B2B Companies Feel the Pinch of Marketing Talent Crunch

    Marketing

    As the demand for individuals who can use Martech tools increase, getting the right talent to hire is becoming a challenge

    As ‘marketing’ becomes ‘Martech’, there is a rapidly increasing demand for newer skill sets. The widespread challenge is getting these new skills for hire. In the 2019 Marketing Talent Crunch Survey report, 75% of companies describe their marketing department as ‘understaffed.’

    A survey conducted by Spear Marketing Group, which is based on responses of 10,000 B2B marketers’ reveals that over 90% of companies have difficulty finding the right marketing talent. With the rise in marketing technology, the most in-demand roles are marketing analytics and marketing operations, but six in 10 respondents find it challenging to hire individuals with marketing analytics skills.

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    Last year, a Gartner report mentioned that nearly one-third of CMO budgets have been allocated to marketing technology. In the hiring sphere, an increasing number of marketing roles require an individual to have worked with some marketing technology, if not direct experience with specific Martech tools and platforms.

    Not just marketing, but several business leaders across various industries are using data analytics I for decision-making. For B2B marketing, too, more than one-third of marketers are using analytics support for their decisions. However, marketing leaders still give importance to straightforward demand generation over other strategies like ABM.  According to the survey, 45% of respondents are having problems hiring human resource with demand generation focused skills in the marketing toolbox.

    Some more skill sets that B2B companies face difficulty hiring for include marketing operations (47%), content marketing (33%), creative (12%) and social media marketing (12%). This demand for specific technical skills adds to the talent crunch as it shrinks the already limited universe of qualified candidates. Survey respondents believe that marketing operations and marketing analytics are the most difficult positions to hire for and are also least preferred to outsource.

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    Since content marketing is forecasted to grow steadily, 41% of the B2B companies are willing to outsource this job. Others areas where businesses are willing to outsource include demand generation (33%), branding (33%), media management (34%), and social media marketing (27%).

    The shortage of the right talent is forcing companies to change their hiring practices like in hiring remote employees, hiring freelancers, or look at third-party service providers as interim or permanent alternatives to full-time hires.

    A report by Global Workforce Analytics says that work-at-home among the non-self-employed population has increased by 140% since 2005, where technology companies are at the forefront of this trend. Even Automattic, a web development company closed their San Francisco office in 2017 because no-one was showing up. Google also has 54% of employees on contracts now.

    The marketing talent crunch can be seen only accelerating. This can also be seen falling in line with, broader trends connected to increased workforce flexibility and mobility and ‘gig economy.’

    Read More: CMO – Global Trends | News and Innovations, Views from Martech Leaders