he ability to predict what customers really want to spend their hard earned income on next is the alchemy all companies seek. In many ways that is the Marketing grail, which is brought much closer for many firms by the continuing revolution that is digital marketing and customer analytics. The insatiable appetite for accurate customer data driven by digital customer engagements has ramped up demand for marketers with these skills set. Far from the old cliché about half your advertising spend working, but just not knowing which half, the huge bump throughout this year has been for marketing talent that does just the opposite. Marketers that can develop creative digital campaigns and be able to track, measure and analyse their success, thus constantly gaining more insight into their customer behaviours. Where digital marketing used to be the preserve of agencies and edgier technology firms, today it is the most in-demand skill set in marketing functions across all organisation types; a trend which is only set to grow in 2015. No surprise perhaps for clients in the banking and finance, food and beverage, retail and telecommunications sectors that we have worked with over the last two years to bring this competency in house. However, it is interesting to watch a dramatic shift amongst more traditional sectors, such as professional services, who have historically lagged in terms of their digital presence and are now starting to get to grips with how to communicate across multiple platforms. While a law firm’s digital strategy will be inherently different to that of an online retailer, a commonality is evident for both; actionable data is required for both organisations to make the right customer driven decisions. Therefore, it translates that as a digital marketer in Ireland, irrespective of the industry sector you work in, while your priority at all times should be your customer; real data value is dependent on the tools of the trade. Many of the digital marketers we work with draw attention to the need to get this right at the outset. If you want to predict a customer’s likely future needs and in turn develop a communications strategy which facilitates customer engagement with your product or services, you need the right supporting technology. Products provided by companies such as Quantcast, Adroll, Dunnhumby, Google, IBM and SAS are based on intelligent propensity models and are vital to running and analysing digital campaigns. A lot of the organisations we work with make the point that successful companies can no longer look back to what has occurred previously to shape their futures, but need to T Insights into Action hrm recruit | three minute leadership | January 2015 | Insights into Action Sarah Good Sales & Marketing Selection Lead [email protected] professional services practice | science & technology practice | commercial & operations practice more effectively use competitor intelligence and wider market informatics to make future commercial predictions. The companies we see growing strong loyal customer bases are generally consumer facing companies with large data sets of customers. These companies are using their understanding of customers’ behavioural patterns to make commercial decisions relating to product development, technology investment, proposition development and even employee engagement. If companies are evolving in their demands from marketing functions, then so too must marketers evolve to make themselves invaluable. Ireland has come out of a tough economic period where many marketers have gained new skills, many through necessity rather than design. Marketers must now bring a much more structured approach to marketing, digital marketing, communications and customer analytics. As an analytical marketer today, it is critical that you keep up to speed with emerging technologies and use a variety of internal sources to develop a clear overall picture of your organisation. Also of importance for digital marketers in 2015 will be coding; we believe this skill will soon become a necessity for digital marketers. As modern marketing managers strive to understand how social media, content demand generation, PR and SEO can all align successfully within a fully integrated marketing strategy, the ability to understand how front end web development and coding can affect, enhance and optimise a content strategy will become a prerequisite. This is a challenging time for organisations and their marketing professionals. The best talent, with the smartest technology, will have the greatest ability to predict what customer appetite will be.