The importance of throwing digital skills into the mix

It’s nothing new that digital and social media are an increasingly important and integral part of the marketing and communications mix. As these disciplines are still relatively new though, some marcoms and media professionals are still not completely confident with them. New research shows there is a significant skills gap with just 35% feeling completely confident when it comes to being able to develop campaigns using these skills.

The danger is that without the right skills, businesses won’t be able to deliver effective digital campaigns and this could have a detrimental knock-on effect on the rest of the company’s communications, whether that’s traditional advertising, PR, mobile or something else. Ultimately, we as consumers (whether in our personal lives or on behalf of the organisations we work for) want to be able to communicate in whatever way we want and we expect businesses and brands to accommodate this. So, failure in one area can negatively impact how we view the company and lead us to be less receptive to marketing messages across other channels.

This is a challenge as mobile and digital continue to evolve, but brands and agencies alike need to make sure they are up-skilling so they can deliver fully integrated communications campaigns that effectively reach and resonate with the target market – a piecemeal approach will only deliver piecemeal results.