Structuring Digital Marketing Teams: Digital Marketing Manager Census 2015

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The big issues facing Digital Marketing Managers in 2015

Almost half of the UK’s 16 billion pound advertising spend goes on digital campaigns. This is because advertisers have had to chase changing consumer habits. Time spent online among the UK audience has doubled over the past decade, driven primarily by tablets and smartphones. Digital marketing is a large and fast-growing industry, but the fast pace of change needs deft managers to organise, structure and strategize without stifling agility or creativity. This is rarely easy. Being a great digital marketing manager requires a certain set of skills and a certain mindset. Some skills are technical, whilst others are harder to pin down. To get some insights into the world of digital marketing managers, Marin software conducted a census of 200 digital marketing managers working at businesses with over £20 million in turnover.

Digital spend up, as is complexity

The latest figures from IAB show that digital advertising spending increased thirteens and a half % this year. With increased spending came increased complexity, and the extra money certainly did not make digital marketing managers jobs any easier. A massive 73% of them reported their job becoming more complicated over the course of 2015.

Not increasing enough

Although spending on digital is increasing, the majority of managers don’t think that spending patterns are changing fast enough. 61% thought that more money should be transferred from offline marketing to digital marketing. Interestingly only 27% of managers reported this in 2014 when asked the same question, so we can see the power of digital marketing is increasingly becoming better understood.

The Digital Gap

There is considerable evidence to suggest digital managers are right to think it wise to shift spending to digital channels. Time spent per day on mobile represents 25% of all media consumption, yet gets only 10% of ad spend, where as print captures 3% of total media time yet gets 19% of total ad spend.

Frustrated by lack of senior buy-in

Digital managers are frequently frustrated by a lack of understanding from their superiors. 39% don’t think the most senior marketer doesn’t fully understand digital or invest sufficient resources in digital.

Having digital talent at the top can also help with recruitment, as 85% of respondents said that a recognisable senior ‘digital champion’ would be a major draw for them. Something to consider when structuring your digital departments.

Digital Skills Gap

As Smart Insights found in our own report with TFM&A recommending Essential digital skills, recruiting for digital talent can be a major challenge. More than half (59%) report that they are planning on hiring more staff this year, yet 66% reported that they have struggled to access talent with the required tech skills. It seems the war for talent will rage on throughout next year.

Omni-channel marketing

Digital integration remained an issue in 2015, with 69% of managers reporting that online needs to be better integrated with offline marketing. However, considerable progress is being made here, as in 2015 only 16% said their online and offline marketing was not integrated at all. However, 53% thought they needed to do more to intergrade online and offline, which shows there is still a long way to go.