10 Digital Talents Your Business Needs to Succeed

The line between digital marketing and other forms of advertising continues to blur. More and more business owners and decision-makers are also finding that they have enough familiarity with some core digital marketing-related practices to dabble in the art themselves. Does that mean you can do away with your digital marketing team? Is it the death knell of specialised teams? No and no.

It’s vital that you have access to some specific digital talents and skills in order to continue to move forward. Sure, some of these can be learned by others, but they must be present, or you must have access to them through a partner firm in order to compete through vital digital platforms. How else will you rank in the SERPs? Without access to digital marketing talent, how will you use Instagram or Facebook?

Does the need for digital talents outrank the need for conventional marketing professionals within your business? No, you’ll still need brand specialists, content developers, campaign managers, and the like. If those professionals also have digital talents, so much the better. So, which roles are the most important? What are the must-have talents for your business?

1. Chief Digital Officer (CDO)
   If you run a larger organisation, then you’ll find that a CDO is able to help integrate digital marketing activities throughout all other marketing aspects.
2. Organic Search Manager (OSM)
   An organic search manager helps ensure that your multi-channel business is able to benefit from strong organic traffic.
3. Digital Marketing Manager (DMM)
   A digital marketing manager helps coordinate the efforts of all your digital marketing professionals and specialists so that you can create a cohesive whole from all those moving parts.
4. Marketing Technology Manager (MTM)
   Digital marketing technology evolves very quickly, making it difficult for non-specialists to identify must-have technology and to integrate it within their operations. An MTM ensures you see maximum benefits from your tech investments.
5. Website and Content Manager
   Who controls your website? Who is responsible for updating it and for creating the content necessary to attract your audience, inform them, and ensure a positive user experience? That’s your website and content manager, and they should also play a role in developing your content marketing strategy.
6. PPC Manager
   Pay per click campaigns are essential for attracting highly targeted traffic across Google, as well as through social platforms. Make sure your campaigns are in the hands of someone with the knowledge and expertise to achieve success.
7. Front-End Developer
   How often do you need to outsource things like website adjustments? Having front-end development talent in-house can allow you to avoid the slowdowns inherent with those partnerships while improving the speed of finding resolutions to technical challenges.
8. Digital Analysis Expert
   We live in the age of big data, but you need specialist expertise in order to analyse all the information to which we now have access, particularly in the digital realm. A digital analysis expert is able to take all the information gathered from your website and digital marketing efforts, parse it, collate it, and transform it into a valuable, useful asset.
9. CRM/Email Marketing Manager
   Who handles your customer relationship management? Who deals with your email marketing campaigns? Email is not just a marketing instrument. It’s a powerful communication tool, which makes it a powerful asset for customer relationship management.
10. Social Media Specialist
    It’s tempting to think of all social platforms as being similar, but they’re not. A social media specialist helps ensure that you’re able to create a consistent, cohesive message from Facebook to LinkedIn and everything in between while still creating a two-way conversation with your audience on each of those platforms.

Build your Team

While lines continue to blur between conventional marketing and the digital realm, understand that it’s not the importance of having digital expertise that is changing. Digital continues to invade other areas. Having the right team, building your business on the right talent, helps ensure that you can make the most of digital marketing and the increasingly connected audience for your business.

However, that does not mean that all digital technologies and specialities are worth your time. For instance, virtual reality likely has little benefit for your business, at least at the present time. Augmented reality may have slightly more potential, but it may be years before an actual use case can be developed for your particular industry.

In truth, the most important takeaway here is that digital marketing expertise should be integrated within your entire marketing team. Digital and traditional marketing are no longer separate, but two faces of the same whole. It’s all about user experience and communicating with your customers in the same way, with the same voice and tone, whether they’re in your store in person, browsing your website, downloading a report, or interacting with your team via Facebook.

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