, and because of this, organisations are having to look internally to develop their Marketing Automation and Marketing Cloud skills. In fact, 92% of Marketers are upskilling their employees’ skills in these areas.
Investment in marketing technology skills will pay off more in the long term than hiring externally as the war for marketing technology talent makes it harder to hire, and with increased cost. The issue is that there are too few genuine experts operating in marketing technology today. According to our recent research, only 25% of marketers specialising in martech are certified in their chosen martech platform!
Your martech training options
Given the global issue surrounding Covid-19, and the necessity for organisations to work from home, now could be the perfect time to invest in marketing technology training. However, training is not just ‘in’ the platform, but also ‘on’ it. It is essential to know why we use these platforms as well as how to use them in order to fully optimise them, be that to drive ‘digital transformation’ or to adapt to the new world of modern marketing and changing buyer behaviour. There are two types of training available with a couple of options in each.
Internal training
- Individual Training: This involves a martech specialist within the business sharing knowledge and delivering training to other marketers in their team.
- Cross Team Learning: This involves marketing specialists and teams learning from other regions within their business.
External training
- Online Resources: for example, the martech vendor’s online learning portal.
- External 3rd Party: Martech agencies or consultancies provide bespoke training solutions based on your individual requirements, in your martech platform.
The benefits of external martech training
The benefit of external training is that knowledge is extended beyond what is currently known in the organisation and brings inspiration and best practice examples from your wider industry. Online resources are also good in providing a broad overview of your platform and use cases but can take time to digest and translate that learning into something bespoke to your business needs. External 3rd party training is often bespoke to your organisation and requirements, and rapidly increases your time to value beyond any other form of training.
Consultancies offer training, both in person and online, with the aim of building out your organisation’s martech capability. The War for Talent and an increased focus on Marketing Automation is creating a demand for certified practitioners, and clients are looking for scalable training options such as training videos to ensure they are future proofing their capabilities. This enables them to train people faster and at scale. These videos are bespoke to client platforms, governance, processes and ways of working.
Other martech training considerations
When thinking about your training program, take into consideration Marketing’s organisational design – is the structure of your team still relevant for your marketing technology strategy? Larger organisations may have Marketing teams dotted around the globe, and so you may have a distributed mix of marketing technology experts throughout the business. Or perhaps you have a team of specialists who operate your martech capability centrally. Simplification tools like Momentum can alleviate some of the difficulties with this, but ultimately a comprehensive training and certification plan is recommended in order to structure your organisation around your marketing investment and strategy.
There is a vast array of training options available to any business looking to transform their martech capability, this ranging from face to face fundamentals and intensive courses, bespoke video content, and webinar training. External training ranges from a day or two refresher courses, through to fully structured guaranteed certification training – at Clevertouch we even cover the cost of the exam if you fail. Beyond that, external agencies should also provide the strategy and facilitation of training for a global marketing team with defined roles and responsibilities, providing the required training appropriate for each role.
Whatever your preferred method of training, we actively encourage all marketers to take this time to upskill their knowledge of marketing technology. It can only support businesses in the long term when some degree of normality ensues.
If you would like to find out more about Clevertouch’s training programs, you can take a look here.