Digital Marketing Today
A simple measure of the importance of digital marketing is how much money is spent on digital media. The latest IAB research on Advertising Spend and Revenue shows that in the United States, over three-quarters of media budgets will be in digital media. We see similar figures from IABS in the UK and European, so this is happening globally.
The IAB also gives an indication of the budget breakdown into digital channels. This is useful since it suggests a mix of the type of marketing activities we should be investing in.
Bear in mind though, that the IAB data is based on data from the largest publishers and platforms, so it is less representative of smaller businesses and underplays the importance of organic search (Search engine optimisation), Digital PR and influencer marketing.
The data shows that, as we would expect social media marketing and search marketing are important digital marketing investments. Yet, the data also shows that digital display and digital video are significant.
Remember, that this is more representative of spend by larger businesses who are now using these channels to replace investment in TV and print advertising.
How will digital channels grow?
As discussed in the latest edition of my book, some have said we are living in a post-digital age since now digital marketing equals marketing, so it shouldn’t be considered separately from a strategic point of view.
While the figures above support the contention that digital marketing is marketing, it’s dangerous to assume that digital marketing isn’t evolving and becoming even more important.
The forecasts from the IAB show that digital marketing will continue to grow in importance over the next few years.
This makes it even more important to have a dedicated digital marketing strategy that is integrated and aligned with your marketing and business strategy to develop your digital maturity.
You can find out more about how to plan and integrate your digital marketing channels across the RACE Framework with our free digital marketing plan template.
Free digital marketing plan template
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How important are jobs in digital marketing?
Another way to assess the importance of digital marketing today is to look at how many jobs are now in digital marketing. Recent research by LinkedIn of the changing marketing jobs landscape shows the importance of digital:
One in every two of the top marketing jobs listed on LinkedIn fall into the digital or media space.
The top fastest-growing roles of the past six months, from the highest to lowest rates of growth, are media coordinators, search managers, social media coordinators, search engine marketing managers, media managers, marketing analysts, email marketing specialists, search engine optimization analysts and digital media managers. LinkedIn reports that among other highly in-demand roles are digital account executives, social media managers, digital marketing managers, copywriters and digital strategists.
As the visual shows, the pandemic has seen the number of remote roles increase dramatically. Whereas just 2% of marketing roles were remote on March 1 2020, today nearly one in 10 are. At the time of the article, had seen a 177% increase in the number of remote job postings for marketing roles in the last six months.